Memory
and video are fallible; plan accordingly
By Chuck Remsberg, editor in chief, Force Science News
Reprinted from
Calibre Press
Some
months ago, officers responded to a single-car accident on a
freeway in a major midwestern city. As they tried to tend to
and question the driver, he became unruly and earned himself
a Tasering. Later, he died. As customary in that
jurisdiction, a state investigative agency took over the
death investigation.
And that surfaced a nettlesome conflict.
As part of the report-writing process, the officers’
department traditionally permits its personnel to view video
from arrest scenes, and it saw no reason that the officers
involved shouldn’t see recordings of the Tasering before
they were interviewed, to stimulate their memories of what
occurred. The investigating agency, however, felt strongly
that the videos from dash-cams and the Taser should not be
seen prior to the officers giving their official statements,
lest the viewing color their recollections.
Reports of the controversy motivated a consortium of
agencies in Minnesota to probe more deeply into the question
that departments large and small throughout the country
potentially face: In a major use-of-force situation, which
position best contributes to a fair, impartial, and
comprehensive investigation?
To see what science might say, the group turned to Dr. Bill
Lewinski, director of the Force Science Institute, parent
entity of the Force Science Research Center at Minnesota
State University-Mankato.
In a first-of-its-kind presentation earlier this month
[1/09] in St. Paul, Lewinski spent more than 2 hours
exploring the pros and cons of the subject, culminating in
recommendations that agencies confronting the dilemma may
find useful. In the audience were representatives of 9 of
Minnesota’s largest law enforcement organizations.
Memory Realities
In St. Paul, Lewinski first reviewed some realities of human
memory, as determined by scientific research, including
experiments conducted with LEOs by FSRC.
“After a high-stress experience, such as a major force
confrontation, an officer’s memory of what happened is
likely to be fragmentary at best,” he explained. “An
incident is never completely recorded in memory.”
At various times during an incident, the focus of an
officer’s attention may shift between internal thoughts and
concerns to external stimuli, and where his focus is at any
given moment will unavoidably influence what he remembers.
“A person’s attention is an extremely significant factor in
determining what that person perceives and then remembers,”
Lewinski said. “It would be extremely rare, if not
impossible, for an officer involved in a fluid, complex,
dynamic, and life-threatening encounter to remember
peripheral details beyond that on which he or she was
focused.
“The average person will actually miss a large amount of
what happened in a stressful event and, of course, will be
completely unaware of what they did not pay attention to and
commit to memory.”
Compounding the problem, a participant or witness “may
unintentionally add information in their report that was not
actually part of the original incident,” Lewinski
explained—not in a plot to deceive, necessarily, but in a
humanly instinctive effort to fill in frustrating memory
gaps.
“Memory is not neatly stored in a single compact file in our
brain but is stored in chunks in a variety of neural
networks,” Lewinski said. “Given this, a variety of stimuli
may be necessary to mine the fragments thoroughly.”
Cognitive interviewing, which encourages an officer to
relive an event with all his senses, can be a highly
effective tool. So can a walk-through at the scene and/or
review of a video of the action, because these “place the
officer back within the context of the incident and thus
stimulate his ‘recognition recall.’
“An officer’s version of an incident will vary, depending on
whether his statement is taken before, after, or without a
walk-through or a viewing of a videotape of the incident.”
Even with the help of stimulation strategies, Lewinski
cautioned, there will still be inevitable memory errors,
particularly when an officer attempts to recall “information
that was on the periphery of his attention during the
incident, even if that information later turns out to be
very important.”
Video Limitations
Seeing on-scene video, while usually helpful in stimulating
an officer’s memory, is no panacea, Lewinski stressed.
“A video recording is often considered a thorough and
accurate record of the incident because it is rich with
information, objective, and unbiased. However, video
recordings, regardless of how good the lighting and quality
of filming, are never a completely accurate reproduction of
any incident.”
