OAN guest: Daunte Wright's parents “should be apologizing to the community” for raising a “young thug”
Brandon Tatum: “This was just him meeting his destiny”
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From the April 16, 2021, edition of In Focus with Stephanie Hamill
STEPHANIE HAMILL (HOST): Speaking of Daunte Wright, obviously his family is speaking out and it's a tragedy all around. This is just terrible to see all these things happening, it's been a rough week for law enforcement, it's been a rough week for the country. That being said, what did you make of the officer mixing up her taser with a gun. I mean, I guess from an outsider's perspective, one wonders how that's possible. How is that possible?
BRANDON TATUM: Well, there's many things that you have to digest here. I would never -- and I would say that with full authority and confidence, I would never mix up my taser for a gun. I mean technically you're supposed to have the gun on your gun side. Your taser is on the opposite side, where you have to reach w/ your right hand or dominant hand to get it and you're reaching across your body, unlatching it with a separate mechanism as your firearm, and it's a lot lighter than your gun. It has a red laser whatever -- laser pointer on the end of it so you can guide it and make sure you're shooting somebody in the right spot. I mean it's a complete different weapon, and so I'm baffled that a police officer would mix that up, especially one that has twenty-plus years on the police department.
But there is a psychological explanation to that. Somebody in a high-stress situation who is not well-trained, who is not very confident in dealing with high stress can actually pull out the wrong weapon and think that they have the other one. Because when your brain is under stress, it does things that you can not control. So, I can see how it happened; it's highly unlikely that it happened.
But all of this could have been prevented if that young thug wouldn't have been resisting arrest. His parents, who I see on TV every day, should be apologizing to the community as well because they raised a person who wasn't just going home to their 2-year-old baby and going in and out of the house with a smile on his face. He was robbing people at gunpoint, he was running around with guns unauthorized, smoking marijuana, on Facebook waving guns and smoking and drinking. The young man was headed down a path of destruction from the very beginning, so this was just him meeting his destiny, living that particular lifestyle, a lot earlier than they may have expected him to meet it.
HAMILL: Yeah, clearly, no perfect angel here.