On a bright, calm morning, two police units are parked next to each other, and the officers are savoring a cup of coffee and sharing a few hearty laughs. But the radio shatters this serenity when it crackles, “Units respond to 21 Main Street for reports of a suspicious male acting aggressively.”¹ Both officers acknowledge the call and respond. While they are enroute, the dispatcher adds, “The caller on the line states the suspicious male is talking to himself and yelling at passing vehicles. He has a hand in his pocket, and the caller is unsure if he has a gun.”

One author describes cognitive tunneling as “a mental glitch that sometimes occurs when our brains are forced to transition abruptly from relaxed automation to panicked attention.” This can cause people to become overly preoccupied with immediate tasks and lose their ability to direct their focus. There is a tendency to latch onto the easiest or most obvious stimulus, sometimes at the cost of common sense.⁴ 

Referring to the two officers drinking coffee in a spirit of fellowship one moment and answering a call for an armed individual the next, perhaps it oversimplifies human attentional capacity to describe this process as a glitch. Tunneling on threats is not a brain malfunction but a reality of humans’ attentional capacity when they believe their safety is in peril.⁵ It only becomes a glitch when officers act on wrong information.

Use of Force

Just as dispatchers will likely pass along details about the possibility of weapons, officers will likely use the data provided to them.⁶ But what if the information is wrong, and the suspicious male is experiencing a mental health crisis and holding a cell phone, not a gun? Could the possibility of tragedy be reduced if officers are given a heuristic⁷ that encourages them to think deliberately and slow down?

How police officers exercise their unique power to use deadly force continues to generate interest among academics. It also has recently become arguably the most visible public policy issue related to the criminal justice system in the United States. Academic interest in officers’ use of deadly force includes attention on how they make the decision to discharge their firearms during encounters with citizens.⁸ 

One chief of police reported that his former agency has between 5 to 15 “cell phone” shootings per year. These include situations where a suspect does not immediately comply and makes a sudden movement, causing officers to perceive this as a threat and fire their weapons. Tragically, some individuals had only a cell phone.⁹  

A former New York City deputy commissioner recommended focusing more effort on decisions officers can make to buy themselves more time. He remarked that sometimes police will not need to make split-second decisions if they make better decisions before that point.¹⁰ Given the serious public policy implications and gravity of the issue, it is astonishing that little empirical effort has been devoted to understanding the vulnerabilities that lead to tragic outcomes.¹¹  

Experiment

One notable experiment that has attempted to examine the systemic vulnerabilities in deadly force situations explored the effects of dispatched information on an officer's decision whether to shoot. Officers were divided into three groups.

1. The control stem dispatched officers to investigate an individual peering into windows of a home where the residents were away on vacation. 
2. Members of the second group were given additional information, or “primed,” that the subject appeared to be holding a gun. 
3. A third group of officers received additional information that the subject was talking on a cell phone, without mention of a gun.

All officers encountered one of two video scenarios where the suspicious person had his hands in his pockets and rapidly pulled out either a gun or a cell phone. Officers in the control stem fired on the subject, who pulled out a cell phone 28% of the time. The number of officers in the second group — given incorrect information about a possible gun that turned out to be a cell phone — who made an error rose meteorically to 62%. Also notable is that the officers in the third group, who were dispatched with the correct information — the subject was holding a cell phone — fired only 6% of the time.¹²

Terms such as “lawful, but awful” and “officer-induced jeopardy” have entered the police training lexicon. They imply that split-second deadly force decisions might have been prevented if the officers took other actions before crossing the Rubicon¹³ and finding themselves in a situation where using deadly force was inevitable.

Both police trainers and scholars have long advocated that slowing down officers’ initial response and employing tactics that incorporate effective usage of distance and cover can give them more time to make better decisions.¹⁴ Studies and research suggest that anything an officer can do that slows down their response and brings deliberate thought to bear on a situation may decrease the risk of a catastrophic mistake.¹⁵

Police agencies expect officers to apply critical thinking skills once they arrive on scene, but what if officers were trained to begin this process sooner?

New Approach

The Colonie, New York, Police Department (CPD) Training Unit believes that the methods (or lack thereof) officers use to preplan their response to emergencies may have a significant impact on their ability to think clearly and remain levelheaded. It has taken parts of accepted police decision-making models and incorporated them into a simple acronym — A.I.M. (authority, “ifs,” and mission).¹⁶ This simplification provides a mental model that is easily recalled and assists officers in their preplanning efforts. 

Authority 

Police leaders are surprised at how often their officers find it difficult to articulate their authority for the actions they took. It is critical for officers to ensure they are on firm legal footing before acting.¹⁷ Officers are taught to consider their authority while responding to a call for service. They learn to ask themselves questions such as the following:

• What authority do I have to respond?
• Given the current information, do I have any arrest power?
• Do I have legal grounds to enter this residence?¹⁸

Ifs

Officers are also taught to recognize two or three possible actions a subject may take. Considering the scenario with the subject peering into homes, what if they are simply an autistic individual prone to wander? The CPD Training Unit posits that this simple consideration may assist officers in engaging their minds in a more deliberate and thoughtful response, rather than relying on mere instinct. 

Mission

Finally, officers are asked to consider their knowledge of applicable laws, department policies, and their ethics to help identify the right thing to do. “What does the public and my agency expect from me?”¹⁹

Example

A lone suicidal individual is barricaded in a residence. Officers’ authority to act is based on applicable mental health laws and the moral imperative to preserve life. They should then consider some possible ifs. What if they took their time and used de-escalation strategies? What if this is a suicide-by-cop situation? Are the officers being lured into a manipulated direct confrontation?²⁰

The officers’ mission is to safeguard human life through persuasion and crisis communications. They should take their time, keep their distance, and seek cover. Officers must be ready if the suicidal person makes an attack toward their position.²¹ Compressing the incident and forcing entry into his home would not be in accordance with that mission.

Implementation

Recruit officers learn the A.I.M. mental model early. Throughout the training process, field training officers (FTO) are required to talk through A.I.M. with their recruits each time they receive a call for service. Each new officer and the FTO must affirm in the recruit’s guidebook that they used the A.I.M. preplanning process. 

During scenario-based training exercises, trainers typically provide officers with a fact pattern and dispatch information before allowing them to engage the scenario. After presenting the initial facts, trainers prompt the trainees to narrate back their A.I.M.s. The CPD has learned that this simple step causes officers to slow down and act more deliberately once the scenario-based training exercise begins. This process aims to simulate the preplanning efforts an officer is expected to go through once dispatched to a live call for service.

Conclusion

Critical decision-making models are not new to progressive policing agencies.²² The problem encountered by the Colonie Police Department Training Unit is that most decision-making models are not intuitive, and officers struggle to recall them during active events. Line officers often criticize these models as an overly complex approach to rapidly evolving events. 

“Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space there is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and freedom.”²³ The tone from dispatch is officers’ stimulus, and the A.I.M. strategy, easily recalled and practical for field use, becomes their response. 

The academic research community should explore how strategies like A.I.M. and other prearrival considerations can help officers think clearly and deliberately before they ever arrive at a critical incident. Police executives and trainers are encouraged to consider how to best use prearrival time to aid their officers in slowing incidents down and successfully resolving them.

The perspectives in this article do not necessarily reflect the views, practices, and policies of the FBI or the U.S. Government.