“The methods used to train officers with their firearms “create the illusion of learning” but are inadequate for the demands of today’s policing, said Bill Lewinski, executive director of the Illinois-based Force Science Institute, which provides research and training to law enforcement agencies.
“Officers are most proficient with their guns immediately after finishing a police academy, experts say.
“After that, most are tested only once or twice a year in 'qualifications' that measure a minimum level of firearms proficiency. There are no federal guidelines for these tests so there are thousands of different standards across the county.
“No one tracks these shootings nationwide, so the AP collected media reports and surveyed agencies across the country through public records requests. The review was not comprehensive due to the sheer number of U.S. law enforcement agencies and a lack of reporting requirements for such shootings. But it provides a snapshot of the problem, documenting 1,422 unintentional discharges since 2012 at 258 agencies.”
(Martha Bellisle. “Accidental shootings by police expose training shortfalls.” Associated Press. October 12, 2020.)
20-year-old Daunte Wright was driving an SUV with expired license plates on April 11, 2021, in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, and he also ran afoul of a Minnesota law that prohibits motorists from hanging air fresheners and other items from their rearview mirrors.
After officers pulled him over, they discovered Wright had an outstanding gross misdemeanor warrant, so they attempted arrest. Wright slipped free of the officer attempting to handcuff him; then, Kim Potter, a 26-year police department veteran, shot Wright dead officials say.
Police officials described Wright's death as an "accident," saying Officer Potter mistakenly drew her handgun instead of her Taser. Body camera footage of the shooting shows Potter shouting "Taser!" before she fires.
Fatal shootings where officers mix up handguns with Tasers are rare, “but this has happened at least 16 times in the last 10 years,” said Sgt. Betsy Brantner Smith, spokeswoman for the National Police Association and a retired 29-year veteran of the Naperville Police Department in Illinois.
The Minneapolis Star Tribune reported that since 1999, when Taser introduced its first handgun-shaped model, there have been at least 11 such incidents. The earlier Tasers looked more like TV remote controls.
The best-known example is the New Years Day 2009 fatal shooting of Oscar Grant in Oakland, California, by a Bay Area Rapid Transit police officer that was also videotaped and inspired the movie “Fruitvale Station.”
In that case, Officer Johannes Mehserle’s defense team said he mistakenly grabbed his gun instead of his Taser when he shot the prone Grant in the back. A jury convicted Mehserle of involuntary manslaughter, and he was sentenced to two years in prison.
(Corky Siemaszko. “How a veteran officer could have mistaken a Glock for a Taser in the fatal shooting of Daunte Wright.” NBC News. April 13, 2021.)
Wesley Skogan, a professor emeritus of political science at Northwestern University who specializes in policing, said officers “have a lot of stuff on their duty belt.” This includes guns, Tasers, pepper spray, a baton, handcuffs, sometimes a sap [blackjack], gloves. Skogan said. “But when they receive training, the emphasis is on guns. Firearms are your best friend.”
As a result, when an officer is in a potentially dangerous situation, their instinct is to reach for their gun rather than the Taser, the experts said.
(Corky Siemaszko. “How a veteran officer could have mistaken a Glock for a Taser in the fatal shooting of Daunte Wright.” NBC News. April 13, 2021.)
Potter's Glock pistol is black metal and almost a pound heavier than the neon-colored plastic Taser. The grips on the Glocks and Tasers are made from a similar type of polymer, and Glocks have a trigger safety while Tasers do not.
“They feel differently in your hands,” said Dennis Kenney, a John Jay College of Criminal Justice professor and a former Florida police officer.
Also, most police departments, including Brooklyn Center, require that officers carry their guns on their dominant side and Tasers on the opposite side to lower the risk of confusing the two weapons, the experts said. That’s also what Axon, the maker of the Taser, recommends.
“You can tell from the video that the Brooklyn Center officers were doing that,“ spokesperson Smith said.
Smith said, it's likely that Potter experienced something called “slip and capture.”
“It’s not like she looked at her gun and thought it was a Taser,” Smith said. “It’s a horrible, horrible motor glitch that could happen in high-stress situations.”
Accident?
Of course, accidents do happen; however, one terrible mistake, much less eleven, is far too many and suggests much better training should be done.
“Police training is in horrible shape in the United States,” said Maria Haberfeld, John Jay professor and co-author of Use of Force Training in Law Enforcement: A Reality Based Approach. “They don’t get refresher courses for years. And with the Taser, it’s just a few hours.”
And, sadly, a lot of police officers get killed doing what should be routine traffic stops. But, the stop of Daunte Wright seemed to pose no significant threat of bodily harm to the arresting officers.
What do we know? Violent encounters with police “represent significant causes of injury and death in the United States, particularly for Black, Indigenous, and People of Color,” according to researchers at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine, Yale University, and Drexel University, and that police shootings of unarmed Black people in the U.S. were three times higher than those of their white counterparts between 2015 and early 2020.
And, so, here we go again. Another Black man has been gunned down for no apparent reason. Be the killing an “accidental discharge” or a “slip and capture” or something more devious, Daunte Wright is gone. Whether the design of the Taser, the lack of adequate training with the weapon, or the fact that Blacks are presumptively suspect by police contributed most to his death will surely be analyzed and debated … yet, whatever the findings, will much-needed reform result?
Statistics alone show the need for reform now. It is clear that systemic racism in policing causes untold destruction.
Vox’s Senior Correspondent Zack Beauchamp writes, “psychological stressors combine with police ideology and widespread cultural stereotypes to push officers, even ones who don’t hold overtly racist beliefs, to treat Black people as more suspect and more dangerous. It’s not just the officers who are the problem; it’s the society they come from, and the things that society asks them to do.”
Beauchamp reveals an internal culture where even non-racist police officers are prone to enforcing policies that disproportionately harm or target Black individuals, as seen elsewhere, like with stop-and-frisk in New York City and revenue generation in Ferguson, Missouri.
(Phillip Meylan.”Are the Police Systemically Racist?” The Factual. September 09, 2020.)
The bottom line is we must address all police actions that threaten the life of innocent individuals. Perhaps, this means incorporating much more change than many traditional departments want to face.
"Of particular concern to some on the right is the term 'systemic racism,' often wrongly interpreted as an accusation that everyone in the system is racist. In fact, systemic racism means almost the opposite. It means that we have systems and institutions that produce racially disparate outcomes, regardless of the intentions of the people who work within them."
– Washington Post
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