The Argument For Pulling the Trigger

New York Times reporter Matt Apuzzo has a fascinating story about Dr. William J. Lewinski’s work as an expert witness in police shooting cases.

When police officers shoot people under questionable circumstances, Dr. Lewinski is often there to defend their actions. Among the most influential voices on the subject, he has testified in or consulted in nearly 200 cases over the last decade or so and has helped justify countless shootings around the country.

Apuzzo’s story is reasonably balanced, but I’d like to talk about a number of red flags when it comes to Lewinski’s work.

His conclusions are consistent: The officer acted appropriately, even when shooting an unarmed person. Even when shooting someone in the back. Even when witness testimony, forensic evidence or video footage contradicts the officer’s story.

My guess is that most police shootings are justified — at least from the point of view of the officer pulling the trigger — but if Lewinski is reaching the same conclusion every single time, then what exactly is he bringing to the table? How much expertise is he contributing when you could replace him with a guy holding up a sign reading “The officer acted appropriately”?

Consistently finding that the officers acted appropriately also raises the issue of bias, which is the next red flag:

He has appeared as an expert witness in criminal trials, civil cases and disciplinary hearings, and before grand juries, where such testimony is given in secret and goes unchallenged. In addition, his company, the Force Science Institute, has trained tens of thousands of police officers on how to think differently about police shootings that might appear excessive.

That’s a pretty big conflict of interest. He runs a company that gets most of its money from police departments to train police officers, and then he offers expert testimony on police conduct in court cases which could send police officers to jail and cost police departments millions of dollars in damages. If he testifies against an officer in a shooting, he risks alienating the sources of his income.

Many policing experts are for hire, but Dr. Lewinski is unique in that he conducts his own research, trains officers and internal investigators, and testifies at trial.

When it comes to the credibility of an expert, doing original research can go either way: On the one hand, it can be a good sign because making original contributions to a field of knowledge requires you to understand it in great detail. On the other hand, it can be a bit of a red flag because it’s easy to cross the line between original science and making up your own special science. (See, for example, forensic bite-mark “expert” Dr. Michael West.)

Lewinski’s personal “About” page says this about him:

Dr. Bill Lewinski is one of the world’s leading behavioral scientists whose work has focused primarily on the intensive study of the human dynamics involved in high stress, life-threatening encounters.

And his Force Science Institute “Who We Are” page describes his research this way:

Dr. Lewinski is conducting the leading research on human behavior in force encounters. His current focus is on action/reaction parameters, perception, attention & memory and judgment. His research has been published in national law enforcement publications, websites and e-news lines. This research has been highlighted on 48 Hours Investigates and the BBC’s Panorama.

Those are not exactly scholarly publications. In fact, of the nineteen published research papers listed by Dr. Lewinski, sixteen are in law enforcement publications. On the other hand, the remaining three papers appear to be genuine research published in legitimate peer-reviewed journals. The man has a Ph.D. and he taught college courses for decades. He’s been involved in some real research.

Still, this is not the research output of “one of the world’s leading behavioral scientists.” For instance, a quick search shows that his most-cited paper was referenced 23 times. By comparison, my old college adviser has a paper that was cited 94 times, and while he was a great teacher, he wasn’t a leader in his field either.

It’s also hard to say what Lewinsky contributed to his two most-cited peer reviewed papers because he wasn’t the lead author for either of them. That was Professor Joan N. Vickers from the University of Calgary Kinesiology department. She has dozens of peer-reviewed publications, many of which have been cited hundreds of times, which means she probably is the kind of scientific leader that Lewinski wants people to think he is.

Apuzzo’s article discusses some criticisms of his research, but I have no way to tell how valid they are. It appears that much of his research is about human behavior under stress in situations typical of police shootings. For example,

In 1990, a police shooting in Minneapolis changed the course of his career. Dan May, a white police officer, shot and killed Tycel Nelson, a black 17-year-old. Officer May said he fired after the teenager turned toward him and raised a handgun. But an autopsy showed he was shot in the back.

Dr. Lewinski was intrigued by the apparent contradiction. “We really need to get into the dynamics of how this unfolds,” he remembers thinking. “We need a lot better research.”

He began by videotaping students as they raised handguns and then quickly turned their backs. On average, that move took about half a second. By the time an officer returned fire, Dr. Lewinski concluded, a suspect could have turned his back.

That seems plausible to me. I don’t know enough about human perception and reaction to know if that particular example is correct, but I do know there’s been a lot of research in this area. We’ve learned a lot about the limits of human perception and behavior, including that we overestimate our ability to understand what happened, and it all gets worse under stress.

That’s why I think it’s wrong to impose severe criminal punishments on people when they make ordinary human mistakes, even when the consequences are unusually tragic, and I see no reason not to extend that principle to the police. Civil damages are a different matter. After all, the officer still made a mistake, and someone still got hurt who didn’t have it coming.

Somewhat disturbingly, Dr. Lewinski doesn’t see it that way. He doesn’t think the officers made mistakes. He the thinks the limitations of human perception and reaction are a justification for a frightening shoot-first policy:

The shooting looked bad. But that is when the professor is at his best. A black motorist, pulled to the side of the road for a turn-signal violation, had stuffed his hand into his pocket. The white officer yelled for him to take it out. When the driver started to comply, the officer shot him dead.

The driver was unarmed.

Taking the stand at a public inquest, William J. Lewinski, the psychology professor, explained that the officer had no choice but to act.

“In simple terms,” the district attorney in Portland, Ore., asked, “if I see the gun, I’m dead?”

“In simple terms, that’s it,” Dr. Lewinski replied.

That’s not the first time we’ve encountered cops who shot people for doing exactly what the cop told them to do. It seems like a no-win scenario for motorists.

