Minnesota prohibits dangling items like air fresheners from rearview mirrors, which Daunte Wright's family says was a factor in the traffic stop that killed him

• Duante Wright was stopped by police for having an object hanging from his rearview mirror, his mother said.
• Police said officers stopped him over a traffic violation, found he had a preexisting arrest warrant, then shot him as he tried to flee.
• The ACLU said the rearview mirror law is used disproportionately against Black drivers.

The family of Daunte Wright, the 20-year-old Black man who was shot dead by a police officer during a traffic stop on Sunday, has said that a routine traffic violation was what led the police to pull over his vehicle.

Wright's mother Katie said that her son called after being pulled over and told her he had been stopped because of "air fresheners hanging from his rearview mirror."

The police said that officers in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, had stopped a driver for a traffic violation on Sunday afternoon, and then found that he had a preexisting arrest warrant. Officers tried to arrest him but he fled in his vehicle, and an officer shot him, the force said.

Wright's car continued on for several blocks before it struck another vehicle, and he was pronounced dead at the scene, authorities said.

Wright's death has increased tensions in the area. Minneapolis - which is located about 10 miles from Brooklyn Center - is already on a knife edge with former police officer Derek Chauvin currently on trial for the killing of George Floyd.

The stated rule infraction for which Wright was pulled over is Minnesota statute 169.71, which prohibits "any objects suspended between the driver and the windshield."

Laws about whether items can be hung from a rearview mirror vary from state to state.

Most states, including California and Pennsylvania, prohibit drivers from hanging things near the windshield that "materially obstruct" their vision. Some states don't bar drivers from hanging things from the rearview mirror if they don't block the driver's vision.

There has long been controversy over how the police use laws such as bans or restrictions on air fresheners and other objects hanging from rearview mirrors.

Civil-rights groups say that they are often used by police in ways that disproportionately target nonwhite drivers.

The Pew Research Center has also said that "Black motorists, especially young men, have long noted how often they get stopped for petty traffic or equipment violations - failure to signal, broken license plate light, tinted windows and the like."

It's a tactic known as a "pretext stop", with police using a minor traffic law violation as grounds to investigate if the motorist may have committed a more serious crime.

In a Sunday tweet, the American Civil Liberties Union's Minnesota branch said it had concerns over the apparent use of the tactic in Wright's case.

"We have concerns that police appear to have used dangling air fresheners as an excuse for making a pretextual stop, something police do too often to target Black people," the ACLU said.

The recent protests in the US over a series of police killings of Black people have renewed scrutiny on "pretext stops" and how they are used.

Pew said that police have defended the tactic as "useful for investigating drugs and weapons possession, human trafficking and drunken driving, among other crimes."