I feared for my life...Really?

We all are human and all humans share the same traits, one of which is that no one is perfect, we all make mistakes. In defending the actions of Police officers some often try to hide that fact, ignore it, or disclaim its validity. In doing so we only do more harm, because we will never investigate correctly to find the treatments necessary to deal with the inevitable situations where mistakes may be made.

Before we fear for our lives, we suffer anxiety. This anxiety is the result of our inner self feeling unprepared to face the situation in front of us. Our subconscious recognizes that we are ill-prepared to meet the demands of the situation we face. Preparing ourselves for such eventualities is the only way we can reduce this anxiety, the symptoms of both anxiety and fear can be very similar and for that reason are often confused.

The Yerkes-Dodson Law/Rule explains how anxiety affects our performance, and it's not new We have known about this and implemented its use in the manufacturing/production workplace for almost a hundred years, but for some reason, we chose not to apply it to our police officers' training.

Being prepared; Receiving the proper training, training, that is violent both physically and mentally creates neuropathways that in turn change the boundaries and definitions of what is ‘uncomfortably dangerous’ and that which is ‘manageably dangerous’.

An officer who is in a completely alien and uncomfortable situation will obviously feel anxiety much sooner than a better-prepared officer and he will almost always translate that anxiety to fear, simply because he has never been taught, or maybe even contemplated the difference. Confidence in our abilities to perform, at any given moment, is essential to reduce stress and anxiety in any given situation.

The anxiety is often because subconsciously or even consciously, we know that we do not have the necessary abilities needed to perform a specific task! We are often told to trust our training but that becomes very difficult if you have never received the training.

Fear is real if you feel it, but it is subjective. Quite simply, what makes one person afraid is another day in the office for someone else.

As humans we may be afraid of many things; snakes or spiders, dogs or horses, heights or water. For the people who suffer from these fears, they are very real: To them.

Regardless of what you may think to be the cause of any given fear or its validity, they produce anxiety in those who feel them, but are they real enough to be able to justify the taking of somebody else’s life because 'you' felt afraid? ?

You would not, I assume, give the job of a lifeguard to someone who had a fear of drowning or employ as a linesman someone who feared heights; would you?

When we employ Police Officers and Security Professionals, there is no ‘across the board’ test, known to me, that tests their fears and phobias in comparison to their classmates or other already serving officers. One that puts them in uncomfortable, possibly life-threatening situations with the intention of seeing if they have such fears or phobias. Firemen certainly do such preparation training for example. I would be grateful if contacts from around the world could tell me if such a program exists for police officers in your country.

Exposure is what is needed to build resilience so gradually increasing stress-inducing, work-related scenarios are the way to build resistance and therefore better performance under stress. Again, this is not new, we have known it for a long, long time, but why is it not being included in the obligatory training phase of an officer’s induction? Why do police officers in some countries, receive some of the most basic and shortest professional training courses, before being issued with their firearm, and expected to do such an important job?

Someone, somewhere, has done the maths and decided 50 police fatalities a year and 1000 civilian fatalities a year is an acceptable price to pay to maintain the status quo. (US data). That the cost of training is too high in itself, specialized training does not come cheap, and in the number of man-hours on the job that are lost to it.

Can that in itself be acceptable? A hairdresser studies anything from a minimum of 1000 hours to get to the chair then maybe 1500 more to become a qualified hairdresser in the UK, whilst in some countries a police officer can do as little as 500 hours to be given a badge and a gun!! No wonder they “fear for their life” so often!

Worldwide comparisons of police training program hours vary considerably. The 500 hundred average hours, U.S. (three months) standard may even be doubled to 6 months, to give a little leeway for the difference between states, etc. but would still fall short of Finland’s 36-month program, for example.

Direct comparisons are difficult to make outside of a dedicated study but such a study conducted over 10 years in Finland showed that 2% of their almost 100,000 incidents annually became physical a number not dissimilar to that of a study conducted in Seattle. The difference is that the Finnish police during these confrontations only used deadly force on 7 occasions, discharging their weapons 197 times in shots to injure or “finding other methods to disarm or dissuade attackers “armed with guns or knives”.

Comparing that to 1000 per year in the US, one might suggest that this indicates, although it is by no means conclusive proof, that extensive and different training may be of some benefit to all involved.

Yet so many who comment on this subject, especially when dealing with police shootings limit their responses to, “he/she had the right to defend themselves if they feared for their lives” and quotations of various laws, all of which are obviously known to us all.

The mere fact that they do so, usually rules them out for a serious conversation on the subject, to be honest. ?It’s as lame as the old “because I said so” defence made by a parent to their inquisitive five-year-old.