“A batter can’t wait for a ball to cross home plate before deciding whether that’s something to swing at,” he told the Los Angeles deputy sheriffs. “Make sense? Officers have to make a prediction based on cues.”

Lewinski is talking about the generally uncontroversial observation that human physical actions are faster than reactions. A bad guy deciding to shoot a cop has the advantage of surprise, so he can be pulling the trigger before the officer has time to recognize what’s happening and respond. This is a real concern for police officers, but Lewinski’s recommendation that officers should solve that problem by shooting before they see a clear threat is deeply disturbing.

Just imagine what it’s like for the black motorist in this story. A cop stopped him, and for whatever reason he had his hand in his pocket. Yes, the smart thing would have been to hold both hands where the cop could see them, but he goofed, and now the cop is screaming at him. What is he supposed to do?

If we accept Dr. Lewinski’s evaluation of the situation, it doesn’t matter if he keeps his hand in his pocket or pulls it out. Either way, the cop should shoot him, because waiting to see if he has a gun would put the cop at risk. So neither of the motorist’s choices will get him out alive. The simple act of putting his hand in his pocket was a fatal mistake from which there is no escape.

On the other hand, what if the motorist did have a gun in his pocket. Then he might be able to survive the encounter with this cop by pulling the gun as fast as he can and shooting first, before the cop can shoot him.

If someone is trying to murder you, even if it’s a cop, you have the right to self defense. Of course, you can’t be doing something wrong at the time — robbing a liquor store, mugging an old lady, breaking into someone’s home — you have to come into the situation with clean hands. But the only thing the motorist does wrong in this scenario is having a hand in his pocket, which is not a crime.

(The paradoxical thing is that having a gun might violate the law, which might mean he can’t claim self-defense, but not having the gun would leave him clear to defend himself, but he’d have no means of doing so.)

You might argue that the motorist has no reasonable belief that the cop is going to kill him: Just because an armed cop is standing outside his car screaming at him doesn’t mean the cop is going to murder him for no reason. That seems like a pretty good argument, but Dr. Lewinski refutes it for us:

“In simple terms,” the district attorney in Portland, Ore., asked, “if I see the gun, I’m dead?”

“In simple terms, that’s it,” Dr. Lewinski replied.

By Lewinski’s own logic, the black motorist can’t afford to wait too long to decide whether or not the cop is going to kill him. By the time he sees the muzzle flash, it’s too late. Best to shoot the cop first, just to be safe, right?

(Reminder: I’m not a lawyer and this isn’t advice. This is a hypothetical argument in a blog. For God’s sake, don’t go thinking it’s okay to shoot cops!)

You might still think it’s not reasonable for the black motorist to believe that the cop will kill him for no reason. Yet that’s exactly what Lewinski is claiming the police officer should do: Kill the motorist before he sees a clear reason to do so. So not only is Dr. Lewinski providing a self-defense argument for black motorists to shoot cops, he’s also providing empirical justification for believing cops are likely to shoot them for no reason, because that’s what he’s telling them to do.

We could apply Dr. Lewinski’s argument more broadly: If you’re a white guy walking down the street and you see a young black male walking toward you, how can you be sure he’s not going to shoot you? Best to shoot him first, just to be sure. After all, if you see the gun, you’re dead, right?

Of course, if you’re the black guy, and you see a white guy coming toward you, shouldn’t you shoot him first? After all, he’s probably thinking about shooting you first. Or maybe not, but can you afford to wait until you’re sure? Dr. Lewinski doesn’t think so: If you see the gun, you’re dead.

We could follow this line of reasoning as far as we want, until we’re gunning each other down in the streets for not showing empty hands and hurtling nuclear bombs across the oceans because we fear our enemies might do the same.

My real point is this: The reason we can justify so much mayhem with Dr. Lewinski’s argument is that Dr. Lewinski’s argument is morally bankrupt. It fails the “What if everyone did that?” test. He’s not telling cops to kill to protect themselves from danger, he’s telling them to kill whenever they can’t be sure they’re safe. And no one can never be sure they’re safe.

A few years back, I wrote about one of those puppycide incidents that went really bad:, and I asked why police couldn’t use less lethal methods to subdue the dog. Someone defending the police told me it would be nuts to go on a drug raid with pepper spray instead of a gun. (Apparently it’s an either/or thing.) My response was that if this was true, then by choosing to conduct drug raids with gun in hand the police have also chosen in advance to meet all resistance with lethal force: Could be a bad guy with a gun, could be a lady with a baseball bat, could be a 10-year-old boy with a hammer. They all get a bullet.

If that’s really the case, then maybe police shouldn’t be conducting so many raids. And if we accept Dr. Lewinski’s argument that cops doing traffic stops should be able to shoot anybody who might be a threat, then maybe they shouldn’t be doing so many traffic stops.

I think it’s telling that you only really hear this argument as a defense after the fact. No police department issues up front warnings to citizens that they will be shot if they fail to put their hands up as an officer approaches. That’s because they know this is a shameful policy, and they don’t want to claim it unless they have to.

Getting back to my example of cops who run into a frightened 10-year-old with a hammer during a drug raid, despite all the bad stuff we’ve seen cops do over the years, I’m confident most officers would find a way to handle that kid without shooting him. Because nobody wants to kill a child.

So maybe the best way to get police to stop unnecessary killings is to find a way to make them want to stop unnecessary killings. Maybe cops will find better ways to stop motorists that are less risky for everyone. Or maybe when a cop who sees a black motorist with his hand in his pocket, he will just roll with it and hope he doesn’t get shot. After all, that’s what the black motorist is doing.

(Hat tip: My co-blogger Ken helped me to characterize the legitimacy and influence of Dr. Lewinski’s research.)