Brooklyn Center Police Chief Tim Gannon said the officer — later identified as Kim Potter, a 26-year veteran who has been placed on administrative leave — had made a mistake in firing her gun at 20-year-old Daunte Wright, who later died. Video of the shooting taken from the officer’s body camera includes audio of her saying “Holy (expletive)! I shot him,” after firing a single round from her handgun.

Gannon said the officer’s immediate distress showed her use of the gun was unintentional.

“As you can hear, the officer, while struggling with Mr. Wright yells ‘Taser! Taser!’ several times. That is part of the officer’s training prior to deploying a Taser, which is a less lethal device,” Gannon said. “As I watch the video and listen to the officer’s commands, it is my belief that the officer had the intention to deploy their Taser, but instead shot Mr. Wright with a single bullet.”

Some questions and answers about officers who mistakenly discharge firearms when they intended to draw and deploy stun guns:

HOW FREQUENTLY DOES THIS HAPPEN?

Experts agree this is a real but very rare occurrence that probably happens less than once a year nationwide. A 2012 article published in the monthly law journal of Americans for Effective Law Enforcement documented nine cases in which officers shot suspects with handguns when they said they meant to fire stun guns dating back to 2001.

WHY DOES IT HAPPEN?

Reasons cited include officer training, the way they carry their weapons and the pressure of dangerous, chaotic situations. To avoid confusion, officers typically carry their stun guns on their weak sides — or their nondominant hand — and away from handguns that are carried on the side of their strong arms. This is the case in Brooklyn Center, where Gannon, the police chief, said officers are trained to carry a handgun on their dominant side and their stun gun on their weak side.

Bill Lewinski, an expert on police psychology and founder of the Force Science Institute in Mankato, Minnesota, has used the phrase “slip and capture” errors to describe the phenomenon. Lewinski, who has testified on behalf of police, has said officers sometimes perform the direct opposite of their intended actions under stress — their actions “slip” and are “captured” by a stronger response. He notes that officers train far more often on drawing and firing their handguns than they do on their stun guns.

Other experts express skepticism about the theory.

“There’s no science behind it,” said Geoffrey Alpert, a criminology professor at the University of South Carolina and an expert on police use of force. “It’s a good theory, but we have no idea if it’s accurate.”

Alpert said a major factor in why officers mistakenly draw their firearm is that stun guns typically look and feel like a firearm. St. Paul, Minnesota, Mayor Melvin Carter brought up the same point during a news conference Monday.

“Why do we even have Tasers that operate and function and feel and deploy exactly like a firearm?” Carter asked. “Why can’t we have Tasers that look and feel different? That you could never mistake for deploying a firearm so that we can ensure that mistake that has happened before can never happen again?”

WHAT ARE SOME OTHER CASES?

In one of most well-known cases, a transit officer responding to a fight at a train station in Oakland, California, killed 22-year-old Oscar Grant in 2009. The officer, Johannes Mehserle, testified at trial that, fearing Grant had a weapon, he reached for his stun gun but mistakenly pulled his .40-caliber handgun instead. Grant was shot as he lay face down. Mehserle was convicted of involuntary manslaughter and sentenced to two years in prison. His department paid $2.8 million to Grant’s daughter and her mother.

In Tulsa, Oklahoma, a white volunteer sheriff’s deputy, Robert Bates, accidentally fired his handgun when he meant to deploy his stun gun on an unarmed Black man, Eric Harris, who was being held down by other officers in 2015. Bates apologized for killing Harris but described his deadly mistake as a common problem in law enforcement, saying: “This has happened a number of times around the country… You must believe me, it can happen to anyone.” Bates was convicted of second-degree manslaughter and sentenced to four years in prison. Tulsa County ultimately agreed to pay $6 million to Harris’ estate to settle a federal civil rights lawsuit.

In 2019, a suburban St. Louis police officer, Julia Crews, said she meant to use her stun gun but mistakenly grabbed her service revolver and shot a suspected shoplifter, Ashley Hall, who suffered serious injuries. Crews resigned and has pleaded not guilty to a pending charge of second-degree assault. The city of Ladue admitted no wrongdoing as part of a $2 million settlement with Hall.

