Re: Detroit Woman Dead After Hugging Off-Duty Cop
These kinds of media reports, ones that report a gun simply 'going off', defy common sense because they lack a framework for analysis of what happened.
Calling a discharge an ‘accident’ can mean one of two things: Either that the department makes no distinction between accidents and negligence; or that it distinguishes negligent accidents from justifiable and excusable accidents.
An accidental discharge is a category of unintentional and/or involuntary discharge caused by mechanical failure or some other event that the operator of the firearm could not have prevented and could not have foreseen. The determination that a discharge was negligent (as opposed to accidental) requires a finding with regard to the appropriate standards of care that the operator of the firearm could and should have been observing, meaning: What did the operator of the firearm know and when did he know it?
I have some experience independently investigating the claims of police officers with regard to whether or not a firearm discharged by itself, and I have yet to see one jump off a table and shoot a hole in the wall. However, until they have a framework for analysis of the event, departments are often confused as to how to proceed with this kind of investigation.
Accidental discharges raise questions of ethical and legal responsibility: The issues are 1) Culpability; and 2) Liability.
Key factors in making the distinction between accident and negligence are:
As a matter of fact, the extent to which the operator of the firearm could have foreseen the event that precipitated the discharge; AND
The extent to which the shooter should have foreseen and could have been expected to prevent the event that precipitated the discharge; OR
The extent to which the operator of the firearm can be held (morally or legally) responsible and blameworthy for the event that precipitated the discharge.