Incidents in which officers mistakenly discharge a firearm when intending to use a conducted energy weapon (CEW) are not truly random — at least not if we define random as “irregular, patternless, or unpredictable.”Another incident was captured on body-worn camera, offering a clear window into the dynamics that can lead to this critical error.
Watch this video starting at the 53-second mark.
There is a lot to unpack here. As always, the purpose of this article is to support improved police performance — often done by analyzing past events and asking why things went well or didn’t. The goal is not to pass judgment. Anyone who has spent time in policing knows what it’s like to be involved in an incident that has gone sideways.
When words fail: The impact of verbal slips under stress
In this instance, both officers are giving commands as the suspect is initially impacted by the CEW. At one point, the female officer yells, “Get on your back!” which the suspect already was. That command is immediately followed by, “Get on your stomach!” This first command appears to be a verbal slip, a common occurrence in high-stress, use of force situations. It reflects an error in the message formation rather than training, as I’m not aware of any agency that instructs officers to have a suspect lie on their back during cuffing. More likely, the command was shaped by what she saw — a person on his back — rather than what she intended to say. She quickly corrects herself, but this kind of mistaken, or inappropriate command is consistent with what we see even in training scenarios: under stress, officers are more likely to make verbal slips, or default to contextually inappropriate habituated commands. Think of “Drop the gun!” when the suspect is holding a knife, or “Get on the ground!” when officers are lying on top of the suspect and really mean to say “Get on your stomach!” It is no surprise then, that factors like stress, distraction, time pressure, or competing mental demands increase the likelihood of such errors [1] — all of which are common during a difficult arrest.
The suspect complied with commands by laying face down and placing his hands behind his back. However, handcuffing was attempted without positive control over the subject, either physical or electrical, and was not efficiently completed, and once the effort stalls, the suspect begins to struggle. The officers are unable to limit or prevent his movement, and after a brief attempt to regain control, the suspect gets to his feet and runs away.
As the officer puts her cuffs away, she draws her sidearm — not her CEW — and fires one round at the fleeing subject. This appears to be an action slip, likely caused by the officer’s attentional resources being overwhelmed by the rapidly evolving situation. Based on later assertions, she unintentionally initiated the wrong, yet similar, action sequence associated with CEW deployment — draw, point, pull trigger. Under stress, strongly habituated responses can influence this type of error, and may result from the disproportionate frequency found in training of drawing a firearm and drawing a CEW. [2]
She later tells a responding officer, “It was so instinctual; I didn’t mean to do it. I didn’t mean to do it. Oh my God, what was I thinking?” But the more revealing question isn’t what she was thinking, it’s why she unintentionally drew her firearm and fired at a suspect when it was inappropriate under the circumstances. A more constructive line of inquiry during an arrest event would be: What factors influenced the act of drawing and using my firearm when I intended to deploy my CEW?
Mistaken weapon use: A preventable pattern, not a random fluke
This is not an isolated event. It. Keeps. Happening. Rarely, to be sure, but happening nonetheless. Yet police agencies and communities continue to focus blame on individual officers, rather than examining the broader contributing factors. Rarely is there a serious look at the role of CEW training, handcuffing under power, suspect control tactics, force option transition, the ratio of firearm access (drawing) to CEW access, or the realities of human performance under stress, all of which influence the likelihood of these tragic errors.
James Reason, who is considered a giant in the field of safety and human error, writes, “the same set of circumstances can provoke similar errors, regardless of the people involved.” [3] Sound familiar? Different officers from different agencies — although rarely — unintentionally use a firearm instead of deploying a CEW while attempting to control or handcuff a resisting subject. If we understand that this type of human error will persist under certain conditions, shouldn’t our focus shift to uncovering why it happens and improving every component of the arrest process to reduce the risk?
Prior to 1999, when the CEW design changed to mirror that of a handgun, [4] I have not been able to find an instance of an officer mistakenly firing their handgun when intending to use the CEW. Indeed, in this article, a picture of a CEW being held in a classic firearms grip — meant to control recoil, illustrates how commonly and similarly the two are employed. What recoil is needed to be managed for rapid follow-up shots?
Moving forward: Shifting the focus from blame to better systems
Understanding that these types of errors can and do happen under predictable conditions, the focus must shift toward improving training and system design — not simply assigning blame. Several considerations can help reduce the likelihood of these incidents:
- Train officers to use context-appropriate command sequences consistently during scenarios. This builds automaticity — or at least a habituated bias to use the command — that supports clearer communication under stress.
- Incorporate handcuffing under power and two-officer control tactics into regular training. The first makes the most of the time a subject is incapacitated by the CEW and the second reduces over-reliance on CEWs as the means of control. Either may prevent critical mistakes, especially in situations where a misstep could endanger bystanders.
- Before rushing to judgment, remember that verbal and action slips are common — even outside of high-stress environments — and can happen to anyone. The difference in policing is that the consequences are far more serious. In fact, some of the most capable officers can make the most serious errors.
Just some things to think about.
References
1. Pincott J. Terrorized by the tongue: most of us live in fear of unleashing a freudian slip, revealing some dark secret hidden even from ourselves. Sure, many verbal gaffes tap our unconscious--but not the way that freud imagined. Psychology Today, March-April 2012.
2. Reason JT. The Human Contribution: Unsafe Acts, Accidents and Heroic Recoveries. Surrey: Ashgate Publishing, 2008.
3. Reason JT. Human error: models and management. BMJ 320, no. 7237 (2000), 768-770.
4. Bowling R. (November 9, 2023). History of the TASER: How it became an essential police tool. Officer.
