Rodger E. Broome

An Empathetic Psychological Perspective of Police Deadly Force Training

Police officers must be able to make an accurate appraisal of a lethal encounter and respond with appropriate force to mitigate the threat to their own lives and to the lives of others. Contemporary police deadly force training places the cadet in mock lethal encounters, which are designed to simulate those occurring in the real lives of law enforcement officers. This Reality Base Training (RBT) is designed to provide cadets with experiences that require their reactions to be within the law, policies and procedures, and ethics while undergoing a very stressful, emotional, and physically dynamic situation (Artwohl & Christensen, 1997; Blum, 2000; Grossman, 1996; Miller, 2008; Murray, 2006). Three police cadets provided written accounts of their deadly force training experiences in the RBT format. The descriptive phenomenological psychological method was used to analyze the data and to synthesize a general psychological structure of their experiences. The results reveal the perceptions, thoughts, feelings and behaviors reflecting the role of consciousness and psychological subjectivity in the participants’ understandings and decision-making in the simulated situations.

A Phenomenological Psychological Study of the Police Officer's Lived-Experience of the Use of Deadly Force

A police officer is sometimes required to literally make a potentially life or death decision and act on it under rapidly evolving and dynamic circumstances involving a variety of mental, physical, and emotional aspects of the deadly force experience. Because the act of using deadly force is so personally influencing, the descriptive phenomenological psychological method was used in this study to provide a qualitative, holistic, and personal viewpoint from the officers’ perspective in their lived experiences. Three city police officers were interviewed and each gave a descriptive account of their experiences with deadly force. It was found that police officers experience complex decision-making challenges requiring rapid interpretations and understandings of the situation as a lethal encounter. The phenomenological psychologically pertinent constituents found in the general structure of their experiences are Perceptions of Bullets Hitting the Suspect, Surreal Experience, Noticing Body Damage to the Suspect, Making Meaning out of the Experience, and Officer’s Understanding the Suspect(s) as Adversaries. Police officers are forced to confront death and later reflect on its personal and social meanings. The emotional impact of deadly force encounters seems to transform the officer and the deep emotional impacts may not ever become resolved.

The Lived-Experience of Leading a Successful Police Vehicle Pursuit: A Descriptive Phenomenological Psychological Inquiry

AbstractPolice vehicle pursuits are inherently dangerous, rapidly evolving, and require police coordination to safely stop and arrest the suspect. Interviews of three US police officers were conducted and the descriptive phenomenological psychological method was used to analyze their naive accounts of their lived-experiences. The psychological constituents of the experience of leading a successful chase and capture of a fleeing criminal found are: (1) Alert to Possible Car Chase, (2) Suspect Identified, (3) Anxiety and Excitement About the Chase, (4) Awareness of Primary Chase Role, (5) Radio Coordination with Others to Take Actions to Stop the Suspect, (6) Ongoing Evaluation of Chase Situation and Persistence, (7) Reading the Suspect’s Driving Behaviors, (8) Car Chase Transition to a Coordinated Physical Capture, and (9) Making Sense of the Experience Through Inquiry. Insights garnered from this study may be useful to police, policy makers, trainers and others interested in emergency and crisis decision-making.