Daunte Wright Shooting

“The police officer who fatally shot a Black man during a traffic stop in a Minneapolis suburb apparently intended to fire a Taser, not a handgun, as the man struggled with police, the city’s police chief said Monday… Brooklyn Center Police Chief Tim Gannon described the shooting death Sunday of 20-year-old Daunte Wright as ‘an accidental discharge.’” (AP News)

Both sides condemn the shooting:

“Some tasers have similar design — not exactly similar but roughly similar — to handguns, which obviously helps with some aspects of training in how to operate them. But the different weapons do not feel the same, they do not weigh the same (tasers can be considerably lighter), and they do not operate the same way. To avoid the minute potential of confusion, cops are typically trained to carry the taser on the weak-hand side (the firearm is on the strong side)…

“This kind of mistake does not happen with anything close to the frequency that would allow portraying it as a reasonable or excusable error. That is a separate issue from the question of whether it can be an honest mistake. It can, but it is grossly negligent and criminally actionable, nonetheless.” (Andrew C. McCarthy, National Review)

“Even if Wright’s shooting was an accident, as Potter claims, shouldn’t police officers at least have better training to avoid this outcome? This is not the first time a cop has claimed she meant to fire her Taser and instead shot her gun. To understand how often this so-called ‘weapons confusion’ occurs, I called up Gerald Takano, a retired police officer in Raleigh, North Carolina, who has studied the problem extensively and is a use-of-force expert. Years ago, he developed a training program to help officers in his state avoid the mistake, but he says most police departments around the country have not done the same. ‘There’s no reason to believe it’s going to diminish until it’s addressed systemically, nationwide,’ he says of these shootings.” (Samantha Michaels, Mother Jones)