The U.S. Justice Department has issued consent decrees mandating certain types of training after use-of-force complaints, but those orders focused mostly on de-escalation training, not guns, he said.
Accidental shootings happen at agencies of all sizes. Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, for example, reported 140 between 2012 and 2018. New York City police had 100 during that time, while the smaller Jackson, Mississippi, police department had 93, the AP found.
They continue to occur at federal agencies, more than a decade after the Justice Department's inspector general documented high rates.
The watchdog office studied shootings by four federal agencies from 2000 to 2003. It found that of 267 shootings reported, 38% — more than 100 — were unintentional.
According to the AP's review of records obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests, the FBI has had at least 48 accidental shootings in the past five years. U.S. Customs and Border Protection has had at least 122 since 2012 — more than 15 a year — and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives 27.
Survival Stress
When SWAT officers searched the Las Vegas hotel room used by Stephen Paddock to massacre people attending the 91 Harvest Festival in 2017, they used an explosive device to breach a door to an adjoining room, and three loud blasts erupted.
Officers in the hallway flooded into the room, asking: "Where did those shots come from? Was that us?" One of the officers called out that he accidentally fired his assault rifle, hitting a chair, cabinet and wall. No one was hurt.
The AP identified six cases in which police accidentally fired their guns while responding to reports of active shooters, including at schools. Two hundred accidental shootings happened while officers were on duty or were responding to crimes.
In some cases, they were hyped up due to adrenaline, which can impair hearing and vision and even skew perception of time.
"When officers suffer survival stress, real survival stress, all of their senses start to degrade," said Sean Hendrickson, an instructor at the Washington State Criminal Justice Training Commission, which trains all police and sheriff's deputies in the state.
An Eden Prairie, Minnesota, police sergeant cited this phenomenon after he accidentally shot a motorcyclist in 2015.
Sgt. Lonnie Soppeland stopped the biker after a middle-of-the-night, high-speed chase along county roads, according to police and court records.
Soppeland drew his firearm as he stepped out of his patrol car, and a round went off, hitting the motorcyclist in the arm.
"You actually shot me!" a distressed and bleeding Matthew Hovland-Knase is heard telling the sergeant in his dashcam video. Soppeland starts swearing and rushes to his aid.
"It was not intentional, I can tell you that," he responds.
Soppeland later explained to Hennepin County sheriff's investigators that as he chased the motorcycle, he watched it nearly crash head-on into a tow truck.
"This added stress and adrenaline to my body," he told them. "It was not my conscious choice to discharge my firearm."
Soppeland was assigned to administrative work during the investigation and later returned to regular duties with no disciplinary action.
Muscle Contractions
Other accidental shootings by police have been attributed to muscle reflexes — one hand or arm jerks or contracts, causing the other hand or arm to jerk or contract — including the 2012 killing of a suspect in Alexander, Arkansas.
Officer Nancy Cummings says she stopped to check on Carleton Wallace, who was walking down the middle of the street, and he pulled a gun on her. She told him to drop it, and he threw it in the bushes.
Cummings then attempted to handcuff Wallace, but he yanked away, causing her to fall. As she tried to hold onto him, the gun fired, the court record said.
Wallace was shot in the back.
Cummings later said she didn't mean for the gun to go off and remembers looking at her hand and not knowing what happened, according to her statement in response to a federal wrongful death lawsuit.
She was charged with manslaughter. An agent who wrote the arrest affidavit said the way Cummings effected the arrest "with her gun in her hand with the finger on the trigger well was reckless," court records said.
Thomas Martin, an officer and firearms expert, testified at a trial in the lawsuit that the gun's firing was the result of a "natural reflex."
"If Ms. Cummings’ finger were situated outside the trigger guard and Mr. Wallace's actions caused her to reflexively squeeze her right hand, it is possible that Cummings' finger inadvertently and unintentionally slipped into the trigger guard and in one fluid motion, disengaged the safety lever and pulled the trigger," he wrote in an affidavit.
Cummings was acquitted, and a jury ruled in her favor in the lawsuit.
A recent study by the Force Science Institute, the research and consulting group, cited involuntary muscle contractions as one of the potential main factors in accidental shootings by police.
The study categorized behaviors based on unintentional discharges outlined in 171 reports from four law enforcement agencies. Other shootings occurred when officers lost their balance or experienced a "startle response."
In most cases, their finger was on the trigger when it shouldn't have been, the study found.
Injuries happened in 20% of the 171 reports — three-quarters of them to the officer, and the rest to fellow officers and suspects. Deaths occurred in 8%, with 85% being suspects and 15% fellow officers.
"These findings suggest that injuries and deaths may be more prevalent than previously reported," the study said.
Training Shortfalls
Experts agree the way to reduce these shootings is to rethink firearms training, starting with the amount required.
While all academies require cadets to undergo a certain number of hours of firearms instruction, the AP found how many varies widely.
Georgia, Illinois and Indiana, for example, call for 40 hours of specific firearms training, while Florida requires 80, Utah 52 and Missouri 66 hours.
Cadets at Washington's academy must have 90 hours of firearms training. But once they go to work for a department, the amount of additional training they receive is uncertain, said Hendrickson, the instructor.
"Those skills that they receive here at the academy, firearms skills, degrade pretty rapidly after they leave the academy if they're not practicing or getting more training," he said.
Another issue is the type of training used. Most academies use "block and silo" methods, which bombard officers with information and don't present it in a coordinated manner, so they don't retain it, experts say.
What's lacking are standards for regular, ongoing training — including scenario-based exercises that mirror high-stress situations — at the academy and over the course of an officer's career.
Spending money up front on training reduces the possibility of having to spend it later — on lawsuits, said Jason Wuestenberg, executive director of the National Law Enforcement Firearms Instructors Association.
"Usually when something bad happens, it's due to a lack of training or leadership," he said.
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