Another argument often fielded is “he/she seems to have been around long enough to know how to handle the situation correctly”. And I get it, in twenty years he never had to shoot someone so he must know quite a bit about how to deal with knife-wielding maniacs, right? Well, NO. Not necessarily, this could be his first and only knife-wielding maniac and he has had twenty years not practicing how to deal with it. Not having to perform a task for twenty years doesn’t make you an expert or even good at it!

And besides that, from pure chance alone they might succeed, but just because something works doesn’t mean it’s the right strategy or even a good strategy. Even a broken watch is right twice a day!

So, I want to make this clear now that I am in no way trying to reduce the defensive powers or rights of any police officer in any country of the world, should their life be in real danger.

They must have all the tools and knowledge available at any given moment, without doubt, to be able to protect themselves, but that danger must be real and so must the fear on which it is based. ?

I believe that “fear for life” alone is not sufficient when such large, and some might say disproportionate, numbers of civilians are being killed, especially when we already?know that fear is subjective.

Fear is a non-quantifiable subjective emotion; it is both a gift (Gavin de Becker) and a friend to extraordinary people (Geoff Thompson). Fear can be both real and irrational at the same time and it needs to be understood and then managed. Then, if once all that is taken into consideration, the decision to take the shot is made, well so be it. Investigate and make your conclusions, ‘justified’ or ‘not justified’. The officer involved will feel a lot better knowing, ‘really knowing’ that they had no other option available to them.

Discomfort in a given (unknown) situation, may produce anxiety and that can be translated, by the individual person/officer as fear, if the correct preparatory training had not been introduced into their training program. That is something that needs to be avoided at all costs.

During training, we need to study how each officer evaluates stress in a given situation, and at what point his/her anxiety converts that stress to fear. Performing various measurable acts under stress as a form of inoculation is one way to achieve this. Not with the intention of dulling the senses, but quite the contrary, to heighten their senses and provide them with ‘known’ limits and recognizable cues to predict imminent danger.

It has been proven, that means it is a fact, that physical fitness aids mental agility and stress/anxiety relief, so obviously maintaining a basic fitness level for all serving officers is essential to their mental health and the performance of their duties and the fact that their work can, at times, become very physical it would seem to me to be a no brainer. Again, something that has been known for many years but for some reason too many officers let their physical fitness slide if indeed they were actually physically fit at entrance level.

Let’s be honest some entrance programs are found to be lacking in serious physical testing. Bearing in mind the officer may spend all day carrying around a 20lb belt as a starter.

Mental fatigue/violence/anxiety etc can be instilled as well as adding time-specific tasks and restrictions, a pass or fail points system to the task and/or course. Fear of failure and its consequences may increase anxiety and in doing so can change a person’s reactions considerably. Don’t forget that the pride of achievement, of succeeding where others fail can be a great incentive, whilst the feeling of mediocracy is draining to most.

Visualization is a great tool to employ too. Visualization is not just imagining/pretending. You can visualize practicing skills you already have to help you become more successful in their application but you can’t imagine them. Visualization is a powerful tool to reinforce physical training.

Watching a Jackie Chan movie and imagining yourself performing his feats is definitely not the same as visualizing repetitions of your own actual training, re-feeling your emotions, constantly pushing yourself a little bit further every time, and getting to your perceived finish line, whatever that may be…

The biggest enemies of a successful outcome in a (potentially fatal) violent confrontation as in so many other scenarios are ‘Ignorance’ and ‘Arrogance’. Ignorance is a failure to perceive the reality of the situation in time to avoid the worst possible outcome and arrogance in assuming that you have all the answers already, that you know the outcome because, well because, “you do”. Some portion of the blame must be accepted by us if we have not prepared for this assault in the first place.?

Often officers are caught by surprise when they should not have been. Why? Maybe because of their daily routine, boredom, and maybe because of a lack of the correct instruction to deal with something that is just a little out of the ordinary.

Some time ago, I was sent a video of a policeman who worked hard to maintain control of a situation, but just did not have the right tools or indeed the street smarts, at that specific moment, (he had a gun and a baton!). He parked too close, to the clearly visible threat, on arrival, eliminating valuable space that he would soon need.

He didn’t use environmental protection when it was obviously available. He became physically entangled because of an error that he had made. And, in an adrenaline-fuelled “red mist” he committed murder, by shooting a previously aggressive assailant, who had done him much physical and psychological harm, twice in the back, from a distance of approximately 15 feet, when the man clearly showed no sign of continued threat and was actually walking away from all concerned.

