This literature addresses two distinct issues related to the effects of shootings:

1) what officers experience during shootings and

2) what they experiences after shooting incidents. Where the first issue is concerned, the research indicates that officers sometimes experience sensory distortions such as tunnel vision, auditory blunting, and altered perceptions of time.

Where post-shooting responses are concerned, the literature reports that officers may experience a variety of short and long-term reactions that can include recurrent thoughts about the incident a sense of numbness, trouble sleeping, sadness, crying and nausea. Indeed, the existence of such responses has led mental health professionals who work with officers involved in shootings to identify them as a type of post-traumatic stress response, commonly referred to as “post-shooting trauma.”

The research described in this report was undertaken to enhance understanding of both aspects of officers’ reactions to involvement in shootings. It consisted of interviews with 80 municipal and county police officers who reported on 113 separate cases in which they shot citizens during their careers in law enforcement. The report offers a review of what previous research has reported about officers’ responses, describes the research procedures utilized in the current work, provides sketches of the officers who participated in the current study and of the incidents in which they shot other human beings, details what the research disclosed about officers’ experiences during and after their shootings, and concludes with a discussion of the academic and policy ramifications of these findings.

Research on the use of deadly force by police officers includes a limited body of literature that examines the consequences of involvement in shootings for officers who pull the trigger. This literature typically conjoins what are actually two distinct issues related to the effects of shootings:

1) what officers experience during shootings and

2) what they experiences after incidents in which they shoot. Where the first issue is concerned, the limited research indicates that many officers experience sensory distortions such as tunnel vision (perceiving but a small portion of what is present in the visual field), aud itory blunting (the attenuation or exclusion of audible sounds), and altered perceptions of time wherein some segment(s) of the shooting are experienced in either slow or fast motion (see, e.g., Nielsen, 1981; Solomon and Horn, 1986; Campbell, 1992). Where post-shooting responses are concerned, the literature reports that officers may experience a variety of short and long-term reactions. In the immediate aftermath of shootings, officers may experience a variety of mental and/or emotional symptoms such as a sense of numbness, anxiety, and anger, as well as physical symptoms such as crying and nausea. As time passes, officers may lose their appetite, have trouble sleeping, experience recurrent thoughts or “flashbacks” of the shooting incident, feel guilty about injuring or killing another human, and/or experience a host of other longer-term responses to the shooting event (see, e.g., Nielsen, 1981; Solomon and Horn, 1986; Campbell, 1992). Indeed, the existence of such responses has led mental health professionals who work with officers involved in shootings to identify them as a type of post-traumatic stress response, commonly referred to as “postshooting trauma” (e.g., Hill, 1984; Nielsen, 1981; Stratton et al., 1984).

The research described in this report was undertaken to enhance understanding of both aspects of officers’ reactions to involvement in shootings. It consisted of interviews with 80 municipal and county police officers who reported on 113 separate incidents in which they shot citizens dur ing their careers in law enforcement. The balance of this report is devoted to delineating what the data collected during these interviews tell us about how shootings affect police officers. It starts with a detailed review of what previous research has reported about officers’ responses, describes the research procedures utilized in the current work, provides sketches of the officers who participated in the current study and of the incidents in which they shot other human beings, details what the research disclosed about officers’ experiences during and after their shootings, and concludes with a discussion of the research and policy ramifications of these findings.

THE LITERATURE ON RESPONSES TO SHOOTINGS

Much of the literature on what officers experience during and after shootings consists of expository essays based on non-systematic research (e.g., Bettinger, 1983; Burris, 1985; Shaw, 1981). The few systematic studies that have been published provide a more detailed picture of how police shootings affect involved officers. Nielsen’s (1981) study of 63 municipal, county, and state law enforcement officers who had shot suspects, for example, found that more than three-fourths of them experienced some notable perceptual distortion during the event (e.g., tunnel vision, auditory blunting). Nielsen further reported that during the first week following the shooting more than 90% of the study officers experienced at least one physical symptom, such as nausea, headaches, and general fatigue, and that nearly 90% of the shooters experienced at least one emotional or psychological symptom, such as depression, anxiety, or intrusive thoughts about the incident. Finally, while Nielsen did not quiz officers about physical, emotional, and psychological responses during any time frame but the first week post-shooting, he did ask them whether they experienced any attitude changes during the first three months following their shootings. Nearly 80% of the officers Nielsen studied reported that they had; increased apathy and cautiousness were the most frequently reported changes.

Stratton et al.’s (1984) examination of how involvement in shootings affected 60 Los Angeles deputy sheriffs offered far less information than did Nielsen’s earlier work. Theyreported no data on reactions during shootings and provided only limited information on postshooting responses. Among the highlights of their findings is that the average deputy “occasionally” experienced recurring thoughts (flashbacks) about the shooting and had “some” problems sleeping during the week immediately after the incident. They further reported a modest decrease in the frequency of flashbacks and sleep disturbances that deputies experienced as time passed during the first three months after their shootings (Stratton et al. did not mention whether they measured deputies’ reactions after three months). They also reported that 63% of the deputies surveyed either cried or experienced feelings of depression, anger, and/or elation1 at some (unspecified) point following the shooting.

Finally, they reported that 30% of the deputies indicated that the shooting affected them either “greatly” or “a lot,” that 34% of them reported a “moderate” effect, and the remaining 36% reported that the shooting affected them either “a little” or “not at all.”

