The mind of a shooter
Today, I want to take a break from the Uniform Crime Reports assembled by the FBI. I’ve been reading a study conducted by David Klinger, Associate Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Missouri-Saint Louis. The study was contracted by the Office of Justice Programs, National Institute of Justice, Department of Justice. The study is entitled “Police Responses to Officer-Involved Shootings.” It’s available for download here: Police Response to OIS (166).
The intent of the study is to examine the consequences for officers who pull the trigger. I’d like to focus on what officers involved in shootings reported to have thought or felt as they fired their weapon, or immediately after firing their weapon. Of the 80 police officers interviewed for the study, 96% of them experienced at least one specific thought or feeling. Here’s the data breakdown:
- Fear for others – 49%
- Strength, adrenalin rush – 46%
- Disbelief – 34%
- Fear for self – 30%
- Need to survive – 23%
- Intrusive thoughts – 9%
- Other specific thoughts – 30%
Of the officers who experienced “other” thoughts or feelings, the list includes being angry at the suspect, concern that the shots being fired were justified, concern that the suspect did not go down after being hit by the first round, and a sense of confusion over what happened because they did not realize they had fired their weapon.
Understanding the role of fear for self and others should be part of any comprehensive training program. What I’d like to examine in greater detail is the “other” category. Whenever a researcher has an “other” category that is larger than other “named” categories, it means that the questions they asked weren’t as good as they’d hoped.
What’s most concerning to me from a training standpoint is that officers are concerned about the justification of the shooting while they’re shooting. Police departments need to address a culture that has law enforcement officers worried about legal ramifications while in the midst of a deadly force encounter. The other, more salient, issue is that police officers are concerned that the assailant is not being knocked down when struck by their rounds. This speaks directly to firearms training that is wholly incomplete. What I suspect is that police officers are trained on paper targets to fire some number of rounds (probably one or two) before ending the engagement.
There is voluminous data available about the ballistics of handgun rounds. This data should be leveraged into firearms training. LEOs need to conduct training that most closely mimics a true deadly force encounter. Put simply, use paper targets for marksmanship, but look to other alternatives when conducting tactical or scenario driven training. There are a host of solutions ranging from technologically sophisticated (computerized targets with random round counts) to completely simple (using inflated balloons).
Training officers need to conduct training that prepares officers to survive and win deadly force encounters, and law enforcement leaders need to conduct a culutural study to discover why officers are worrying about justification of shooting instead of surviving. Both trends are disturbing, but easily correctable.
Jedburgh Corp offers a wide range of courses specifically designed to leverage this data, and provide the most effective Law Enforcement Training available. Contact us atinfo@Jedburgh-USA.com to provide feedback on the blog, or discuss your training needs. Also, feel free to post your comments.
