Lafayette Police Department

Welcome back, warriors. Today we are going to go over how an officer “accidentally” shot his fellow officer.  Let me be clear there is no room for accidents when dealing with firearms, this is completely unacceptable. I can not stress enough how important firearms training is. So before we can into what went wrong I would like to go over some firearm safety fundamentals.

There are four basic rules for handling a firearm.

1. Treat every weapon as if it were loaded.

Every gun deserves an air of respect, and the best way to exhibit that is to always treat every gun as if it were loaded. Never assume that a gun is unloaded. This holds even when you handle a firearm without shooting it, like during maintenance and cleaning processes.

2. Keep your finger straight and off the trigger until you intend to fire.

The most easily broken rule of firearms safety is placing your finger on the trigger when you’re not prepared to shoot. The only appropriate time to place your finger inside the trigger guard is when you’re ready to fire the weapon.

3. Never point your weapon at anything you don’t intend to shoot.

Although you’ve determined that the gun is safe, always be conscious about the direction the muzzle is pointed in.  Of course, it’s impossible to keep a firearm pointed at its intended target every single moment. In practicality, when it’s not aimed at a target, the gun should always be pointed in a direction so it will not harm anything if a round went through the barrel at any moment.

4. Keep your weapon on safe until you intend to fire.

Not all guns have the same style of safety mechanisms. Be familiar with your firearm and how it operates.  If it has a traditional safety keep it engaged until ready to fire.

I can not stress enough the importance of these four rules.  As long as you follow these you decrease your chances of an “accident” to zero. Plain and simple. So lets now discuss how that officer shot his partner. Out of the four rules I mentioned above I would confidently say he disregarded three of them. Rule number two, he could not have shot his partner if he had his finger off the trigger, it doesn’t get any simpler than that.  Rule number three, after watching the video I have to believe he did not intend to shoot his partner, but obviously, he had no awareness to where he was pointing his muzzle. So complete and utter disregard for that rule. And the last rule I think he broke was the fourth rule. Now not all firearms have a safety in the same place, maybe the safety was on the trigger. Not important. What is important is if he did have a safety then it was not engaged as it should have been. If his weapon did not have a traditional safety then he should have been aware of that and took the proper precautions, like following the first three rules.

 I read that the police officer’s chief said”We can’t prepare for every event.  Sometimes we are placed in situations outside of our control that we haven’t planned for.” And that is a true and factual statement however, this is why we train this is why we practice firearm saftey.  So when we do come up against something outside the norm we can fall back on our fundamentals to help get us through.

 So I leave you with this,  it is on you the officer to know and understand these basic firearm safety rules.  Follow them and there will be no accidents like the one we watched. And as always I hope this was entertaining and educational.  Please feel free to ask me any questions. Stay safe out there, till next time.