While not common, instances of police officers accidentally firing a pistol when they meant to draw their Tasers, as the police in a Minneapolis suburb said happened on Sunday when an officer shot and killed Daunte Wright, are not entirely unusual, either.
In 2018, a rookie Kansas police officer mistakenly shot a man who was fighting with a fellow officer. In 2019, a police officer in Pennsylvania shouted “Taser!” before shooting an unarmed man in the torso. And in 2015, a former Oklahoma reserve deputy killed an unarmed man when he accidentally grabbed his handgun.
Ed Obayashi, a California-based expert on the use of force by law enforcement, said that with appropriate training, it should be difficult for officers to confuse a gun with a Taser. “But unfortunately it does happen — this is not the first time and it won’t be the last,” he said, referring to the fatal shooting of Mr. Wright.
In a 2012 article published in the law journal Americans for Effective Law Enforcement, Capt. Greg Meyer, a retired Los Angeles Police Academy instructor, documented nine similar instances between 2001 and 2009.
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