Journals Proceedings

Abstract

Non-cooperative subject behavior leading to fatal shooting by law enforcement officers is discussed from the perspective of self-organizing systems. To this end, non-cooperative subject behavior is understood in terms of attentional blindness and functional fixedness as predicted by a mathematical model for self-organized human behavior proposed earlier by Frank (Nonlinear Dynamics, Psychology, and Life Sciences, 2015, 19, 111-146). Importantly, the same kind of model is applied to understand fatal shootings of non-cooperative subjects by law enforcement officers. It is argued and demonstrated by simulation studies that when the mechanism of fixedness acts both on subjects and law enforcement officers, tragic incidences of fatal shootings are likely to occur.