Eyewitness memory and critical incidents

[Glenn E. Meyer]

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/05/15/nyregion/witness-accounts-in-midtown-hammer-attack-show-the-power-of-false-memory.html?_r=3

An interesting read on the power of false memory. As a psychologist, this is one of the most useful principles in legal and law enforcement applications to come down the pike.

Officers and civilians have been unjustly prosecuted based on such claims. It's covered in the intro psych books now and intensively in the law/psych texts. Just finished a senior seminar on such issues. Ayoob just had column on such.

When anybody has a hissy fit about psych being this or that - here's a good application. In fact, a good legal applications of psych book is a good read for folks contemplating using lethal force. So much crap out there from some.

Glenn

[Chuck Haggard]

Even in less than critical incidents.

Watching on video after my final evo in AMIS I see that I was talking to my "niece" while pieing the corner to pick up a bad guy I by-passed, I have no memory of talking to her, and before watching the video I thought I had forgotten an important step in my post shooting mental checklist.

[LSP552]

It's not uncommon for witness testimony to be at odds with physical evidence.

[Paul]

There's also issues with witnesses and/or non-witnesses discussing what occurred and becoming convinced that they saw things that were described to them but never witnessed.

[voodoo_man]

One event with 5 witnesses means 5 completely different stories.

Ive shown people videos and have been told that didnt happen that way.

humans have a tendency to connect the dots, even if a dot or two doesnt exist with a marker that doesnt work.

[Chuck Haggard]

I do note that the more highly trained to work under stress that people are, then less this hits them.

If you have one guy that's completely jazzed up, and another who took the event in stride, the calm dude will have the more accurate recall.

[PD Sgt.]

There's also issues with witnesses and/or non-witnesses discussing what occurred and becoming convinced that they saw things that were described to them but never witnessed.

This used to drive me nuts. I would continually be telling street officers to separate and monitor the witnesses as much as possible. It is also why you must make sure you are asking all the questions you need to in order to make sure you are getting what the witness actually saw. Witnesses are like crime scenes, the absolute best you can hope for is one clean run at them before they become contaminated.

The other major concern is telling the differences between lies and errors of perception.

[UNK]

How do you train for this?

I do note that the more highly trained to work under stress that people are, then less this hits them.

If you have one guy that's completely jazzed up, and another who took the event in stride, the calm dude will have the more accurate recall.

[Kyle Reese]

One event with 5 witnesses means 5 completely different stories.

Ive shown people videos and have been told that didnt happen that way.

humans have a tendency to connect the dots, even if a dot or two doesnt exist with a marker that doesnt work.

We did an exercise reinforcing this concept years ago. While in the classroom, a student would arrive late, causing a huge scene with the instructor. Very heated word were exchanged, and the student was ordered to GTFO by the instructor. A few seconds later, both the instructor and student returned to the classroom, and we were told to write an account of what just transpired, in great detail. As you can probably guess, there were 20 different accounts of what happened, what was said, et al.


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[voodoo_man]

We did an exercise reinforcing this concept years ago. While in the classroom, a student would arrive late, causing a huge scene with the instructor. Very heated word were exchanged, and the student was ordered to GTFO by the instructor. A few seconds later, both the instructor and student returned to the classroom, and we were told to write an account of what just transpired, in great detail. As you can probably guess, there were 20 different accounts of what happened, what was said, et al.


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The thing that drives me nuts is when you stop a guy based on "rough flash" which is basically a description of a perp by a victim right after the incident, then trying to stand it up in court.

Say its flash for a white male, white shirt, blue jeans, tan boots and you stop a whitish hispanic guy, white hoody, black sweat pants with a blue stripe and brown sneakers - positive ID and on motion to suppress the stop your basically attacked for having no RS because thats not the flash....

[Chuck Haggard]

How do you train for this?

FoF and other training that gets people to working under adrenaline stress/loading.