I mean this analogy doesn't even cover it. This is akin to being a professional stunt driver of 25-odd years and seeing a jaywalker a mile ahead, steering your car towards that jaywalker while flooring it and screaming "I'm braking!", then expecting anyone to actually believe this. That's 100% a vehicular manslaughter charge, and manslaughter is bare minimum what this cop should be charged with.
Daunte Wright Accidental Shooting
- Thread starter thebobmaster
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In the absence of overt malice, I'd take a more sympathetic line. It's more like someone walking out in front of a driver and the driver accidentally hitting the accelerator instead of the brake. It really happens, even with experienced drivers.
I think in the heat of the action, with a lot going on, this is a genuine mistake that is always going to sometimes happen because we're only human. Indeed, apparently in the USA about one person a year is seriously wounded or killed by a police officer using a gun when they meant to use their taser. (Presumably on top of this are a load of instances where the gun was accidentally drawn instead of the taser, but not fired.) It should end in a manslaughter conviction, fair and square.
It's good to see that there are procedures in place designed to minimise this risk, such as the taser being set up for the off-hand. But a redesign so a taser feels very different to hold from a firearm would be a good idea, or ensurnig they are bright yellow / green etc. rather than black.
An experienced president of a US police union would inarguably know the most effective excuses to cast enough benefit of the doubt to wiggle out of justice after being caught responsible for citizen murder.
Will you look at that, another incompetent and jackass officer mistaking their taser for a gun. If you don't know the weight & size difference of your gun and taser, you don't deserve to be an officer.
If I didn't take my foot off that accelerator for ten seconds, do you think I could use that excuse?
I've always found this, and other similar reasonings, to be completely inadequate.
"We're only human" is acceptable when it comes to little mistakes, like missing appointments, or forgetting to season your meal, but when it comes to mistakes that literally cause serious injuries or deaths, I find it to be wholly unsatisfactory.
When your job can potentially kill someone, I hold you to a higher standard. If they can't handle the stress, then they need to find another job.
Maybe that is unreasonable, but I just don't want to die by the hands of someone who should know better.
Not always. Some are primarily black - and they can superficially look like a handgun.
That's not a good analogy, because she only pulled the trigger at the end of that ten seconds.
So imagine you are driving and have a sense something is wrong. You enter a state of alertness for ten seconds prepared to hit the brake, but your concentration is heavily focused on the road and situation that you may have to respond to, so if you have perhaps put your foot in the wrong place at the start of those ten seconds or forgotten to move it, thinking it is over the brake when not, you may be less likely to notice in that period because of where your attention is fixed.
It should be very easy for each and every one of us to think of an incident where we ended up thinking "How the hell did I do that?" Who's flipped their spectacles up onto their forehead and a short while later spent three minutes looking for their spectacles, or seen someone else do it? It might seem trivial, but it's the same sort of thing.
Sure. They're still at fault, they get fired, prosecuted for manslaughter, and live with the guilt. No-one questioning that.
We can and should demand systems to minimise risk: training, processes and so on. But everyone on this planet just to accept that even with risk minimising, every once in a while someone's going to have a bad few seconds and completely fuck up in potentially devastating ways. It doesn't mean they are an irredeemably bad person.
I would agree, but when that person is in a position of power/authority, where that bad few seconds ends up with people DYING, they should be held to a higher standard of behavior. It might be cliche to quote uncle ben, but if you want the power/authority of an official position, then you should also be ready to face greater repurcussions/punishment if you mess up. For some reason though, at least in the US, for the cops/politicians, Uncle Ben's quote translated to "With great power, comes no responsibility/accountability"
I'm willing to believe that it might've been a genuine accident, I don't know the details, and haven't seen the footage, so I can't say either way. I've been on jobs with massive machinery that can instantly grind up a human body to mulch if they put a limb in the wrong place. And I almost killed a man when I made a split second mistake, and released a safety guard on an industrial platform. And only because of timing and a bit of luck, he wasn't hurt. A moment of miscalculation different, and someone might be dead because of me.
But if the cop themselves are saying "I grabbed the wrong weapon", well then you clearly aren't capable of making clear object recognition in a stressful situation, as evidenced by what you said you did. So therefore you should never be allowed to hold any position that lets you risk the life of another person, based on split second decisions, in stressful situations.
I agree that mistakes are going to happen. But the US police keeping oopsying people, especially black people, at a suspiciously alarming rate.
