Quantifying police officers' arrest and self-defence skills: Does performance decrease under pressure?

Abstract

This study investigated police officers' performance on five selected arrest and self-defence skills that are regularly used in the line of duty. In Experiment 1 a 5-point scale to measure skill performance was developed and tested with 14 police instructors. Results showed that the new scale has satisfactory inter-rater reliability and good intra-rater reliability. In Experiment 2, the external and concurrent validity of the scale was tested by measuring the performances of 19 police officers executing the same skills in a high- and a low-pressure environment and comparing the results obtained with the new 5-point scale with results obtained with a currently used binary scale (i.e. sufficient/insufficient). While the scale proved to have good external and concurrent validity, it appeared that the police officers' performance really suffered under pressure. Given the criticality of successful police performance, it is suggested that incorporating psychological factors (e.g. pressure) in training procedures may enhance performance.

‘Gun! Gun! Gun!’: An exploration of law enforcement officers’ decision-making and coping under stress during actual events

“…Attempts to understand performance under stress, it is thought, will provide insights into how best to train individuals to perform in stressful domains such as aviation, law enforcement, the military, and emergency medicine (Inzana, Driskell, Salas, & Johnston, 1996;Nieuwenhuys, Caljouw, Leijsen, Schmeits, & Oudejans, 2009). …”

Training with anxiety: Short- and long-term effects on police officers' shooting behavior under pressure

“…Nevertheless, regular police training focuses predominantly on the technical, tactical, and physical aspects of performance and largely neglects the role of psychological factors such as stress and anxiety (Oudejans 2008; see also Nieuwenhuys et al 2009;Nieuwenhuys and Oudejans 2010). As such, one may wonder whether ''ordinary'' police officers are properly prepared to perform well under stressful circumstances (Murray 2004).…”

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“…Finally, affective components influence the emotional state in which the defender has to perform (functionality), like anxiety caused by situational constraints creating pressure on the performer [Nieuwenhuys et al 2009;Renden et al 2014] or emotionladen situations [Headrick et al 2015]. This allows the performer to experience the emotions associated with the task and how this impacts their thoughts and action (e.g.…”