Retired Police Major Explains How Miami-Dade Officers Are Trained Not To Mix Up Handgun & Taser
MIAMI (CBSMiami) – Following the shooting death of 20-year-old Daunte Wright, questions have been raised how a police officer could confuse a Glock with a Taser.
CBS4's Bobeth Yates spoke with Iggy Alvarez, a retired police major who's now an attorney, about the training at the Miami-Dade Police Department to avoid that very mistake.
"When you're in a critical incident, you're not thinking, you're just doing," he said. "We're talking about a half of second decision. Your adrenaline is going. It's very stressful and in that type of situation you always revert back to training."
In Miami-Dade, Alvarez said that training includes placing the gun in the dominate hand and Taser to the other side.
"Your Taser was always in your non-dominate side. Why? Because when your training, practicing, it's muscle movement. So when you're in critical incidents, you're not thinking, you just do," he said. "So when you see the video, and you hear her screaming, 'Taser, Taser, Taser,' that's the first thing you teach all the officers. Because you want all the other officers to get away so they don't get tased."
But Wright was shot and killed Sunday after being pull him over for an expired tag. Officers tried to arrest him after learning he had an outstanding warrant.
In body camera video, you can see former Brooklyn Center Officer Kim Potter pull her weapons, firing the fatal shots. Potter said she miss took her weapon for her Taser.
"All this training, at what point did you not feel that there was a gun in your hand and this was not a Taser?" said Benjamin Crump, the attorney for the Wright family.
The investigators who examined Potter's on-duty belt after the shooting said her Taser was on her left side and her handgun was on the right. Potter has now been charged with second-degree manslaughter.
"On everything I read and saw, she tried to do the Taser and this was an accident," Alvarez said. "She's going to have to live with for her entire life."
Those Yates spoke with said many of the concerns that have been raised about police officers throughout the country are being tackled here locally with training.