Rep. Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.) called the fatal Minneapolis police shooting of Dolal Idd a "state sanctioned murder"—despite body-camera footage showing that Idd fired at police first.
Idd, a 23-year-old black man, was inside his vehicle at a gas station parking lot when Minneapolis police surrounded him on December 30, suspecting he was involved in a felony gun crime.
Police chief Medaria Arradondo said that Idd shot at police from within his vehicle—something confirmed by body-camera footage and eyewitness testimony—before police returned fire, ABC News reported.
Omar, a longtime critic of the Minneapolis police, condemned the officers' actions and called the department a "joke" in a tweet following the shooting.
MPD is a joke, this isn’t transparency or accountability.
A man was killed, his family terrorized & robbed of a son and all they are left w/ is more questions than answers.
Let’s stop normalizing + justifying state sanctioned murder by those who take an oath to uphold the law. https://t.co/PPYcYvCa6i
— Ilhan Omar (@IlhanMN) January 1, 2021
In the tape, which the police department released less than one day after the shooting, officers can be heard demanding that Idd put his hands up. The window of Idd's car then shattered outward because of a gunshot fired toward police from within the vehicle. Officers fired back several times, killing Idd.
Idd's shooting occurred near where George Floyd died in police custody last year. After Floyd's death, Omar, whose district includes Minneapolis, called for dismantling the city's police department.
"I will never cosign on funding a police department that continues to brutalize us," Omar said at a rally in June. "Not only do we need to disinvest in police, but we need to completely dismantle the Minneapolis police department."
In response to anti-cop activists, the Minneapolis City Council approved a massive $7.7 million budget cut to the police department last month, despite skyrocketing homicide and violent-crime rates in the city.
State authorities are investigating the incident.