Tactical Decision-Making is a strategy of focusing on immediate actions to assess the immediate options, weighing their potential risks and applying these factors to a decision. It sounds like what a law enforcement officer does on the street, but this template simply is not true. Law enforcement officers often have to ditch or accelerate the template and make a decision on the fly. We know that training, especially that which exposes a person to templating, and experience are the things that drive good decision-making.
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Science tells us that people who make quick, effective decisions under immense pressure identify a single reasonable reaction, rather than a choice of options, and use imagination to see if the result makes sense. Studies have shown that the experienced person almost intrinsically “knows” the correct decision, and has already discarded all the other options, once this decision is made. It is experience and training that selects this course.
Captain Sully: Right Decision, Right Time
On Jan 15, 2009, Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger made a split-second decision to land an A320 in the Hudson River after a catastrophic bird strike. They took off from LaGuardia, headed for Charlotte, when the plane struck a flock of geese, taking out both engines. Sully weighed the three options: Return to LaGuardia, land in the Hudson, or try to make it to Teterboro (New Jersey). Recognizing immediately they did not have the altitude for either airport, Sully made an immediate decision. In his own words, “I chose to do only the highest priority items. And then I had the discipline to ignore everything I did not have the time to do as being only distractions and potential detriment to our performance.”
Sully had just the right First Officer, Jeff Skiles, who received the mission change and carried it out, even though the impossible had never been done before. There in one of the most densely populated places on the planet, Sully’s decision has rescued 155 souls, and likely hundreds more.
Sully made the right decision, at the right time, in the right context. High-pressure decision-making is about training, experience and committing to the decision.
Casualty Care Under Fire
Recently, I completed the Tactical Emergency Casualty Care course by Third Degree Communications, the kind of class that every line officer should take. The first thing that was presented to us is the fact that casualty scenarios have both a medical problem and a tactical problem. This creates a complex dynamic that affects decision-making.
I took this concept and looked at different scenarios in which I could train. I made a simple “L-shaped” hallway, using 50 gallon barrels. Using two assailants, I set it up, so the officer cannot see them when first entering the scenario. I used 3-dimensional targets, and offset them from the hallway, to add to the decision-making process. In this scenario, the trainer can make the officer on the range respond to a “failure” to go from center mass to a headshot.
The first thing the officer sees is a victim, which is really my jujitsu training dummy. When the person steps onto the range, they are told where and how the casualty is injured. The officer needs to make tactical and medical decisions in the “hot zone.”
What decisions? If there is still a potential threat, the only likely treatment the patient will get is one that stops the bleed, depending on the medical need. Other decisions include whether to move the patient or treat other injuries.
I was shooting this scenario with my friend Michael Temnyk, a retired MD. He commented that, in his residency time in an ER, he learned that what is done in the field is critical toward the survival of the patient when they go to the higher level in the chain of evacuation. In the decision-making world, the balance between the medical problem and the tactical problem is crucial.
As simple as it is, the training scenario gave me flexibility and training value. A lot of exposure like this is great for fostering good “real world” decisions. Having said that, shooting this scenario was just flat-out fun.
No Time for Complex Decision Templates
In his book Blink, Malcolm Gladwell talks about when Lt. General Paul Van Riper, USMC, participated in the Millennium Challenge 2002 war game. Using asymmetric strategy, Van Riper sank a whole carrier battle group in a simulation, playing the Red Team Opposing Force. Blue Team, which is the Allied (U.S. friendly) force, was quite certain of the whereabouts and disposition of the Red Team, at this point. Lt. General Van Riper took out their communications and sank sixteen war ships, which was the equivalent of about 20,000 personnel.
Lt. General Van Riper was opposed to systematic decision-making, where time pressures and fluidity of battle made rational analysis inappropriate. Gladwell tells of how Lt. General Van Riper befriended Gary Klein, the author of Sources of Power. Klein had studied First Responders, including nurses and firefighters. Klein’s data indicated that there is no time to construct decision matrices and analysis in these industries.
