Kimberly Potter, the 26-year police veteran who fatally shot Daunte Wright during a traffic stop in Minnesota on April 11, has been charged with second-degree manslaughter. Prosecutors will be tasked to prove to the courts that she was negligent in drawing and firing her Glock pistol instead of her Taser stun gun when subduing the 20-year old.
A widely scrutinized body-cam video shows Potter yelling “Taser! Taser! Taser!“ before firing a bullet into Wright’s chest which killed him on the scene. Beneath what appears to be another appalling accidental shooting actually belies a complex, systemic issue at the core of America’s problematic, hyper-aggressive policing philosophy. This ethos is ultimately reflected in the design of standard tools law enforcement officers carry and how they use them. It’s bigger than an industrial design problem, but it’s certainly part of the issue.
How could a veteran cop—who even served as a training officer—mistake a stun gun for a pistol? Many speculate that it has something to do with the physical similarities between the two objects Potter allegedly mixed up. Both the Taser and the gun, for instance, are held via a pistol grip. It’s a form in tools such as power drills, gasoline pump nozzles, and even the now ubiquitous body thermometers at Covid-19 check points. “It’s ergonomically simple and it’s an ideal shape for a trigger finger to depress a button,” explains Pascual Wawoe, director of the undergraduate product design department at the ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena.
Read the rest of this story on qz.com. Become a member to get unlimited access to Quartz’s journalism.
