A Systematic Social Observation Study of Police De-Escalation Tactics

Todak, Natalie; James, Lawrence R.

doi:10.1177/1098611118784007

Cited by 104 publications

(92 citation statements)

References 74 publications

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“…While performance was not examined in our study, we believe that with slight modifications the methods we used could provide the foundation for future research on the relationship between stress, experience, and performance. For example, a ride-along component could be added to assess performance as other researchers have recently done (e.g., Todak and James, 2018).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Stress-Activity Mapping: Physiological Responses During General Duty Police Encounters

et al. 2019

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Policing is a highly stressful and dangerous profession that involves a complex set of environmental, psychosocial, and health risks. The current study examined autonomic stress responses experienced by 64 police officers, during general duty calls for service (CFS) and interactions with the public. Advancing previous research, this study utilized GPS and detailed operational police records as objective evidence of specific activities throughout a CFS. These data were then used to map officers’ heart rate to both the phase of a call (e.g., dispatch, enroute) and incident factors (e.g., call priority, use-of-force). Furthermore, physical movement (i.e., location and inertia) was tracked and assisted in differentiating whether cardiovascular reactivity was due to physical or psychological stress. Officer characteristics, including years of service and training profiles, were examined to conduct a preliminary exploration of whether experience and relevant operational skills training impacted cardiovascular reactivity. Study results provide foundational evidence that CFS factors, specifically the phase of the call (i.e., arrival on scene, encountering a subject) and incident factors (i.e., call priority, weapons, arrest, use-of-force), influence physiological stress responses, which may be associated with short-term performance impairments and long-term health outcomes. Implications of research findings for operational policing, police training, and health research are discussed.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Stress-Activity Mapping: Physiological Responses During General Duty Police Encounters

et al. 2019

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“…Given that the majority of interactions officers have with citizens will not require crisis intervention, it might be prudent to stress the importance of using these tactics (e.g., showing empathy, building rapport, and demonstrating concern for the citizen) in everyday routine policecitizen encounters to enhance public trust in police. In this regard, our training implications are very similar to Todak and James (2018) who stressed that officers should employ "de-escalation" tactics, such as being respectful and reducing the cop/citizen power differential, not just in situations that require de-escalation, but in all situations to reduce the likelihood of citizen escalation. It is possible that training such as this, which emphasizes the importance of treating each and every citizen in ways that prevent escalation, could reduce the 20% officer performance deficit we observed in the current study.…”

Section: Implications Of Resultsmentioning

confidence: 61%

Using Interval-Level Metrics to Investigate Situational-, Suspect-, and Officer-Level Predictors of Police Performance During Encounters With the Public

James

Davis

et al. 2019

Police Quarterly

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The issue of how to measure the impact of situational-, suspect-, and officer-level factors on police actions has long been debated in the policing literature. One promising method is to use interval-level metrics developed via a combined method of concept mapping and Thurstone scaling. Our objective here was to use these metrics to score 667 incident reports from a large (n 1,500) urban police department. From this process, we explored significant trends in how police officers perform during encounters with the public. We found that officers performed better in "higher stakes" encounters and excelled in vigilance situational assessment as well as use of tactics and adapting tactics. Officers tended to receive the worst scores in routine police-citizen interactions and the highest in crisis encounters. Interpretation and implications of these findings for American policing are discussed.

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“…Yet despite this support, and increasing calls for the adoption of de-escalation training, no uniformly accepted definition of de-escalation exists within the policing field (Todak & James, 2018). Most recommendations for de-escalation policies or training, including those from the President's Task Force, neglect to provide a specific definition, or even more general description, of de-escalation.…”

Section: Police Use-of-force and De-escalation Policies And Trainingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Therefore, we provide a more recent search limited to only criminal justice studies produced from November 2016 through January 2019. Even though there have been several important contributions to the knowledge surrounding police use of de-escalation tactics (e.g., Todak, 2017;Todak & James, 2018), the results of our search reveal limited recent empirical work aimed at examining the impact of de-escalation training specifically. This finding is unsurprising.…”

Section: Considering Recent Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Does de‐escalation training work?

Engel

McManus

Herold

2020

Criminology & Public Policy

105

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De-escalation training has been widely implemented by U.S. police agencies in the wake of adverse public reaction to recent controversial police use-of-force incidents. Despite vast promotion from politicians, academics, expert panels, and the public, we know little about the effects of de-escalation training on officers and police-citizen interactions. In this article, we offer findings from a multidisciplinary systematic literature review that demonstrate limited knowledge concerning the impact of de-escalation training across all professions. We identified 64 de-escalation training evaluations conducted over a 40-year period, primarily in the fields of nursing and psychiatry. Policy Implications: Although assessment outcomes reveal few adverse consequences and provide some confidence that de-escalation trainings lead to slight-tomoderate individual and organizational improvements, conclusions concerning the effectiveness of de-escalation training are limited by the questionable quality of almost all evaluation research designs. As such, important questions regarding the impact of de-escalation training for police remain. Given the critical impact that de-escalation training could have on officers and the public they serve, we conclude with a direct call to academics, practitioners, and funders across the field of policing to prioritize as soon as possible the testing of de-escalation and other police use-of-force policies, tactics, and training.

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A Systematic Social Observation Study of Police De-Escalation Tactics

Cited by 104 publications

References 74 publications

Stress-Activity Mapping: Physiological Responses During General Duty Police Encounters

Stress-Activity Mapping: Physiological Responses During General Duty Police Encounters

Using Interval-Level Metrics to Investigate Situational-, Suspect-, and Officer-Level Predictors of Police Performance During Encounters With the Public

Does de‐escalation training work?

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