11.1: Introduction

Use of force is arguably the most critical issue in contemporary policing, with recent high-profile use of force events leading to wide-spread calls for reform (Bennell et al., 2021) and street-level activism focused on changing the role of police in public safety (Cobbina, 2019). Colloquial discussions of police use of force typically revolve around whether an incident violates legal standards. Legal standards alone, however, provide an incomplete picture (Stoughton, Noble, and Alpert, 2020). For example, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to regulate police officer perceptions of imminent danger as it relates to the use of deadly force on two separate occasions, first in Grahm v. Connor (1989) and then in Kisela v. Hughes (2018) (Sherman, 2020). In other words, situational factors that influence an officer’s assessment of the need for force, as well as the officer’s tactical responses to such factors, are not guided by court rulings (Garrett & Stoughton, 2018).

While agency policy and legislation constrain use of force to particular types of situations, police officers enjoy a great deal of discretion in most instances (Reiss 1980). Situational characteristics of police-civilian encounters are widely considered the most salient influence on police use of force (Bennell et al., 2021; Bolger, 2015). Prior research has consistently found that police-citizen encounters involving force typically extend across fairly lengthy time periods, which contradicts common narratives that police use of force decisions must be made in a “split-second” manner (Stoughton, 2014). During these extended periods, however, police officers must rapidly assess a series of dynamic situational factors, requiring the use of cognitive shortcuts that can influence later use of force decisions (Mears et al., 2017). As such, use of force is not a single decision, but the result of a series of interactions between an officer and a subject (Stoughton et al., 2020). In this regard, prior research has conceptualized use of force as a transactional event resulting from the interplay of officer and civilian actions (Terrill, 2005).

Situational factors, and the cognitive shortcuts they motivate, can ebb and flow throughout a police-civilian encounter, differentially influencing the likelihood of force at various points. In this regard, prior research has conceptualized use of force as a transactional event resulting from the interplay of officer and civilian actions (Binder and Scharf, 1980). Common data sources typically only allow for the cross-sectional analysis of use of force events, precluding the use of longitudinal methods that can sufficiently measure transactional events. With both police discretion and data limitations presenting challenges, researchers and practitioners have struggled to understand the situational factors that drive use of force events (Sherman, 2018). This shortcoming has continued to enable controversial use of force events that strain police and community relations.

The OODA Loop

The transactional nature of use of force is further informed by psychological perspectives that consider how humans process information. Scholars have noted the importance of the observe, orient, decide, and act (OODA) loop in understanding police use of force (Garrett and Stoughton, 2017; Stoughton et al., 2020). The OODA loop demonstrates that individuals actively and passively gather information (observe) before processing and interpreting that information to draw conclusions (orient). Individuals then determine how they will react to these conclusions (decide) before putting their decisions into motion (act). The OODA framework has been incorporated by researchers to analyze various aspects of legal analysis (Chestek, 2020), inclusive of police tactics during use of force events (Garrett and Stoughton, 2017).

The OODA loop complements prior perspectives by conceptualizing how situational factors may accelerate or decelerate the movement of police-civilian encounters from the information exchange phase to the final frame. For example, a driver quickly reaching for their glove box during a traffic stop forces an officer to speed up their decision making to quickly ascertain whether such behavior constitutes a significant threat worthy of force (Stoughton et al., 2020). The OODA loop can also be strategically applied in a manner that influences the decision making of other involved parties (Chestek, 2020). Officers can slow down the OODA loop by “creating time” in a manner that affords them the ability to consider a larger range of information before making a final decision (Garrett and Stoughton, 2017) or by informing civilians of BWC presence to potentially generate a civilizing effect (Patterson and White, 2021). Situational factors tangential to police and civilian behaviors can also influence the OODA loop, like the arrival of additional officers on scene which can generate a civilizing effect that may alter the subsequent behaviors of both the civilians and officers present (Bayley and Garofalo, 1989; Terrill, 2005).

The OODA loop may be an important step of the information exchange phase. Civilian physical antagonism immediately triggers a shift; however, some other forms of information exchange either can result in either an immediate shift to the final frame or may build to a tipping point before a shift is triggered—depending on various situational factors. During this build, actors may be repeatedly cycling through the OODA loop, each time coming to the conclusion not to use force until the last OODA loop that takes place at the point of shift to the final frame phase of the Binder and Scharf framework. Future research can conceptually and empirically interrogate these ideas further—particularly the role of the OODA loop in each phase of the Binder and Scharf framework. In addition, dispatch may relay important information (e.g., potential injuries sustained by victim) to officers before they arrive on scene. Although technical aspects of the BWCs used by NPD prevented us from including the anticipation period in this study, future research may seek to unpack how the entry phase of the OODA loop is differentially impacted by the type of information received by officers prior to arrival on scene.⁴⁹

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⁴⁹Piza, E., Connealy, N., Sytsma, V., and Chillar, V. (2022).