Klein studied people who routinely make complex decisions under pressure in their own environment. One of the things that his studies recognize is the fact that none of the current decision-making models could adequately describe the types of decisions made in a fluid environment.
Fight or Flight
When a person encounters a threat, there are automatic physiological processes that happen. The sympathetic nervous system (SNS) is activated and the area of the brain responsible for the common part of consciousness, the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS) takes a backseat. If the officer perceives a high loss of control in the situation, based on perception, training, or other factors, the higher the degree of the SNS response.
A severe SNS arousal is considered a “fight or flight response.” This is an instinctive survival mechanism that includes a dump of epinephrine in the system, which results in an increase in respiration, heart rate, and blood pressure. As it increases, other phenomena begin to happen. These include reduced motor dexterity, changes in vision, changes in sense of time (this can include slowing down or speeding up), visual acuity, auditory exclusion and visual distortion.
Fight or flight can also be protective. For example, the body begins to pull blood away from peripheral vessels. That is, if a person is injured, they will bleed less. I have experienced auditory exclusion where I heard a gunshot, but it was not accompanied by the usual ringing in the ear, or even a loud noise.
The more stress exposure an officer receives in training, the more opportunities he has in stress inoculation. The more an agency integrates stress controlling strategies in training, the more efficient their decision-making strategies will manifest in actual use.
Chief Investigator Laura King and Decision Fatigue
In her article, “Decision Fatigue and Why It Should Be Understood by Law Enforcement Leadership: Can Science Provide Insight into How Officers Make Decisions?” Chief Investigator Laura King makes the case for fewer tools for law enforcement officers, to reduce decision disparity. Studies have demonstrated that some can experience Decision Fatigue on a daily basis, and the number and weight of decisions that a person makes daily can affect this process. Supporting this, King uses simple math. Regarding less lethal tools, there are two options from which to choose, there is a 50% likelihood a person will make a correct choice. For example, if the choice is between a handgun and an ECW, it is a simple decision. Adding OC spray on the belt, lowers the correct decision ratio to 33%. Considering number of less lethal options available, fewer is more.
If an officer enters a high stress dynamic decision already experiencing Decision Fatigue, the chance of making a flawed decision, or no decision at all, is increased. Police administrators need to consider the impact of Decision Fatigue.
Training and Use of Force
In their study on police use of force, researchers Mangels, Suss, and Lande had 42 police experts and 36 novices view scenarios from body worn camera footage. They paused the footage at several points, and asked questions. The conclusion of the study is definitely more precise than I am describing it, but my point is more simplistic.
Expert police officers are more likely to report force-mitigation opportunities and words associated with verbal de-escalation than novices. For police administrators, this means that training and experience might result in fewer use of force complaints.
I Hope You Do
I hope that police administrators go through this article and create a recommended reading list for line and intermediate supervisors. Blink is a book that Chiefs and all members of the Courtroom Work Group (Judges, DAs, Investigators) should have on their reading list. The complexity of decision-making should be understood in the context of the people who make high stakes, high stress decisions daily, on a regular basis.
- Laura King, “Decision Fatigue and Why It Should Be Understood by Law Enforcement Leadership: Can Science Provide Insight into How Officers Make Decisions?” Police Chief online, June 21, 2017.
- Kalisch R., Müller M. B., Tüscher O. (2015). A conceptual framework for the neurobiological study of resilience. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 38, e92.
- Mangels, L., Suss, J. & Lande, B. Police Expertise and Use of Force: Using a Mixed-Methods Approach to Model Expert and Novice Use-of-Force Decision-Making. J Police Crim Psych 35, 294–303 (2020). https://doi. org/10.1007/s11896-020-09364-4
Officer Lindsey Bertomen (ret.), Contributing Editor
Lindsey Bertomen is a retired police officer and retired military small arms trainer. He teaches criminal justice at Hartnell College in Salinas, California, where serves as a POST administrator and firearms instructor. He also teaches civilian firearms classes, enjoys fly fishing, martial arts, and mountain biking. His articles have appeared in print and online for over two decades.