The cop cam footage has been released if anyone is interested in seeing that (this was on the news so the actual gunshot seems to have been edited out FYI or maybe I'm just blind because the tweet specifies you see the shot but I don't see a muzzle flash or hear the bang)
I'd understand if people didn't want to watch the video to see for themselves but in this case, yes, the tazers are yellow (screenshot my own with the tazer on another officer's hip circled)
I will say that it does seem pretty clear in the video that the officer didn't mean to do this. Whether that should matter or not is a completely separate debate but it would be hard to me to have someone watch that video and listen to her voice and think that she shot the guy on purpose.
That's interesting, because my recollection for most of the Australian police I've seen, they have the taser in a holster attached to their ballistics vest so its a different motion entirely to grab it and use it. Putting it on the opposite hip seems counter productive.
These "accidental" draws are always interesting to me (bit of backstory I was a military auxiliary security officer for the Navy) because we were trained to have our belts setup from least deadly to most. On our right side is spray, taser, firearm that way you have to make the conscious decision to pull your firearm. The idea that a 20 plus year veteran of the force could make the "mistake" is laughable.
This is just one person's thoughts on a local radio show but I feel like he puts it extremely well in describing what (at least from what I've learned with my talks with black men/women I know since I am not black) it feels like to be black in America.
I know what's going to be the main problem with it (people who will agree with it will want to listen and agree with it and people who want to shout down that black people have it super easy nowadays and they shouldn't have ran or whatever "Cop shoots black man for the 5,000,000th time this year" excuse they want to use will just skip it) but still felt like it was worth sharing for those who are interested.
I've put some thought in this and I think there are three quick and easy statutory changes that could be made that would fix the problem real fast.
1. Lawsuit and settlement payment for unlawful and murderous cop behavior don't come out of municipal, county, or state general funds. They come directly and exclusively from law enforcement budgets and police pension funds.
2. No bail for cops who stand accused of unlawfully killing people in the line of duty. Period.
3. No protective custody for cops who stand accused of unlawfully killing people in the line of duty. They go straight to gen pop, do not pass go, do not collect $200.
This isn't a training problem, this is a "cops are corrupt" problem. The "training" canard is a quick and easy way to divert blame and develop designed-to-fail non-solutions.
Because going for a gun instead of a taser is a forgivable event, but going for your gun and not realizing the safety was off and you have poor trigger discipline is a firing offense. That's all it is, they're trying to save her job and shuffle her to another station when it all dies down.
A lot of police handguns don't have manual safeties, to draw and fire faster.
EDIT: Not defending the officer by that, though.
I thought they were legally required to have safeties in the event of someone going for their gun when its on their belt?
Most contemporary pistols altogether are like that nowadays, not limited to police service pistols. Explanation spoilered for those not firearm-savvy so as to not derail.
Most contemporary pistols are striker-fired, rather than hammer-fired. Striker-fired pistols don't have hammers and mainsprings, eliminating potential points of failure from the firing mechanism. In hammer-fired pistols, you pull the trigger, which releases the hammer, the hammer hits the firing pin, the firing pin contacts the round's primer, and the gun fires. In striker-fired pistols, you pull the trigger which releases the striker, and the striker contacts the round's primer.
In hammer-fired pistols, manual or grip safeties either lock the trigger, disconnect the trigger from the firing mechanism, lock the hammer, or place a block between hammer and firing pin which prevents contact between the two. These mechanisms reduce the possibility of accidental discharge but don't eliminate it, because they don't act on the firing pin and its relationship to the round's primer directly. Striker-fired pistols, on the other hand, have a block that slides between the striker and the primer that only disengages when the trigger is pulled, meaning that relationship between pin and primer is acted upon directly thereby eliminating possibility of accidental discharge under normal circumstances.
Therefore, manual safeties on striker-fired pistols are redundant. They can be included, but they're not necessary for the sake of preventing accidental discharge. Pretty much all else is a case of "keep your booger hook off the bang switch, dipshit".
In hammer-fired pistols, manual or grip safeties either lock the trigger, disconnect the trigger from the firing mechanism, lock the hammer, or place a block between hammer and firing pin which prevents contact between the two. These mechanisms reduce the possibility of accidental discharge but don't eliminate it, because they don't act on the firing pin and its relationship to the round's primer directly. Striker-fired pistols, on the other hand, have a block that slides between the striker and the primer that only disengages when the trigger is pulled, meaning that relationship between pin and primer is acted upon directly thereby eliminating possibility of accidental discharge under normal circumstances.
Therefore, manual safeties on striker-fired pistols are redundant. They can be included, but they're not necessary for the sake of preventing accidental discharge. Pretty much all else is a case of "keep your booger hook off the bang switch, dipshit".