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PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine police shooting accuracy and the factors that influence whether officers hit, or miss, their intended target.Design/methodology/approachDescriptive statistics explore both incident-level and hit rate shooting accuracy in single officer/single suspect shooting incidents in the Dallas Police Department between 2003 and 2017. Multiple regression models analyze the predictive utility of officer, suspect and situational factors on the two accuracy outcomes.FindingsConsistent with prior research, the results demonstrate that officers are often inaccurate in officer-involved shooting (OIS) incidents. Additionally, several factors emerged as significant predictors of shooting accuracy.Practical implicationsThe results are discussed in terms of the practical implications for training and accountability.Originality/valueIt has been more than a decade since the last academic study investigated this important topic using actual OIS data. Acknowledging the general dearth of this literature, this study explores what factors contribute to shooting accuracy.

How many times have you read a news story about someone being shot by the police while reaching for their waistband?Or about an officer who testified at trial that the person he shot during a physical struggle had superhuman strength or a thousand-yard stare in his eyes?.

To demonstrate that psychophysiology may have applications for objective assessment of expertise development in deadly force judgment and decision making (DFJDM). Modern training techniques focus on improving decision-making skills with participative assessment between trainees and subject matter experts primarily through subjective observation. OBJECTIVE metrics need to be developed. The current proof of concept study explored the potential for psychophysiological metrics in deadly force judgment contexts. Twenty-four participants (novice, expert) were recruited. All wore a wireless Electroencephalography (EEG) device to collect psychophysiological data during high-fidelity simulated deadly force judgment and decision-making simulations using a modified Glock firearm. Participants were exposed to 27 video scenarios, one-third of which would have justified use of deadly force. Pass/fail was determined by whether the participant used deadly force appropriately. Experts had a significantly higher pass rate compared to novices (p < 0.05). Multiple metrics were shown to distinguish novices from experts. Hierarchical regression analyses indicate that psychophysiological variables are able to explain 72% of the variability in expert performance, but only 37% in novices. Discriminant function analysis (DFA) using psychophysiological metrics was able to discern between experts and novices with 72.6% accuracy. While limited due to small sample size, the results suggest that psychophysiology may be developed for use as an objective measure of expertise in DFDJM. Specifically, discriminant function measures may have the potential to objectively identify expert skill acquisition. Psychophysiological metrics may create a performance model with the potential to optimize simulator-based DFJDM training. These performance models could be used for trainee feedback, and/or by the instructor to assess performance objectively.

PurposeAmerican police agencies' swift adoption of body-worn camera (BWC) technology, coupled with the ubiquity of smartphones and social media, has led to a “new visibility” of policing. Video recordings are often touted as objective evidentiary accounts of police-civilian interactions. Yet even these recordings are rarely seen in a vacuum, but instead accompanied by headlines and accounts.Design/methodology/approachUsing a diverse sample of young American adults (N = 943) and an experimental design incorporating a short poorly recorded BWC video embedded within a survey, this study investigates perceptions of the appropriateness of police behavior in an ambiguous situation where officers used deadly force on a Black civilian. All respondents viewed the same video, but were randomly assigned to one of four ultimate outcomes.FindingsRespondents overwhelmingly reported the BWC video was personally important and significant for a subsequent investigation and public opinion. The experimental manipulation, along with background factors, exerted a substantial effect on perceptions of the officers' actions. Respondents found the officers' actions more appropriate when told the civilian held a weapon.Originality/valueAmericans are divided on the role of police in a democratic society. Objective accounts like video recordings may be used to build consensus, but our results, derived from a novel method and dataset, suggest deeper cognitive biases must also be overcome.

Friends and activists gathered at a skatepark in Memphis on Jan. 26 to honor Tyre Nichols after five former police officers were charged with his death.

iAs unrest over officer-involved shootings and deaths in custody takes center stage in conversations about policing and the criminal justice system, Guidelines for Investigating Officer-Involved Shootings, Arrest-Related Deaths, and Deaths in Custody addresses critical investigation components from an expert witness perspective, providing the insights necessary to ensure a complete investigation. Investigating a custodial death or an officer involved in a shooting presents unique and complex issues: estate, community, judicial, agency, involved officer, and public policy interests are all at stake. These types of deaths present various emerging medical, psychological, legal and liability, technical, and investigatory issues that must be addressed through a comprehensive investigation. This book is ideal for students in criminal investigation, death investigation, crime scene investigation, and special topic courses in custodial deaths and officer-involved shootings, as well as for death investigators, law enforcement officers, police administrators, and attorneys.

