In the news

of course it's bullshit - but it's what they have seen time and time again will fly in court.

Ftfy.

I think that NYT article said that taser/pistol mixups have happened about 9 times since 2009 and led to aqcuital for the officer about 50% of the time and jail for the others.

It's also that there seems to be no effort to de-escalate situations when the US police deal with black men, so they go into the situation more than willing to shoot.

This officer may have had a moment (of fucking inexcusable) blind panic and thought she was holding her taser. But she would have drawn her gun going into the situation, which would have been less likely to happen if the dude was white.

But she would have drawn her gun going into the situation

This is one of the reasons why the whole situation doesn't hang together for me. The victim had an outstanding warrant for a firearms offence...I find it quite surprising that a US cop would choose to go into that arrest with their taser drawn rather than a gun.

At the press conference the honcho cop said they wear the gun on the strong side and taser on the opposite side. You can also see a taser on the other cops belt and it’s bright yellow. Struggling to see how it could be a genuine mistake.

sure, why not? this is the police we're talking about. they shoot unarmed black men all the fucking time.

Well yeah. Thats the point.

When has a US cop had to pretend to be holding a taser to shoot a black guy on a firearms warrant who resists arrest?

I think that NYT article said that taser/pistol mixups have happened about 9 times since 2009 and led to aqcuital for the officer about 50% of the time and jail for the others.

I think you might’ve missed that it refers to an article from 2012, so that’s 9 mixups that were prosecuted between 2009 and 2012.

I think the point is that there's a 50% success rate of lying that you accidentally used a gun instead of a taser.

Before any of the usual suspects jump in and suggest that I'm defending the unarmed shooting of a black guy by a cop, me saying that I don't understand why the cop needed to lie about what happened is not me saying that I'm ok with what happened!

Sorry Mick, wasn't meant to be a reply to you.

No worries!

I'm in the same boat, considering how common/easy it is to get away with it, it seems odd to attempt to cover it up and draw more scrutiny to the situation.

Granted, not being able to distinguish between a lethal & non-lethal weapon seems like the sort of thing that should prevent someone being allowed to wield them. Though we can all be pretty sure that's not going to happen.

I imagine 'Murica will now ban Tasers to prevent this ever happening again.

When I saw the story I instantly thought it sounded like bollocks. Having seen the video though it seems much more possible that she really did mix the taser and gun up. Obviously a whole array of other issues around how it got to that stage.

I guess it's possible that there was some kind of conspiracy where it had been decided in advance they were going to shoot him and the video was all acting but it seems way too complicated when they could have just claimed they thought he had weapon in the car and shot him.

Granted, not being able to distinguish between a lethal & non-lethal weapon seems like the sort of thing that should prevent someone being allowed to wield them. Though we can all be pretty sure that's not going to happen.

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

Holy shit! I've had more handgun training (admittedly over a period of a decade) than some states require somebody to have before being given a gun and patrolling the streets. That is freaking sobering.

Johnson reads out Phil's racism and says nobody complained:

https://twitter.com/jonlis1/status/1381705739899666435

Accountability is the start right? I.e cops facing consequences for harming others

First thing that comes to mind is this: https://abc7news.com/sj-police-officer-under-investigation-for-behavior-during-protests/6224192/

Still gets defended by the police chief, "He's a good kid", and as far as I can tell the only punishment handed out was "Moved to off-street duty". Still picking up a nice pay packet despite multiple clear instances of looking pretty damn unhinged while pointing a weapon at unarmed protestors.

Can't see accountability becoming a thing any time soon.

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.

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.

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.

They don't need training cos guns is in their DNA.

Just watched the video, seems likely to me that she thought she was shooting a tazer.

I think the point is that there's a 50% success rate of lying that you accidentally used a gun instead of a taser.

Yes I did catch that, and the idea that it would be an unusual choice for a cover-up. I was suggesting there have been more incidents of pistol-not-taser between 2012 and 2021 that throw those odds off, so maybe it is a more attractive defence than we think.

From what little I’ve seen, seems like she made a mistake. Still criminal homicide imo.

I mean if it's possible to go to prison for accidentally or negligently killing somebody, surely this meets the criteria!

Ah I see, yeah that makes sense!

Sadly no captioning, anything with caption?