It is rare to respond to a call at a residence and have an occupant come to the door holding a weapon. Sure, they come to the door bleeding, crying, angry, disheveled, drunk, curious, happy, reserved, distant, distracted, animated, frightened and more — but rarely do they come to the door carrying a firearm or a knife. When they do, it can become problematic for officers who learn in training to fear the mere presence of a weapon, creating in some an outsized emotional response that significantly impairs the ability to recognize mitigating cues and stay on task.
There is no question that the nature of the call and information on hand can, and will, influence an interpretation of why a person is in possession of a weapon. If you are responding to a domestic disturbance, the weapon is assigned a meaning within the domestic violence context. This article addresses a very narrow fact pattern and law enforcement response.
Context and perception: The impact of a weapon
If a person comes to the door with a knife — and it always seems to be the large kitchen knife a la psycho — when police are conducting a neighborhood canvas, outreach, or other generally benign context, the officer may believe that the person may have just come from preparing dinner in the kitchen.
In any event, there are times that citizens come to see who is at the door and bring a weapon with them for a variety of reasons that are unknown to the arriving officer. Banging on someone’s front door late at night when not expecting visitors? Gun. Watching crime on the news and an unexpected knock at the door? Knife. Bat. Whatever. Of note is that the “cop-knock” is rarely used by friends — it has an insistence and deliberateness that communicates a less than casual encounter. Indeed, how many times have police officers gone to their own doors with a gun discreetly in hand in response to an unexpected visitor banging on the door? Officers regularly report that they have done this at one point or another.
These types of events prove uniquely challenging to some officers, as the weapon immediately and intensely captures their attention [1] and reduces their ability to process visual information even minimally distant from the weapon. [2] This is unsurprising in that when a person selectively attends to specific information, that information is enhanced while other information, even near to the focus of attention, is suppressed. [3] As such, the ability to recognize other cues is diminished and a fear response can divert an officer from accessing more important information or from a more appropriate task or goal-directed activity.
Separating the weapon from the subject encountered becomes the overriding task and officers have generally been trained in this approach for good reason. The unexpected appearance of a weapon very close to an officer creates an urgent need to evaluate the person’s intent. This time compression is aggravated by the “action beats reaction” mantra burned into officers in training — and often experienced in the field. The time compression, fear and information available to the officer can lead to errors — in issuing commands and in interpreting subject behaviors.
This is exacerbated by the stress-induced decision-making of the subject who has come to the door with a weapon and encounters a police officer and who must make an immediate decision about what to do to avoid being shot. The same impairments officers can experience during acute stress events, and which are routinely used to explain officer actions during critical incidents, can also be experienced by the homeowner.
So when officers yell “drop the gun” or “show me your hands” or simply “hands,” that subject may not even hear them (or at least correctly divine what the officer really wants them to do in the “hands” scenario), and only hear “SHOUT, SHOUT, SHOUT” or nothing — this while an officer is producing a firearm, further creating stress in the subject. Officers aren’t the only people who have stress responses to the appearance of weapons. Officer commands of “drop the gun” resulted in an officer involved shooting of a man who was attempting to do just that in Charlotte, N.C. The gun was in the man’s waistband. When he attempted to drop it after 22 commands to do so, he was shot (Franklin v. City of Charlotte). [4] The court observed that “Watching the events unfold, one cannot help noticing that the intensity of the situation emanated not from Franklin, but from the volume and vigor of the officer’s commands.”
The concealment reflex and risky misinterpretations
What do people do when they don’t want an officer to see something in their hand when they unexpectedly encounter an officer? They immediately try to conceal it behind their leg/back or otherwise obscure it and then covertly get rid of the item. Anyone working in a college town will quickly recall a similar dynamic, students hiding beer bottles behind a leg and then “discreetly” discarding them upon seeing an officer. The concealing of the alcohol is done almost reflexively and discarding it in plain sight of an officer is not well thought out. Importantly, it is a behavioral cue that should provide meaning to the officer.
When a weapon is involved, the person likely believes that their best chance at not being shot (at) by officers is to keep it from an officer’s view until they can get rid of it. This makes sense. However, under stress, in a novel and time-compressed situation, with the mind unable to quickly sort through alternatives, the strongest and likely first impulse that comes to mind is what is adopted and implemented, and may not be consistent with officer commands. This impulse can be driven by a homeowner’s (mis)understanding of what they are supposed to do in this situation — that might mean getting on the ground and putting their hands in the air.
Like this.
When a person is seen with a gun one moment, moves to obscure it from an officer’s sight the next, and then quickly brings that same (albeit empty) hand back into the officer’s view — plenty of reasonable officers would likely discharge their weapon in that moment. Telling a person who is holding a gun to show their hands is a command that seems more likely to create problems — if the person shows their hands with a gun still in one, he is likely getting shot (at); if the person wisely refuses this command and keeps the gun hand down, the officer can interpret this as not obeying commands — increasing the threat evaluation, and may be more likely to shoot because…this person is non-compliant and action beats reaction. The important behavioral cue that is not weighted by an officer because of a weapon fixation in these situations is that the person is attempting to conceal the gun — not use it. Like this (start at 00:39).
And unlike this (start at 01:00):
The resident behaviors in this video are very different — starkly different — than the encounters shown above. Officer commands are similar to the other videos and are reflexive to many in law enforcement under stress. However, this person makes no effort to conceal the weapon and immediately engages the officers.
Mitigating tension: Clear and calm commands
To help mitigate the situations where a homeowner comes to the door with a weapon, shouldn’t officers start by stopping the action? Tell them not to move? How about, as calmly as one can: “Don’t move”...comply… “drop the gun/knife/weapon”...comply… “slowly show me your empty hands (think Outlaw Josey Wales)”...comply… “take a step back from the gun/knife/weapon”...and so on. and we’ll talk about why we are here.” The order to “freeze” or not move can be given while the officer draws their weapon, creates (or takes) space, changes angles, and otherwise improves their position in case things do go sideways. Giving or barking commands that require any movement from the homeowner, which can cause a weapon or hand to move, will more readily prompt actions of the homeowner that can be misinterpreted as threat cues, even from those who want to comply.
Commands to stop all action are unambiguous and reasonable, and give a person who is inclined to cooperate, and the officer, a better chance of avoiding a tragic outcome. Importantly, at any point the officer observes cues that signal a specific intent — either toward compliance or away from compliance — they can respond or change behaviors appropriately. Training for this type of event could better provide officers with the tools to improve outcomes if faced with this situation. This could be accomplished by modeling how an officer might address an armed homeowner, conditioning appropriate commands to stop the action, teaching officers that all humans can experience cognitive and perceptual deficits resulting from fear, and building in response behaviors that make allowances to mitigate or negate these. There is no debate that safety threats must be dealt with immediately and decisively, but we should be constantly evolving in the manner they are addressed. Training an approach to armed homeowners in this way could have significant carry-over to other enforcement contexts.
Stay safe.
References
1. Biggs AT, Brockmole JR, Witt JK. (2013). Armed and attentive: Holding a weapon can bias attentional priorities in scene viewing. Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics 75:8.
2. Harada Y, et al. (2015). The Presence of a Weapon Shrinks the Functional Field of View. Applied Cognitive Psychology 29:4.
3. Evans KK, et al. (2011). Visual attention. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Cognitive Science, 2(5): 503-514.
4. Franklin v. City of Charlotte, No. 21-2402 (4th Cir. decided April 4, 2023).
