Officer Created Jeopardy: Defining the Problem

What is “officer created jeopardy”?

It can be defined as a situation where an officer deviates from established tactics or policies and his behavior unnecessarily places him (and/or others) at greater risk of harm because of his actions. For example, an officer stepping in front of a fleeing vehicle and then shooting because he is now in danger of being run over.

Police work is a dangerous business. There are times when we will have to place ourselves in danger to save someone else. However, we have set procedures and proven tactics that are designed to reduce our risks and stack the deck in our favor. We all agree that the first rule of policing is to go home alive at the end of the shift. Unfortunately, police officers are human beings and will occasionally make mistakes. To improve ourselves, our fellow officers, and our employees (if you are in a supervisory position) while attempting to eliminate unnecessary risks, we should review and then de-brief minor and major use of force incidents, identifying both the good performances and the poor decision making in an effort to learn from them.

Why do many agencies ignore and sometimes even reward poor decision making on the street? Perhaps it is because many administrators tend to be result-oriented, subscribing to the “no harm, no foul” theory of management. The major problem with this theory is that poor tactics on one call can soon become bad habits duplicated on all calls, which are then mimicked by other officers and spread throughout the agency. Young officers learn through mental scenarios and watching the actions of more seasoned officers. They are taught to visual situations that they may face on the street so that they can make some pre-decisions to speed them through their OODA loop in the face of potential danger. Allowing poor decision making to go unchecked in your agency may send a signal to your other employees that the undesirable behavior was actually condoned by the department.

In 2005, Major Steve Ijames (ret.) wrote an article for Police One, Managing Officer Created Jeopardy. In the article, he specifically mentions situations involving mentally deranged subjects who are armed, but the theory is valid for a wide variety of tactical errors that are made by officers on a seemingly daily basis.

One of the most common tactical errors that officers make involves the failure to conduct a felony stop at the end of a vehicle pursuit. This issue increases two types of jeopardy for the officers involved: physical safety and career longevity.

1. Physical safety – Taking a suspect into custody at the end of a vehicle pursuit can expose officers to many risks, but the potential for injury can be mitigated by performing a felony stop. Each year, officers are killed or seriously injured when they fail to conduct a felony stop and approach a suspect vehicle at the end of a pursuit.
2. Career longevity – During a pursuit, officers can experience high levels of stress and excitement which can cause them to over react to low levels of resistance. A felony stop can act as a cooling off period, where officers are able to recover from the adrenaline rush while maintaining a tactically superior position. Rushing up to a suspect vehicle at the end of a pursuit while adrenaline levels are high, can increase the chances of an officer using an unreasonable amount of force. Since the vast majority of pursuits are captured on video, mistakes made at this point can end an officer’s career.

I am embarrassed to admit that I have made this same mistake more than once during my career. I was fortunate not to be injured during these lapses in judgment. Sadly, I was only counseled once for this tactical error, but it did have an effect on me. However, because I was talked to privately, no one else learned from my mistake. I had a friend who failed to conduct a felony stop at the end of a pursuit and found himself getting fired over an excessive force complaint that may have been avoided if he had abided by our standard procedure. A neighboring agency had an officer killed when he failed to perform a felony stop at the end of a pursuit. He was shot as he approached the suspect’s vehicle on foot. There are countless examples of officer created jeopardy, and far too few examples of the poor decisions being corrected so that others can learn from them.

In part 2 of this series, I will discuss ways that we can correct officers’ errors in judgment, so that we can begin to control officer created jeopardy in our departments.

Please take the time to post a comment and share your own examples of officer created jeopardy. I would like to begin a list of common mistakes so that we can all benefit from each other’s experience.

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