When officers who’ve just finished a shooting exercise gather around and an instructor holds up a “no-shoot” target that looks like it’s been riddled by machine gun fire, that’s a sobering moment. Especially when the officers now see that the target sports a badge. Some flat out deny they fired any mistaken rounds. But after...Read More
In the nation’s highest-profile case of weapons confusion, the California Court of Appeal has ruled that a jury verdict of involuntary manslaughter was reasonable and a two-year prison sentence was warranted for former officer Johannes Mehserle, who swore that he thought he was deploying his Taser when he actually drew his pistol and fatally shot...Read More
You are confronting an armed suspect, no cover available. He faces you, with his gun at his side, pointed at the ground. Your gun is aimed at him and you’re ready to shoot. He ignores your commands to drop his weapon. Are you justified in pulling the trigger before he makes any move to point...Read More
A new take on use-of-force judgment training has been developed by the Phoenix Police Dept. in collaboration with simulator manufacturer Ti Training Corp., a strategic partner of the Force Science Institute. What the 2 entities have created are believed to be the first interactive simulator scenarios specifically designed to test K-9 handlers in decision-making relative...Read More
After nearly 3 decades in law enforcement, Jeffry Johnson still remembers vividly a “hellacious” physical fight for his life as a young cop. “I was called to a scene where a guy was banging on his girlfriend’s door, trying to break in,” he told Force Science News recently. “He was BIG…and on PCP. Six of...Read More
Fascinating experiments by 2 California researchers show that young civilians who might someday be on an OIS jury overwhelmingly disagree with veteran officers about when police are justified in shooting armed, threatening perpetrators. Interestingly, tests also reveal that when facing shoot/don’t shoot decisions of their own, civilians tend to be quick on the trigger—and often...Read More
Force Science to bring unique new research-based police driving training to a computer screen near you. A new collaboration between the Force Science Research Center and the producer of ground-breaking computerized training programs could soon radically alter the way officers learn to drive on high-speed pursuits, Code 3 calls, and conventional patrol. “The results will...Read More
The first time Robert Murtha fired his gun on duty was to kill a rabid skunk. The next time, he was shooting to stop another kind of skunk, some would say, a criminal fugitive and career drug dealer who Murtha claimed was trying to run him down with a car. But that time it was...Read More
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...Read More
Don’t have the money for a bells-and-whistles training simulator? Don’t have the time for realistic live role-playing? Despair not! If you have paper and pencils and a reality-based imagination, you can still prepare your officers to react immediately with good decisions in life-or-death crises, according to Dr. Laura Zimmerman, a research psychologist whose insights into...Read More
