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opinions about the Taser being a different weight and colour
Having no interest in weapons of any sort, I always assumed that a Taser was operated in a completely different way - ie not a handgrip and a trigger. I'm surprised how 'gun-like' they are. It seems like a bit of a design flaw for a device intended to be non-lethal, not to be a different shape and require a different action.
hoefla-
The safety catches are located in the same place too. Left side of pistol grip and actuated with right thumb (so you don't have to take your finger off the trigger to release the safety).
Anyway, enough of me being an internet expert. Just feels that there is no publicly available evidence that suggests that the officer is lying about what happened, the video superficially supports her version of events and I personally don't believe there is any benefit to her claiming that it was a Taser mix up. If anything, I think it probably makes things worse for her from a defense perspective.
Edit: To spell it out more simply, "shot a suspect who was wanted on a firearms warrant because they tried to get back in their car and I feared for my life" would be the standard cop response. "I drew the wrong weapon and accidentally shot a suspect" is not, on the face of it, a "good" defence.
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It seems like a bit of a design flaw for a device intended to be non-lethal, not to be a different shape and require a different action.
I think there are good arguments for making these kind of weapons harder to use, but they are not particularly persuasive to the people being paid to carry them.
Stonehedge
Howard
It's a bonkers situation. If the weapon mixup was genuinely what happened (I personally think it's more likely to be true than not from what I've seen) then it's an act of gross misconduct and negligence that lead to the death of an unarmed man. If it's a ruse, then it's outright murder.
I've had probably 20 hours or so of pistol shooting training, only some of which was with a Glock 17 so clearly not an expert by any stretch but one thing I think that is worth mentioning is that after a few hundred holster draws you stop being aware of the weight of the firearm in your hand. When you start becoming more used to what you are doing you don't even notice pistol at all. You don't look at the pistol when aiming. Imho opinions about the Taser being a different weight and colour to a Glock don't really shed much light on what happened. Imho it's perfectly plausible that a dangerous/reckless cop could fail to notice they had the wrong weapon in their hand.
Whatever happened, somebody died who shouldn't have died and I have no trust in the system either getting to the bottom of what happened or holding the shooter accountable.
Accountability is the start right? I.e cops facing consequences for harming others