Officers’ memory and stress in virtual lethal force scenarios: Implications for policy and training

ABSTRACT

Sworn law enforcement officers (N = 151) were exposed to two different simulated lethal force encounters, a motorcycle-traffic-stop (MTS) and a workplace violence incident. Workplace violence incidents (WPV) consisted of two versions: an original version (WVO) and an enhanced version (WVE) with additional tactile and auditory stimuli within the simulation environment. Officers’ recognition memory (immediate and 48 h later), perceived stress, and physiological stress responses were examined. Delayed reporting led to impaired memory for event information in the MTS and perpetrator information in the WVE simulation. Moreover, perpetrator information was remembered more accurately than event information. Two physiological stress markers – alpha amylase and immunoglobulin-a – were correlated with memory for the simulated experiences; however, cortisol and interleukin-6 were not. These findings support current theory related to arousal and memory suggesting that officers should be interviewed as soon as reasonably possible after a lethal force incident. Implications for legal parameters in defining a ‘reasonable officer’ exerting lethal force are considered.

KEYWORDS:

• Lethal force
• stress response
• physiological arousal
• memory
• virtual simulation
• officer-involved-shooting policy

Acknowledgements

A portion of these data were used in a published report by Groer et al. (2010) and presented at the annual meetings of the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences (McClure, Ross, & Murphy, 2011) and the American Psychology and Law Society (McClure, McGuire, Kurt-Hilditch, & Marcotte, 2018).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Kimberley A. McClure http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0956-1838

Notes

1 The WPO condition was designed to serve as a comparison group for the WVE in relation to officers’ physiological reactivity. It was estimated by Groer that 25 officers would be enough for a comparison to determine whether the simulation without the enhanced environmental stimuli was effective in increasing officers’ physiological response (See Groer et al., 2010). This approach resulted in unequal cell sizes across types of simulation (Randall Murphy, Personal Communication, July 9, 2019). It is for this reason that we did not assess the impact of simulation condition on memory in the statistical analyses.

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by Meggitt Training Systems, Inc.