Shooting Decisions by Police Firearms Officers

Abstract

This study is an investigation into whether briefing information, which was heard prior to seeing a firearms incident in a firearms training simulator, affected British police officers' decisions to shoot, as measured by their shooting behavior. Police authorized firearms officers (AFOs) heard either threat or neutral briefing information and then saw a "shoot" (suspect shot at AFO) or "no-shoot" (suspect surrendered without shooting) scenario. AFOs were tested in one of four conditions: threat briefing with shoot scenario, threat briefing with no-shoot scenario, neutral briefing with shoot scenario, or neutral briefing with no-shoot scenario. A postevent questionnaire and the General Decision Making Style (GDMS) questionnaire were completed by the AFOs. Those who had heard the neutral briefing felt more surprised when they saw the suspects than did those who had heard the threat briefing, regardless of which scenario they had seen. However, the briefing type did not affect the time taken to draw and aim the gun at the screen. No shots were fired in the no-shoot scenario, regardless of which briefing the AFOs had received. Differences in preferred decision style were not related to shooting decisions. The results suggest that the briefing information did not influence the AFOs' decisions to shoot, but they attended to cues in the scenario (not identified) and responded accordingly.

Effects of threat, trait anxiety and state anxiety on police officers’ actions during an arrest

“…Second, general information given to participants before they entered the room may have primed them to expect a certain amount of threat. Although previous research has suggested that briefings before experiments do not significantly affect officers’ behaviour (e.g., Mitchell & Flin, ), expectations may have played a role in the reasonably high levels of state anxiety in the LT scenarios.…”

Norwegian Police Use of Firearms: Critical Decision-Makingin Dynamic and Stressful Situations

“…Their findings suggested that, irrespective of threatening circumstances, limited working memory capacity can increase the risk of aggressive shooting behaviour. Furthermore, Mitchell and Flin (2007) investigated whether briefing information, provided prior to seeing a firearms incident in a simulator, affected police officer's decisions to shoot in Scotland. The findings in this study suggested that briefing information did not influence the shooting decisions by the firearms officers, but they attended to the cues in the scenario and responded accordingly.…”

“…During the period 2002-2014, on average, there were 62 cases per year in which police threatened to make use of firearms but did not discharge their weapons (Politiet.no, 2019b). Because police use firearms so infrequently, it is difficult to determine when an officer can be regarded as experienced in this matter (Mitchell & Flin, 2007). Given these numbers, it is reasonable to argue that Norwegian police officers' recognition of armed assignments is likely to be based on situations involving no confrontation or deescalation.…”

Organization of the Shooting Training System in the Polish Police

“…Individual preference for each style varies from high to low, and decision-making can be based on many styles; however, for each person, one style tends to dominate. Two types dominating in the police, most in line with the attitude of the officer: rational and intuitive, have been subjected to research related to the comparison of the type and time of making a decision to use the weapon and consequences of its use (Mitchell, Flin 2007;Brown, Daus 2015).…”