Accession Number:

ADA603665

Title:

Developing a Common Metric for Evaluating Police Performance in Deadly Force Situations

Descriptive Note:

Final rept.

Corporate Author:

WASHINGTON STATE UNIV PULLMAN

Personal Author(s):

• Vila, Bryan
• James, Lois
• James, Stephen M.
• Waggoner, Lauren B.

Report Date:

2012-08-27

Pagination or Media Count:

181.0

Abstract:

There is a critical lack of scientific evidence about whether deadly force management, accountability and training practices actually have an impact on police officer performance in deadly force encounters, the strength of such impact, or whether alternative approaches to managing deadly force could be more effective. The primary cause of this lack is that current tools for evaluating officer-involved shootings are too coarse or ambiguous to adequately measure such highly variable and complex events. There also are substantial differences in how key issues associated with police deadly encounters are conceptualized, even by subject matter experts, how agencies can or should train for them, and what officers should--or reasonably can--be held accountable for. As a consequence, trainers and policy makers have generally been limited by subjective or rough assessments of deadly force performance or how challenging a deadly force situation was.

Descriptors:

• *POLICE
• DECISION MAKING
• METRICS
• PERFORMANCE(HUMAN)
• SIMULATION
• TRAINING

Subject Categories:

• Sociology and Law

Distribution Statement:

APPROVED FOR PUBLIC RELEASE