Researchers are beginning to realize that there’s an unexpected benefit when investigators conduct skillful interviews of officers who’ve survived shootings and other life-threatening encounters. In addition to eliciting more and better information, good questioning techniques tend to ease the emotional after-burn that many officers experience in the wake of traumatic events and leave survivors with...Read More
A leading sleep researcher argues that officer deaths from vehicle accidents and violent attacks could be cut by at least 15%—“a pretty darned conservative estimate”—if the problem of police fatigue was seriously addressed. As it is, he claims, a toxic mix of poor personal habits and arbitrary agency policies is creating a “large pool of...Read More
There’s now more evidence that waiting “a day or 2” after a shooting before interviewing an involved officer will likely produce more accurate and complete recall than insisting on immediate questioning. That conclusion is reported by Dr. Ed Geiselman, a UCLA psychology professor and a faculty member for the Force Science Analysis certification course, after...Read More
Two research reports of interest to officers concerned about health and fitness: 1. A study from the University of Chicago reveals that sleep deprivation may inhibit your ability to lose weight, even if you exercise and eat well. The research shows that restricting sleep to just 4 hours per night—a familiar phenomenon to officers who...Read More
Officers who predominately work midnights are at greater risk of developing severe health problems than civilians and other cops, especially if they average more than about 90 minutes of overtime per week and have trouble sleeping. This is established in a new study by an 8-member team of health experts, headed by Dr. John Violanti,...Read More
[Editor’s note: Memory is often a wild card in officer-involved shooting investigations. Involved officers typically don’t remember certain things that happened or they remember them incorrectly or their recollections conflict with accounts of other witnesses. This is frustrating and often suspicious to investigators. [Just how memory works is still the subject of intense exploration by...Read More
We’ve reported previously on the dangers of fatigue in policing, but we haven’t described a creative countermeasure, typified by the San Mateo County Sheriff’s Office in Redwood City, CA. To help deputies who would otherwise face exhausting commutes after long shifts, the SO has established 2 free “crash pads” where personnel can get adequate sleep...Read More
The FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin has added its voice to the growing concern about police fatigue, with an article in its August issue characterizing the problem as “an accident waiting to happen.” Among other things, the author, Spcl. Agt. Dennis Lindsey, a senior instructor at the DEA Academy and an international fellow at the Australian...Read More
Does your agency encourage you to nap on duty? Probably not. But your department might get better performance and you might be safer if regulated snoozing was permitted, according to well-known trainer and consultant Tom Aveni, head of the Police Policy Studies Council and a Technical Advisory Board member of the Force Science Research Center...Read More
