041. The Truth Behind Police Officer Involved Shootings and Use of Force - Dr Bill Lewinski

February 24, 2021 Joel Aylworth

I am super excited to bring you guys this interview with Dr Bill Lewinksi, head of the Force Science Institute. Force Science’s Division of Research is dedicated to scientifically determining and fully understanding the actual physical and psychological dynamics of force encounters through research of human behaviors during rapidly unfolding, high-stress confrontations. Dr Lewinksi is somebody I’ve been following for years since the controversial shooting of Oscar Grant in Oakland severals years ago. What I found fascinating about Dr Lewinski back then was he was talking about the human factors and dynamics that play a huge role in officer use of force encounters. Dr Lewinski was really the first person I had heard of perform studies to show the reaction time of someone retrieving a handgun from a hidden hand position and firing the weapon from various angles. Dr Lewinski also conducted studies in how long it took an officer to stop firing his weapon after receiving a stimulus. All of these factors are hugely important when talking about use of force in police incidents, but yet no one talks about them!

Dr. Lewinski is a leading behavioral scientist whose work has focused on the intensive study of human dynamics involved in high stress, life-threatening encounters. He has a Ph.D. in Police Psychology and is a professor emeritus of Law Enforcement at Minnesota State University, Mankato, where he taught for more than 28 years, was an L.E. Program Director and also chair of the Department of Government.

Dr Lewinski has studied officer involved shootings and human dynamics in a way that no one has Obviously, in 2020, the police got a lot of attention. So, I wanted to bring on someone who has intelligently studied use of force and officer involved shootings to help shed some light on the topics. This interview, is in no way meant to be divisive, but is meant to give the audience another lens of looking at a topic that most really have no insight on. The mainstream media only gives us one narrative and the police only gives us one narrative. The public constantly asks, "Why did the officer shoot the suspect in the back? Why did the police fire so many rounds? Why do barbers get more training than a police cadet in the academy?" These are all valid questions, but the public rarely gets a great answer other than sensationalized news headlines. Dr Lewinski answers all these questions and much more in the interview.

See this SoundCloud audio in the original post

Timeline

6:40 - How to regulate your emotions in high stress situations

08:00 - Biggest misconception from UOF and the public view

11:40 - Why officers fire so many rounds at suspects in UOF incidents

16:30 - The average shot cadence of an officer under stress

22:20 - The average high school football player is better trained than a 25 year veteran police officer

33:50 - The speed of an assault & why the officer is always at the disadvantage

40:30 - What’s the one things officers can do to reduce errors in the field

51:27 - What officers need to understand about attention and workload capacity

1:00:19 - Exciting research with edged weapons

1:03:20 - Why police shoot people in the back