“Engineering Resilience” Into Split-Second Shoot/No Shoot Decisions: The Effect of Muzzle-Position

• DOI: 10.1177/1098611120960688
• Date: 01 June 2021
• Published date: 01 June 2021
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

“Engineering

Resilience” Into

Split-Second Shoot/No

Shoot Decisions:

The Effect of

Muzzle-Position

Paul L. Taylor

1

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to explore the feasibility of engineering resilience into

the split-second decision environment police officers face during potential deadly

force encounters. Using a randomized controlled experiment that incorporated a

police firearms training simulator and 313 active law enforcement officers, this study

examined the effects of muzzle-position – where an officer points their weapon – on

both officer response time to legitimate threats and the likelihood for misdiagnosis

shooting errors when no threat was present. The results demonstrate that officers

can significantly improve shoot/no-shoot decision-making without sacrificing a signif-

icant amount of time by taking a lower muzzle-position when they are dealing with

an ambiguously armed person – a person whose hands are not visible.

Keywords

police, deadly force, resilience engineering, human performance, system safety

1

School of Public Affairs, University of Colorado Denver, Colorado, United States

Corresponding Author:

Paul L. Taylor, School of Public Affairs, University of Colorado Denver, 1380 Lawrence Street #500,

Denver, CO 80204, United States.

Email: paul.taylor@ucdenver.edu

Police Quarterly

2021, Vol. 24(2) 185–204

!The Author(s) 2020

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DOI: 10.1177/1098611120960688

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Errors should be taken as the starting point for an investigation, not an ending.

—Sidney Dekker, 2014

On September 27, 2016 two El Cajon, California police off‌icers were dispatched

to a call of a man who was “not acting like himself” and “walking in traff‌ic”.

According to an El Cajon Police Department Press Release (2016), the following

incident occurred when the off‌icers located the man:

The subject refused multiple instructions by the f‌irst off‌icer on scene to remove his

concealed hand from his pocket. Because the subject did not comply the off‌icer

drew his f‌irearm and pointed it at the subject while continuing to give him instruc-

tions to remove his hand from his pocket ...The subject paced back and forth

while off‌icers tried to talk to him. At one point, the subject rapidly drew an object

from his front pants pocket, placed both hands together and extended them rapidly

toward the off‌icer taking up what appeared to be a shooting stance. (p. 1)

One of the off‌icers, at whom the object was pointed, shot and killed 38 year old

Alfred Olango who, it turns out, was holding an electronic vaping device. Cell

phone and surveillance video footage of this tragic incident show the off‌icer who

shot Alfred Olango pointing his f‌irearm directly at him as he ordered him to

remove his right hand from his pocket (Parvini et al., 2016).

Unfortunately, these types of police involved shootings – in which the shoot-

ing off‌icers assert that they believed a person presented a deadly threat in the

moment when in fact, in hindsight, it turns out no actual threat existed – are not

uncommon in the United States and have been classif‌ied by police practitioners

and academics in a number of ways. Los Angeles County Assistant Sheriff Cecil

Rhambo called them “cell phone shootings” and said that his department had

“5 to 15” of them each year (Police Executive Research Forum, 2012). The Los

Angeles Police Department (2018) calls them “perception only shootings” and

of the 211 shooting incidents reported by LAPD between 2013 and 2017, they

accounted for 14% (n¼30) (p. 173). Fachner and Carter (2015) called them

“mistake of fact” shootings in their research on the Philadelphia Police

Department’s use of deadly force between 2007 and 2013 and found that they

accounted for 10% (n¼35) of the cases they examined (N¼385). Scharf and

Binder (1983) classif‌ied these types of shootings as “false-positive errors”, which

they def‌ined as, “A person presumed dangerous but, in fact, not actually armed

or dangerous is killed by the police” (p. 23). Taylor (2019a) expanded on Scharf

and Binders’ false-positive error category with a typology of police shooting

errors and def‌ined these types of shootings as “misdiagnosis errors” – situations

in which off‌icers intend to discharge a f‌irearm and hit their intended target but

the result is an unintended outcome (e.g., believing someone was armed an

off‌icer shoots a person who was actually unarmed) (p. 814).

186 Police Quarterly 24(2)