A more detailed picture of how shootings can affect involved officers comes from Solomon and Horn’s (1986) questionnaire study of 86 Rocky Mountain-area officers who had shot suspects in the course of their duties. They reported, for example, that during the events in which they fired their weapons, 83% of the officers experienced some sort of time distortion, 67% experienced some sort of auditory distortion, and 56% experienced some sort of visual distortion. Where post-shooting experiences are concerned, Solomon and Horn offered information about 18 specific emotional, psychological, and physical reactions that officers may have experienced. They reported, for example, that 58% of the officers felt a notable degree of anger in the wake of the shooting, 46% experienced substantial sleep difficulties, and 44% had bothersome intrusive thoughts. They used information about the 18 symptoms to create a “trauma rating” score for each study officer and asked officers to rate how well they had integrated the shooting into their life at the time the questionnaire was administered. Solomon and Horn then examined the relationships between these two measures of how the shootings affected the officers and the degree of support the officers felt from various quarters (e.g., fellow officers) following the shooting. They reported that the more support officers felt, the less severe their response. Finally, Solomon and Horn reported that the information they used to develop the trauma rating scores indicated that 37% of the officers surveyed experienced “mild”

1 They used a single indicator that asked the officers’ whether they experienced any of these four things to develop this information.

post-shooting reactions, 35% experienced “moderate” reactions, and the remaining 28% had “severe” reactions. Unfortunately, the data they collected did not clearly delineate the time frame(s) during which officers experienced the various reactions they reported, so it is not possible from Solomon and Horn’s study to determine how officers’ reactions may have varied over time.

Two other studies that were published after Solomon and Horn examined officers’ responses to shootings offered data on just one of the two major temporal components involved (i.e., reactions during shootings and post-shooting responses). The first, Gersons’s (1989) brief study of 37 Dutch officers who had been involved in shootings, reported only on post-shooting experiences. Among the more salient findings reported were that 76% of the officers experienced recurrent thoughts about the event, 68% reported a sense of “hyper-alertness,” and 43% of them had sleep disturbances. Gersons did not offer data on the timing of officers’ postshooting reactions, so it is not possible to derive information on how they might have changed over time.

While Gersons’s study was limited to officers’ post-shooting reactions, Artwohl and Christensen (1997) limited their work to data on responses during shootings, with a focus on perceptual distortions. The most notable thing about Artwohl and Christensen’s work is that the rates they report for many specific distortions are substantially higher than those reported in other research. While they report, for example, that 82% of the 72 U.S. officers they studied experienced tunnel vision, the highest rate previously reported is 44% (see Campbell, 1992, below). Similarly, where the y report a heightened visual detail rate of 65%, the only other study to report on this distortion (Solomon and Horn, 1986) reported a rate of 18%, and while the previous high for rate of auditory blunting was 51% (Solomon and Horn), Artwohl and Christensen report that 88% of the officers in their research experienced a diminution of sound.

The most comprehensive systematic research to date on how involvement in shootings affects law enforcement officers is Campbell’s (1992) study of special agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), which indicted that FBI agents who are involved in shootings tend to have less severe reactions compared with their peers in state and local law enforcement.

Campbell administered a 16-page questionnaire, which he augmented with structured face-toface interviews, to 167 agents who had been involved in shootings in the years 1973-1989. He presented his findings in three main categories:

1) physical and emotional responses at the time of the shooting,

2) psychological responses following the shooting, and

3) physical and emotional responses after the shooting. Among the most frequent emotional and physical experiences reported during shooting events were a sense of disbelief that the event was occurring (37%), a sense of increased physical strength (46%), tunnel vision (44%), and auditory blunting (42%).

The instrument that Campbell used included items for agents to report on the emotional, psychological, and physical after effects they experienced during the first 24 hours, and then during the rest of the first week following their shootings. The instrument also asked agents to report any changes that they may have experienced in their attitudes or emotional states during the first six months after the shootings. For whatever reason, Campbell limited his presentation of the data on agents’ post-shooting reactions to what they reported experiencing during the first week following the events. Highlights from this data include the information that at some point(s) during the first week:

62% of the agents experienced recurrent thoughts about the shooting,

29% had dreams about the shooting,

32% had problems sleeping,

24% were fatigued, and

25% had some sense of anxiety and/or tension.

Although Campbell presented no data on temporal variability in agents’ responses, he did devote considerable attention to the role that post-shooting events played in agents’ adjustment.

He wrote, for example, that many agents felt that certain post-shooting events had a negative impact on them: 27% stated that they worried a great deal about the Bureau’s investigation of their shooting, and 20% identified the news media as a major source of aggravation. On the flip side of the coin, 60% of the agents believed that discussing their experiences with other agents who had been involved in shootings helped them to cope with their own shooting. Moreover, Campbell reported that agents who went through a systematic post-shooting mental health debriefing (the Bureau’s “Post-Critical Incident Program”) typically experienced fewer negative consequences in the wake of their shootings than their peers who did not.

While the extant literature offers a substantial amount of information about what officers experience during and after shootings, we still have a very limited picture of how shootings affect police officers. We know, for example, that perceptual distortions are a common occurrence during shootings, but we have virtually no information on the inter relationships between different types of distortions, how perceptions might change during shooting events, or how distortions might be associated with other phenomena. Similarly, while we know that some officers experience specific physical, emotional, and psychological reactions to involvement in a shooting, previous research has not clearly specified how officers’ responses vary over time and we have little understanding of how post-shooting reactions might be associated with other factors. The research described below was undertaken to provide more information about issues such as these.

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