Dispatch Priming and the Police Decision to Use Deadly Force

Police shootings have become one of the most “visible and controversial” aspects of the criminal justice system . Yet, very little empirical effort has been devoted to understanding the underlying systemic vulnerabilities that likely contribute to these tragic outcomes. Using a randomized controlled experiment that incorporated a police firearms simulator and 306 active law enforcement officers, this study examined the effects of dispatch priming on an officer’s decision to use deadly force. The findings suggest that officers rely heavily on dispatched information in making the decision to pull the trigger when confronted with an ambiguously armed subject in a simulated environment. When the dispatched information was erroneous, it contributed to a significant increase in shooting errors. The results contribute to a broader understanding of officer decision-making within the context of police shootings and introduce the theoretical concepts of cognitive heuristics and human error to the research on police use of deadly force.