Police gun ‘accidents’ all seem tobe— and end — the same

Faces manslaughter in slay of Minnesota driver; prosecutor vows to hold her ‘accountable’

So, I’m reading about the cop who shot Daunte Wright in Minnesota on Sunday and the police chief who defended her deadly mistake, and I’m wondering if there has ever been a time in the history of law enforcement when an officer grabbed his Taser by accident when he meant to pull his gun. Kim Potter’s weapon was still warm when stories started appearing online about all the other cops across the country who had apparently made the same mistake as Potter and fired the kill gun instead of the stun gun.

White transit cop Johannes Mehserle said he pulled out the wrong weapon in 2009 when he fatally shot a 22-year-old Black man, Oscar Grant, on the platform of a Bay Area Rapid Transit station in Oakland, Calif.

In 2015, a white volunteer sheriff’s deputy in Tulsa, Okla., fatally shot

a Black man, Eric Harris, 44, during an undercover operation. The deputy, Robert Bates, claimed he confused his personal Smith & Wesson revolver with a Taser, even though officials later said the stun gun wasn’t even on his hip at the time.

Neither of those shooters spent more than two years in jail for their “mistakes.”

But if such confusion is so common — like reaching for my house keys when I meant to get my car keys or sprinkling some sugar in the recipe when I meant to use the salt — then it stands to reason that a cop just one time would have shot his Taser when he meant to fire his gun.

Any officer who would ever confess to such a blunder would be a laughingstock. Of course, any officer who would ever commit such a blunder would likely be dead.

Yet we are expected to believe that Potter (below), a veteran police officer with 26 years of experience, pulled out the wrong weapon when Wright, 20, got back in his car during a traffic stop for expired tags.

“Oh s—t, I just shot him,” Potter said, as surprised as anyone.

But what exactly did she expect to happen when she pointed a loaded gun at a man and pulled the trigger?

“This was no accident,” Benjamin Crump, a lawyer for Wright’s family, said in a statement on Wednesday. “This was an intentional, deliberate, and unlawful use of force.”

Potter, 48, was arrested Wednesday and charged with second-degree manslaughter after days of protests in Brooklyn Center, Minn., where the shooting took place just miles from the courthouse where another former police officer, Derek Chauvin, is being tried for murder in the police custody, knee-in-the-neck death last year of George Floyd.

“Driving while Black continues to result in a death sentence,” Crump said. “A 26-year veteran of the force knows the difference between a Taser and a firearm.”

A Taser is lightweight and yellow. Bright yellow. A gun is heavy and black.

It’s like mistaking a plastic fork for a cast iron skillet.

Apologists will point to the need for better Taser training, as if it was even a given that Potter needed to use a stun gun that situation.

But until police departments address the implicit racism and bias that compel cops to approach people of color with suspicion and force, no amount of weapons training is going to keep unarmed Black men and women from being killed.

When it comes to police-involved shootings, the list of items cops have mistaken for a gun is long. The list includes a hairbrush, a Bible, a cell phone and a wallet.

Potter said she thought her gun was a Taser.

How is it that cops can think everything is a gun except their own gun? in

The Minnesota cop who quit after she fatally shot a Black man at a traffic stop was charged with second-degree manslaughter, authorities said Wednesday.

Kim Potter was taken into custody late Wednesday morning, and was later released on bail in the killing of Daunte Wright, according to online jail records.

“Certain occupations carry an immense responsibility and none more so than a sworn police officer,” Imran Ali of the Washington County attorney’s office said in a statement.

“With that responsibility comes a great deal of discretion and accountability. We will vigorously prosecute this case and intend to prove that Officer Potter abrogated her responsibility to protect the public when she used her firearm rather than her Taser. Her action caused the unlawful killing of Mr. Wright, and she must be held accountable.”

Potter, a 26-year veteran of the Brooklyn Center Police Department and former union president, and Officer Anthony Luckey pulled over Wright on Sunday afternoon, then began to arrest him for an outstanding warrant for a weapons charge, according to the criminal complaint.

After the 20-year-old tried to get back into his car, Potter pulled out her gun and fired once, hitting him.

“S—t, I just shot him,” Potter, 48, can be heard saying in the body cam footage.

Wright was pronounced dead at the scene, and the Hennepin County medical examiner ruled his death a homicide from a gunshot wound.

“While we appreciate that the district attorney is pursuing justice for Daunte, no conviction can give the Wright family their