There are 2 types of knife attacks that an officer can encounter: a non-spontaneous attack where the officer is aware in advance that the subject has armed him/herself with a knife, and a sudden, spontaneous attack at close range, where there is a high probability that the officer will not even know that a knife...Read More
Nearly 8,000 rounds fired by Los Angeles County (CA) sheriff’s deputies have now conclusively proved what the Force Science Research Center first asserted more than 2 years ago: The single greatest influence on where spent shell casings land when ejected from a semiautomatic handgun is how the pistol is physically manipulated by the shooter, not...Read More
An expanded study of shell casing ejection patterns, with important legal implications for law enforcement, has just been completed by the Force Science Research Center, with cooperation of the Los Angeles County (CA) Sheriff’s Dept. Details and an analysis will be reported in the next issue of Force Science News, but FSRC Executive Director Bill...Read More
Canadian researchers have added a subtle but potentially significant nuance to the old warning, “Watch the hands.” A study at the University of Alberta has found that the length of a man’s index finger relative to his ring finger can be a predictor of his predisposition for physical aggression. The shorter the index finger is...Read More
Representatives of 2 elite British policing units and a major police union traveled to the Force Science Research Center this month [5/05] for a private 3-day update on the latest scientific findings about officer-involved shootings. Three of the visitors (Andrea Earl, Peter Smyth and Dave Bonnett) were spokespeople for the Metropolitan Police Federation while Mark...Read More
Should police uniforms be red? Would that make you safer and more easily in control of touchy situations? You might jump to that conclusion after a quick read of a new study by British scientists of results at the 2004 Olympics. A research team from England’s University of Durham compared the performance of athletes randomly...Read More
Part 2 of a 2-Part Series [EDITOR’S NOTE: For the record, the 21-Foot Rule, when accurately stated, says that in the time it takes the average officer to recognize a threat, draw his sidearm and fire 2 rounds at center mass, an average subject charging at the officer with an edged weapon can cover a...Read More
Part 1 of a 2-Part Series For more than 20 years now, a concept called the 21-Foot Rule has been a core component in training officers to defend themselves against edged weapons. Originating from research by Salt Lake City trainer Dennis Tueller and popularized by the Street Survival Seminar and the seminal instructional video “Surviving...Read More
When you’re dispatched to a call of a naked person out in public you’d be like a lot of officers if you thought the matter was amusing. But you’d probably be wrong-and in the worst of circumstances, dead wrong. Dr. Bill Lewinski, executive director of the Force Science Research Center at Minnesota State University-Mankato, has...Read More
To hear some of the media and activist police critics tell it, American cops are “out of control,” running rampant in an “epidemic” of unjustified use of force. But in an ongoing study that has been underway now for more than three years, Dr. Darrell Ross, an associate professor in the CJ department at East...Read More