Sean Murphy • AP News

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Prosecutors are charging a Minneapolis police officer accused of pressing his knee against George Floyd’s neck with second-degree murder, and for the first time will level charges against three other officers at the scene, a newspaper reported Wednesday.

Widely seen bystander video showing Floyd’s May 25 death has sparked sometimes violent protests nationwide and around the world. The officer, Derek Chauvin, was fired May 26 and initially charged with third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter. The three other officers involved were also fired but were not immediately charged.

The Star Tribune reported reported that Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison would be upgrading the charge against Chauvin while also charging Thomas Lane, J. Kueng and Tou Thao with aiding and abetting second-degree murder. The newspaper cited multiple law enforcement sources familiar with the case that spoke on condition of anonymity.

Earl Gray, who represents Lane, told The Associated Press that the report “is accurate” before ending the call.

Widely seen bystander video showing Floyd’s death has sparked sometimes violent protests around the world against police brutality and discrimination.

Floyd’s family and protesters have repeatedly called for criminal charges against all four officers as well as more serious charges for Chauvin, who held his knee to Floyd’s neck, despite his protests that he couldn’t breathe, and stayed there even after Floyd stopped moving. Floyd, a black man, was in handcuffs when he died with his face pressed to the street.

Earlier Wednesday, the Floyd family’s attorney demanded that all four officers be charged.

“He died because he was starving for air,” Ben Crump said. “He needed a breath. So we are demanding justice. We expect all of the police officers to be arrested before we have the memorial here in Minneapolis, Minnesota, tomorrow.”

Crump said the other officers failed to protect a man who was pleading for help and said he couldn’t breathe.

Crump pointed to the criminal complaint against Chauvin, which said that while Floyd was complaining he couldn’t breathe, Lane asked Chauvin twice if they should roll him on his side. Chauvin said they should keep him on his stomach.

“To us that is intent,” Crump said. And he said the other officers were complicit because they failed to take action.

“We are expecting these officers to be charged as accomplices,” Crump said.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz said on a National Governors Association call that state Attorney General Keith Ellison, now leading prosecutions in the Floyd case, would make an announcement later Wednesday on the other officers. Ellison spokesman John Stiles confirmed that Ellison would give an update but would not provide any details.

Personnel records released by the city show Chauvin served as a military policeman in the U.S. Army in the late 1990s. Since being hired as a police officer in 2001, he has been awarded two medals of valor: One for being part of a group of officers who opened fire on a stabbing suspect after the man pointed a shotgun at them in 2006, and one for apprehending another man in a domestic incident in 2008. In the latter incident, Chauvin broke down a bathroom door and shot the man in the stomach.

Chauvin was reprimanded in 2008 for pulling a woman out of her car in 2007, frisking her and placing her in his squad car after he stopped her for speeding 10 miles per hour over the limit. His dashboard camera was not activated and a report said he could have interviewed the woman while standing outside her car.

Lane, 37, and Kueng both joined the department in February 2019 and neither have any complaints on their files.

Lane previously worked as a correctional officer at the Hennepin County juvenile jail and as a probation officer at a residential treatment facility for adolescent boys.

Kueng was a 2018 graduate of the University of Minnesota where he worked part-time on campus security. He also worked as a theft-prevention officer at Macy’s in downtown Minneapolis while he was in college.

Tou Thao, a native Hmong speaker, joined the police force as a part-time community service officer in 2008 and was promoted to police officer in 2009. He was laid off later that year due to budget cuts and rehired in 2012.

Gov. Tim Walz and the Minnesota Department of Human Rights on Tuesday launched a civil rights investigation of the Minneapolis Police Department and its history of racial discrimination, in hopes of forcing widespread change.

The official autopsy by the county medical examiner concluded that Floyd’s death was caused by cardiac arrest as police restrained him and compressed his neck. The medical examiner also listed fentanyl intoxication and recent methamphetamine use, but not as the cause of death.

Crump and the Floyd family commissioned a separate autopsy that concluded he died of asphyxiation due to neck and back compression due to Chauvin’s knee on his neck and other responding officers’ knees in his back, which made it impossible for him to breathe.

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