Police Expertise and Use of Force: Using a Mixed-Methods Approach to Model Expert and Novice Use-of-Force Decision-Making

By Laura Mangels & Joel Suss & Brian Lande  

  Improving police use-of-force training is methodologically difficult. By providing a method for identifying the “expert” response to any given scenario, and by triangulating multiple methods, we aim to contribute towards police departments’ capacities to engage in more effective and targeted training. Forty-two police experts and 36 novices watched five scenarios taken from body-worn camera footage. The videos would pause at several points, and respondents gave both close-ended survey answers and open-ended written answers. Using a mixed-methods approach combining quantitative regression and natural-language processing techniques, we triangulated our findings to reach conclusions regarding the differences between experts and novices. Relative to novices, expert police officers were more likely to report the importance of force mitigation opportunities to any given scenario in close-ended questions, and were more likely to use words associated with verbal de-escalation; novices were more likely to use words associated with physical control.  

  Journal of Police and Criminal Psychology, Volume: 35 Dated: 2020 Pages: 294-303