Two more officers had arrived as support and did not feel the need to shoot, but they had obviously not received the brutal beating he had. The officer is under investigation and will almost certainly serve a custodial sentence.

So, before everyone starts telling me that I should not be the "armchair quarterback" or that I “don’t have the right to second guess the actions of a police officer under stress, especially as I was not in his situation”.

Well, I do, and here’s why. I received that video several times in the minutes and hours immediately after the event. Once from a friend who works closely with the police, but mostly from serving police officers, twice from members of different police units I teach, pointing out mistakes they believe that the officer had made, (brownie points for them)!!

Another was from a commanding officer. Why? Because I was asked to study the video to propose a training program, specifically related to that "common scenario", “to better equip these officers in the future”.

The same day another video landed in my inbox, depicting the last seconds of a fatal police shooting of an aggressive and violent individual. It was 21 seconds long and showed no context just the fatal shooting. I don’t believe that incident was justified either, but do understand the situation the officer found himself in. In fact, I understand completely. He “feared for his life” and so he pulled the trigger. He was found not guilty of any wrongdoing which I believe was the right and possibly only decision open to the courts under the circumstances, however, I am not sure the decision he made was the correct one. Although I accept it may have been the only one, he thought was available to him at the time.

He was alone and confronted by a larger, violent, and probably intoxicated non-pain-compliant individual armed with, what appeared to be a rotten branch, dangerous enough in the right hands I will grant you.

It took me the best part of the day to find a longer video of the event, lasting two and a half minutes, and showing the officer's arrival on the scene. I counted 17 mistakes he made, or to be fair to him and the situation he found himself in, 17 things he could have done better to negate the necessity he felt to use his firearm. I won’t bore you with them all.

He was alone which is a scenario no police officer should have to find themselves in but unfortunately many do. His backup arrived only 10 seconds after he had pulled the trigger. Had he done one or two of the 17 things differently he would have been able to hold the aggressor at bay until help arrived and would not have needed to pull the trigger.

Something that I know has affected him deeply, he was, last I heard, still off work, suffering stress and anxiety attacks. He felt the necessity to take another’s life and he is finding it hard to live with that decision.

He lacked meaningful direction in his approach, he believed his badge was enough (it wasn’t), and he failed to notice the assailant was not responding to his commands or to adjust his position and approach accordingly when confronted. He walked backward with no spatial consciousness, he failed to take control of his environment. He was weapon-obsessive, fixated, and probably in tunnel vision.

So let us start there:

Vision, our ability to see, has little to do with our ability to consciously observe. Yes, it’s important obviously but observation is much more than seeing. Our eyes, in combination with our brains, often trick us as to the reality of the situation, leaving us with only snapshots of what is the reality. Our brain fills in spaces, it fills in the blanks with memories, to avoid overloading our senses.

It’s like our eyes take a few photos and our brain turns them into a 360 panoramic view. We must make sure we have some relevant ‘memories’ to fill these spaces with and that goes back to ‘work-related stress test scenarios and role plays’. Creating the memories, and the neural pathways necessary to deal with such situations instinctively.

It is only by consciously concentrating on the scene in front of us that we may see the details within the snapshots. We often do that automatically, subconsciously, at times of heightened stress, but we can choose to do it too, cognitively, whenever we enter a new environment for example.

Choosing to do it as opposed to being forced to do it under duress is what situational awareness is, it is also why time and space are so important. I have written other articles about Situational Awareness. Here for example;

Don′t be fooled its not all about situational awareness. | LinkedIn

Our work environment may indeed bring unwanted problems to our door, but we must not live in constant fear of attack and the best way to avoid that situation is to plan for such occasions and prepare ourselves, as best we can, living in a state of preparedness and not a state of fear.

We shouldn’t feel the need to make excuses when situations don’t go the way they should have, and don’t blame people/officers who make genuine mistakes.

However, we must, it is our duty to, look at all violent interactions through the microscope of hindsight to try to make performance adjustments to better suit society as a whole and to better protect our police forces, physically, socially, legally, and mentally.

If you would like to know more about the training we offer police officers individually or for group training programs feel free to reach out here in the comments, via a PM, or at [email protected]

Here in Cádiz, Spain we also teach civilians, individuals, small groups, families or companies, as well as Police and Military units. We can provide online workshops, courses, and educational material specifically designed to guide you through the minefield which is self-defense or personal protection. It is far from all physical, but our CQC courses are also extensive for those whose employment doesn't allow them to avoid physical violence.

Contact us at www.insafehands.net or [email protected] or in feel free to drop me a DM.