Among the limitations Lewinski cited:
•
“Video cameras generally record only a portion of an
incident and are bereft of the context of the event”;
•
“Video is a 2-dimensional representation of an incident from
a particular perspective and tends to distort distance and
other associated with depth of field”;
•
“Generally video does not faithfully record light levels and
does not represent what a human being in the incident would
perceive”;
•
“A video does not present the incident as viewed through the
officer’s eyes”; and
•
“Video cameras recording at less than 10 frames per second
can leave out significant aspects of an incident that occur
at speeds faster than that.”
Despite these limitations, in Lewinski’s view, an officer
seeing any available video recordings is vital in many
cases, if a comprehensive mining of the officer’s memory is
the goal.
Timing
A debatable factor is timing.
A “raw” statement taken from an officer without his viewing
any video of the incident or experiencing other memory
enhancers (like a walk-through) “may be a good record of his
‘state of mind’ before, during, and after the
confrontation,” Lewinski said, “but it may not be a
thorough, factual representation of what happened.”
Indeed, it could be “viewed more as a memory test with
potential disciplinary and criminal consequences than a
pursuit of the facts of the incident,” he said. “Internal
Affairs investigators, criminal prosecutors, and plaintiffs’
attorneys exploit discrepancies in reports between
participants and witnesses, and they can do the same when
there is a discrepancy between the officer’s report and a
videotape.
“The most enriched, complete, and factually accurate version
of a high-stress encounter is most likely to occur after a
walk-through and/or after the officer has had at least one
opportunity to view an available video of the incident.”
Ideally, Lewinski believes, a video review should be
permitted before an involved officer gives his official
statement.
Currently, however, some departments and prosecutors are
insistent on obtaining a “pure” statement to document an
officer’s state of mind regarding the encounter as it
evolved, before other stimuli, particularly a video review,
are introduced.
Consequently, Lewinski proposed a compromise
“middle-of-the-road” position, which at least assures that a
video review becomes part of any force investigation early
in the game.
Compromise Recommendation
If
an agency is adamant about not showing an officer video
prior to a statement being taken, Lewinski suggested that a
video review be allowed soon after the interview and that
the officer then be re-interviewed or given a chance to
write an additional report at that time.
“This offers the officer a chance to comment on what he now
understands about the incident compared to what he may have
said in his original statement,” Lewinski told Force Science
News. “This is not perfect, but it does offer a chance for
additional mining of the officer’s memory and it is far
better than having the officer ‘ambushed’ with the video
much later, not having seen it at all.
“Where discrepancies exist, investigators need to be
knowledgeable and sensitive enough, in the absence of other
incriminating evidence, to explain to the officer, the
administration, and the public how an officer’s perception
of an incident can be vastly different from what’s seen on a
video recording and still be legitimate.”
Whether the video is shown before or after the statement, it
is important to “caution the officer on the limited accuracy
of video recordings,” Lewinski told the group. “An officer
who is unaware of the limitations and uncertain about the
accuracy of his own memory may be influenced to change an
otherwise accurate report.”
Lewinski also warned that “officers who have been through an
extremely emotionally distressing incident may find a
walk-through, a viewing of the video, and the giving of a
statement to be too difficult to handle unless they have had
some time to decompress.” (In previous transmissions,
experts quoted in Force Science News have recommended that
officers be allowed to rest for up to 48 hours after a
critical incident before submitting to extensive
interviewing.)
Lewinski told FSN that the representatives at the St. Paul
meeting do not intend to formulate a joint policy on the
video issue. Rather, they planned to individually evaluate
their department’s position in light of his information and
to help in spreading the word to other agencies.
As a part of his presentation, Lewinski included film clips
and other materials from the Institute’s popular
certification course on Force Science Analysis. During this
unique 5-day training program, investigators learn how to
assess controversial force encounters with scientific
principles of biology, physiology, and psychology in mind,
to gain a more accurate picture of the dynamics involved.
Chuck
Remsberg, editor in chief, Force Science News:
Chuck
Remsberg is the editor in chief of Force Science News and
the co-founder of Calibre Press.
By
Brian Willis