srothstein wrote: ↑Tue Apr 13, 2021 3:53 pm
parabelum wrote: ↑Tue Apr 13, 2021 12:58 pmAfter 20+ years of police experience, how the heck do you confuse a taser (roughly 8oz) from a glock (roughly 32oz)? Not to mention they were on opposite sides and she had it pointed at him for a bit. Troubling, very troubling. His conduct notwithstanding, there is an issue here. A big issue.
There are two ways to confuse the pistol and Glock. The first and most obvious is that I do not know that she was carrying them on opposite sides. That is how I was trained, but not everyone does that and it was advanced thinking when I went through Taser training because they were still a relatively new thing back then. But I was also taught something that almost no one does, carry the Taser in a normal left handed draw, not just on the left side in a cross draw. It means the left hand gets used to drawing the Taser while the right hand still draws the pistol. It helps just a little more with keeping them apart (IMO).
The second part is that we know that under stress, people lose some functions, such as fine motor control, and various senses such as auditory exclusion. When I was in a shooting, the detectives did not believe I could draw the hammer on the revolver and let it back down safely to squeeze the trigger double action. What was going through my mind was contradictory training. From the time I was 8, my father had taught me to shoot the revolver single action for accuracy. Then the PD taught me to shoot it double action for combat style shooting. I drew it and cocked it out of 35 years of habit, then remembered saying to myself that they said to fire it double action so I lowered the hammer and then squeezed off a round - and cocked it again out of habit, lowering it again. The detective found the fired round was not under the hammer like he expected and did not believe my explanation. I also suffered auditory exclusion and time dilation so that I heard three distinct pops (not even as much as a 22 produces) as my partner and I fired, and it felt like a lot of time between them. The neighbor who called it in said it sounded like one long boom to him and he heard no pause between the shots. I know the sense of touch and the judgement of the weight are also going to go when the person is under stress like that.
I honestly believe she thought she had her taser out. I also honestly believe that either she carried the taser on her right side OR she was under enough stress that her hand went to her pistol instead of her taser because of too much training with pistols and little to no recurrent training with tasers. In danger she reacted instead of making a thinking and calculated action. In a fight, you react how you were trained normally. If she got recurrent training in pistols (at least once a year and probably more, but no recurrent training with tasers), her reaction is going to be to draw. One of the problems with officers being gun people is they go practice with their pistols for fun and relaxation. This is still training and it reinforced in her subconscious where the pistol was. I know there have been quite a few times where I needed a pistol and it was suddenly in my hand and I had no recollection of even reaching for it let alone drawing it.
I don't really think there is a lot of mystery in this shooting. They had a suspect with a warrant that fought with them and ran back to get in his car. I think he was trying to drive away but since the warrant was for carrying a gun (reportedly), it might have been an attempt to get a weapon. I think, because of the passenger, it was an attempt to get away but we don't know that either. To the best of my knowledge, the shooting was not legally justified (not under Texas law and I doubt if Minnesota's is much different) but it was also not a crime.
Her resignation was probably a good thing for her and the department, despite the comments about it being to get a new job as a cop in some other city. She might, but I bet her decision after this was to get out of police work. This kind of mistake weighs heavily on the soul of good or even mediocre cops.
