Archive for November, 2008
Force Science News #110: Stress & Memory: Important New Findings from FSRC Research
Final analysis of data gathered by the Force Science Research Center during a simulated shooting experiment has revealed important new findings about officers’ perceptions and recall that could bear significantly on OIS investigations.
Among other things, the testing showed that:
• Officers tended to recount vastly more information about what happened when interviewed by investigators than when told to write a report;
• Written reports, although much briefer, were more factual than accounts given in interviews;
• The error rate was considerably lower among officers who were allowed to confer briefly before being questioned;
• Whether expressed orally or in writing, what officers were able to accurately remember about the confrontation was severely limited in scope by their inescapable compulsion to focus narrowly on the threat they encountered.
“This is one of the most significant studies ever done in law enforcement regarding attention, memory, and memory-mining procedures,” FSRC’s executive director Dr. Bill Lewinski told Force Science News. Read the rest of this entry »
Force Science News #109: An Officer’s Down in a Kill Zone that’s Still Hot. What Should You Do?
Over the last 6 months, Dr. Matthew Sztajnkrycer, a “SWAT doc” from Minnesota, has exposed some 150 officers to this stressful and revealing training exercise:
A patrol officer, answering a domestic violence call, is shot down as he exits his unit. Officers responding to 911 calls from the scene observe him slumped in a seated position behind his car, not moving. To reach him, they must leave cover and cross more than 75 feet of open ground. The unlocated gunman potentially still controls the kill zone.
