INDIANAPOLIS — "That's the big question of the day in this whole thing: How in hell could she mistake it?" asked Mike Dove, a former Brownsburg police chief.
That's what the 25-year law enforcement veteran asks himself when he watches the video of now-former Brooklyn Center Police Officer Kim Potter shooting and killing 20-year-old Daunte Wright.
Potter's police chief, who has since resigned, said the 26-year veteran officer mistook her gun for her taser.
"There's nothing in that video in all my years of doing this stuff that tells me she had the basics down," Dove said of Potter.
Dove, a graduate of the FBI National Academy, has trained in SWAT and active shooter situations and has also instructed officers on tactics during patrol stops. He believes Wright's killing is what can happen when an officer who carries a taser doesn’t train with it regularly.
"You have to do maintenance, self-performing maintenance all the time with your craft," Dove explained.
At a gun range at the Camden County Police Department in New Jersey, officers train with guns and tasers in a virtual simulator. If an officer is right-handed, their gun is on their right side, their taser, which is yellow and of lighter weight, is on their left.
According to an IMPD spokesperson, officers who carry tasers train with them at the same time as with firearms. Officers get initial training on the taser and then twice a year after that, and have to be recertified every year to carry it.
According to a Carmel Police Department spokesperson, officers there get eight hours of training when they first get their tasers. Then every year, they undergo a two-hour recertification, which includes firing two cartridges and a PowerPoint presentation. They also have taser training as part of scenario-based training during the year.
"They get like 110 hours of firearm training throughout the academy, they get like eight hours with a taser," said IU Associate Professor of Criminal Justice Stephanie Whitehead. She has also watched the video of Potter shooting Wright.
"The fact that she had gun in hand first and she's already pointing it does make it look like less of an accident because she's already got the gun in play," said Whitehead, who agrees if officers carry tasers, more training needs to happen.
"It's actually expensive to train. The cartridges that they use are really pricey," said Whitehead. "And most departments can't afford simulators to be able to do that."
"We need to have standards across the board of how much training officers continually see, not just getting through the academy," Dove added.
Whitehead hopes Daunte Wright's death will be a wake-up call that something needs to change.
"I'd like to think it will make departments pay attention to the training, to kind of raise awareness of their need to take responsibility for training," she said.