Evaluation of the article “Biomechanics of lethal force encounters—officer movements” by W. Lewinski published in The Police Marksman magazine (2002)

This article contains the statement: “Until we understand and measure the variety of biomechanical motions that officers perform in lethal force encounters, it’s difficult to isolate the more complex and profound psychological dynamics, such as perception and judgment time” (middle of second paragraph).

The statement above assumes that processing related to perception and judgment do not occur during biomechanical motions—that is, they can be separated in time from these biomechanical motions. However, it is general knowledge in the perception/attention literature that these processes occur in parallel, they are not discrete processes that can be separated. This is an example where the goal of the research is based on flawed assumptions and reflects a lack of understanding human information processing.