Although the use of excessive force by police has been a concern within communities of color for decades, the issue recently reached the public consciousness through media coverage of a number of high-profile police killings of unarmed Black victims. In explaining these events, the common understanding has been that there are some \"bad apples \" among police forces who exert excessive force due to personal conscious bias or implicit racial bias. The most widespread institutional response has been the implementation of implicit bias trainings and the use of body cameras to shape and monitor individual police-citizen interactions. This Essay adopts a different perspective. Using critical race theory and the Public Health Critical Race Praxis, it asks a novel set of questions regarding the marked racial disparities in police violence. In particular, it attempts to explain the striking differences in the magnitude of racial disparities in fatal police shootings across states and major U.S. cities. The Essay reviews research that examines structural racism as a possible explanation for the \"disparities in racial disparities\" across spaces and considers the potential role of racially identified spaces in molding the way police officers perceive not only individuals but also entire neighborhoods. It concludes that individual-level interventions cannot adequately address racial disparities in fatal police violence and that confronting and remedying the consequences of a long history of racial residential segregation and structural racism is necessary.

Objectives. To describe all-outcome injurious shootings by police and compare characteristics of fatal versus nonfatal injurious shootings nationally. Methods. From July 2021 to April 2023, we manually reviewed publicly available records on all 2015–2020 injurious shootings by US police, identified from Gun Violence Archive. We estimated injury frequency, case fatality rates, and relative odds of death by incident and victim characteristics. Results. A total of 1769 people were injured annually in shootings by police, 55% fatally. When a shooting injury occurred, odds of fatality were 46% higher following dispatched responses than police-initiated responses. Injuries associated with physically threatening or threat-making behaviors, behavioral health needs, and well-being checks were most frequently fatal. Relative to White victims, Black victims were overrepresented but had 35% lower odds of fatal injury when shot. Conclusions. This first multiyear, nationwide analysis of injurious shootings by US police suggests that injury disparities are underestimated by fatal shootings alone. Nonpolicing responses to social needs may prevent future injuries. Public Health Implications. We call for enhanced reporting systems, comprehensive evaluation of emerging reforms, and targeted investment in social services for equitable injury prevention. ( Am J Public Health. 2024;114(4):387–397. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2023.307560 )

On 16 August 2012, the world looked on in horror as South African police gunned down striking mine workers at Marikana, leaving thirty-four dead and many more wounded. It was a massacre that echoed apartheid-era violence at Sharpeville and Soweto, shattering the international image of South Africa as a liberated 'rainbow nation'. The bloodshed laid bare the lingering inequalities and class tensions that have endured beyond South Africa's democratic transition, and which the ruling African National Congress has done little to address. Marikana, an ebook exclusive by award-winning Guardian journalist Jack Shenker, explores the origins of the massacre and the truth behind the establishment's attempted cover-up, which has played out against a backdrop of growing popular disillusionment with the ANC and a spike in worker militancy. Weaving together the history of international mining interests in southern Africa, the mutation of the ANC from economic radicals into free-market cheerleaders and the emergence of new forms of popular resistance, Marikana poses vital questions about the massacre's legacy both within South Africa's borders and beyond. Offering a new and invaluable insight into one of the darkest episodes in South Africa's modern history, Shenker's work could not be more timely.

Following racially charged events, individuals often diverge in perceptions of what happened and how justice should be served. Examining data gathered shortly after the 2014 shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri alongside reactions to a novel officer-involved shooting, we unpack the processes by which racial divisions emerge. Even in a controlled information environment, white Americans preferred information that supported claims of a justified shooting. Conversely, Black Americans preferred information that implied that the officer behaved inappropriately. These differences stemmed from two distinct processes: we find some evidence for a form of race-based motivated reasoning and strong evidence for belief updating based on racially distinct priors. Differences in summary judgments were larger when individuals identified strongly with their racial group or when expectations about the typical behaviors of Black Americans and police diverged. The findings elucidate processes whereby individuals in different social groups come to accept differing narratives about contentious events.