MILWAUKEE — The fatal police shooting of Daunte Wright is throwing police training into the spotlight.
Investigators in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota say the officer–Kim Potter–shot Wright accidentally when she meant to use her Taser.
“Police officers do not train enough,” said Robert Willis, a use of force expert and police trainer. “I’ve seen veteran officers believe they were drawing their pepper spray and drew their gun instead, or vice versa. And yes I’ve seen officers draw a Taser thinking they’ve had a gun, or a gun thinking they had a Taser. Those are not common mistakes, but they do happen.”
There are no national standards for police training.
The state of Wisconsin requires officers to go through 24 hours of training every year, but Willis says there’s little mandate to what that training consists of.
“A good agency would do continuous training, but a lot of agencies do the required minimum,” he said. “Training is always the first thing to go and the last thing to come back, and no officer gets enough of it.”
Willis has experience training officers with using a Taser. Click in the player above to hear the entire conversation.