Originally published 2021-04-25.
Can a trained police officer really draw a handgun while believing it is a Taser? That question went viral in April 2021, days after officer Kim Potter shot and killed 20-year-old Daunte Wright during a traffic stop in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota. Potter said she meant to use her Taser. Soon afterwards a serving officer identified only as Brian B posted a video holding both weapons and arguing that the two feel far too different to confuse.
The short answer is that such mix-ups are rare but documented, and the law treated this one as a crime. A jury convicted Potter of first- and second-degree manslaughter in December 2021, and she was sentenced to two years. Here is what happened, what the viral video said, and what is known about how these errors occur.
What happened to Daunte Wright
On the afternoon of 11 April 2021, officers in Brooklyn Center, a suburb north of Minneapolis, pulled over a car driven by Daunte Wright. They cited an expired registration tag and an air freshener hanging from the rear-view mirror. A records check showed Wright had an open warrant for missing a court date on a gross-misdemeanour weapons charge.
As officers tried to arrest him, Wright pulled away from them and got back into the driver's seat. Potter, a 26-year veteran who was supervising a trainee that day, shouted "Taser!" several times and then fired a single shot from her Glock pistol, hitting Wright in the chest. He drove a short distance before crashing and was pronounced dead minutes later.
The killing came less than a year after the murder of George Floyd and while former officer Derek Chauvin was on trial a few miles away, so it set off days of protests. Potter resigned two days after the shooting, as did the city's police chief, and on 14 April she was charged with second-degree manslaughter.
The viral video from a fellow officer
The clip that spread across social media showed an officer, described in posts as a 12-year police veteran called Brian B, holding a Taser in one hand and a pistol in the other. His point was physical: the weapons differ in weight, shape and feel, and officers are trained to carry them on opposite sides of the body. "Huge weight difference, guys," he said, before adding that he could not understand how anyone confuses the two.
He went further than the equipment. In his view, an officer who makes that error in the heat of the moment should not be doing the job, and bad officers make life harder for the good ones who have to rebuild trust with the public afterwards. He also argued that most police work is talking, not force, and that officers should not treat everyone they stop as a threat.
The original video was later taken down, and the post that shared it on X is no longer available either. The embed below is kept as a record of what circulated at the time.
“I don’t understand how we can mistake a taser for a gun or a gun for a taser. 99% of our job is communication. You don’t gotta be quick to pull out a gun or a taser. Not everybody’s a threat. Try talking to them, get to know them people.” — 12 year Veteran Police Officer Brian B pic.twitter.com/feOIUBH2tu
— Qasim Rashid, Esq. قاسم رشید (@QasimRashid) April 17, 2021
(This post is no longer available on X.)
It is worth being clear about what the video was and was not. It was one officer's opinion about weapon handling and police culture. It was not evidence in the case, and it did not show what happened inside Wright's car.
How different are a gun and a Taser?
Quite different, at least on paper. Evidence presented about Potter's own equipment, as summarised on Wikipedia, showed that her Taser was mostly yellow plastic and weighed about 0.94 lb, while her loaded Glock was all black, partly metal and weighed about 2.11 lb. She carried the Taser on her left side and the handgun on her right, a common set-up designed to make a mistaken draw harder. Her most recent Taser certification was in March 2021, a few weeks before the stop.
That arrangement is exactly why the viral video found such a large audience. Many people, including many officers, found it hard to believe that someone with Potter's experience could pick up the wrong weapon.
"Slip and capture": what the research suggests
Potter's defence relied on an idea known as "slip and capture". The theory holds that under intense stress a person can carry out a well-practised motor habit, such as drawing a dominant-side weapon, even while consciously intending a different action. Before the trial, Judge Regina Chu ruled that the defence could present evidence on it.
The theory is debated among researchers, and critics point out that it is often raised after the fact to explain police shootings. Still, the mistake itself is not unheard of. By April 2021 the Minneapolis Star Tribune had counted 16 known US cases in which an officer fired a pistol while saying they intended to use a Taser. They include the 2009 killing of Oscar Grant in Oakland and the 2015 killing of Eric Harris in Tulsa, both of which led to criminal convictions of the officers involved.
After Wright's death, some departments changed their rules. Roeland Park, Kansas, for example, required officers to carry Tasers in a cross-draw position, and St. Ann, Missouri, switched to yellow Tasers worn on the opposite side from the firearm.
The trial, the verdict and the sentence
In September 2021 the state attorney general's office added a charge of first-degree manslaughter, based on reckless handling of a firearm. At trial Potter testified that she had mistaken her gun for her Taser. On 23 December 2021, after about 27 hours of deliberation, the jury found her guilty on both counts.
On 18 February 2022 Judge Chu sentenced Potter to two years: at least 16 months in prison, with the rest on supervised release. That was well below the roughly seven-year guideline range. The judge called the shooting "a tragic error" but said Potter had acted recklessly and that Wright's life mattered. Wright's mother, Katie Wright, told the court the lenient sentence felt like losing her son again. Potter was released in April 2023, and her supervised release ended that December.
Wright's family later reached a $3.25 million settlement with the city of Brooklyn Center.
What the case changed, and what it did not
The case left two arguments standing side by side. One is that a weapon mix-up can be a real human error, and that equipment design, holster placement and training can reduce it. The other, made forcefully by the officer in the viral video, is that police should rarely be reaching for any weapon during a routine traffic stop, and that communication and de-escalation prevent many of these situations from arising at all.
Both views can be true at once. The jury's verdict made clear that, whatever Potter intended, an officer who fires a gun without checking what is in her hand can be held criminally responsible for the result.
Sources: Wikipedia: Killing of Daunte Wright; Al Jazeera: Former officer sentenced to 2 years in Daunte Wright's death (18 February 2022); video shared on X by Qasim Rashid; story first highlighted by Upworthy.
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