Survive an encounter with the police

"And we're stayin' alive, stayin' alive
Ah, ah, ah, ah
Stayin' alive, stayin' alive
Ah, ah, ah, ah
Stayin' alive"

   Bee Gees, "Stayin' Alive," 1977

I want readers of this blog to survive encounters with law enforcement. I want law enforcement officers to survive, too. 

Each side of a police encounter is looking at different things and perceiving different risks. The setting on the street in Minneapolis was chaotic. There were angry shouts from bystanders and sharp commands from ICE agents. Events moved quickly. Renee Good apparently thought she was supposed to move her car out of the street. She was looking to her left, at ICE agents pulling at her door. She moved her car forward and to the right. A third officer was in front of her car, toward the path of that movement. He shot and killed her. 

Raz Mason prepared a nonpartisan safety bulletin. Each side in the encounter needs to understand the point of view of the other. This is a recurring high-risk scenario: Vehicles + armed officers + compressed time + divided attention. Any of us could find ourselves in this situation.

Raz Mason is the owner of CompreSec LLC (Comprehensive Security), a consultancy focused on upstream causes of violence.  She works with public-facing professionals on safety, situational awareness, and prevention strategies that reduce unnecessary escalation. She is a Force Science Institute–trained analyst, addressing how people perceive, decide, and act under extreme stress, including real-world limits of human attention, reaction time, and motor control in high-risk encounters.

Mason

Guest Post by Raz Mason

Following the January 7 shooting of Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis, public narratives quickly polarized. Some accounts emphasize officer self-defense; others civilian cooperation and disproportionate force. The assumption is that the other person should have and could have done something different. My purpose in this piece is not to determine legality, but to address a dangerously widespread lack of security literacy.

The physiological and perceptual constraints discussed here apply equally to civilians and law-enforcement officers. Under stress, human nervous systems do not become more capable. They become narrower, faster in some ways, and slower in others.

Several observations appear reasonable:
--- Ms. Good is seen with her arm outside the vehicle window, a gesture that may be interpreted as communicative rather than hostile.
--- Video shows her interacting with an officer at the driver’s side window.
--- Another officer approaches from a different angle, closer to the front of the vehicle.
--- Key to what unfolded is what Ms. Good perceived, what commands she heard, whether commands were consistent, and how the tenor of the interaction impacted her responses. 

These details matter because human perceptions under threat are partial and unfold sequentially, not instantaneously.

Guidance for Civilians

If you are a civilian interacting with law enforcement in an emotionally-elevated situation, particularly inside a vehicle, you are in a high-risk environment. Several realities are critical:

--- Recognize that officers are trained to treat occupied vehicles as potential weapons; courts have at times found deadly force reasonable when a vehicle is perceived as an imminent threat.

--- Under stress, perception lags behind movement. Beginning to move a vehicle to comply, reposition, or leave may occur before you register an officer approaching from another angle.

--- Stress narrows your attention. Focusing on one officer may prevent awareness of another officer, a drawn weapon, or a shouted command until it is too late to respond safely.

Civilians rarely experience an immediate, conscious realization of mortal danger. Initial responses often include denial, followed by automatic fight, flight, or freeze behaviors. Recognize your peril.

Civilian bottom line: In tense law-enforcement encounters, your safety depends on minimizing motion and maximizing clarity. Keep hands visible. Stop the vehicle completely. Ask calmly and clearly: “What do you want me to do -- stay still or exit?” Do not creep, turn wheels, or move unless instructions are unambiguous and the path clear.

Guidance for Law-Enforcement Officers

Officers operate under the same physiological constraints as civilians, with the added burden of threat assessment, policy, and scrutiny.

Force Science principles relevant here include:

--- Automaticity under stress: Highly trained actions, such as drawing a firearm, can initiate rapidly with limited conscious thought. Memory of the sequence may later be incomplete. 

--- Startle and sympathetic muscle response: Sudden movement can spur involuntary muscle contractions, particularly when fingers are near triggers.

--- Once a weapon is drawn, the encounter is already deep into a high-risk pathway. De-escalation might be the much-superior course, but to be accessible, de-escalation must be honed through prior training, practice, and ongoing nervous system regulation.

--- When multiple officers issue commands or move tactically, rather than maintaining clean delineation between contact officer and cover officer(s), officers divide civilian attention and create conflicting cues.

--- Vehicle contacts amplify risks. Crowding an occupied vehicle lessens decision-making and reaction times for everyone. Crowding can manufacture the threat you are trying to prevent.

Officer bottom line. Human perception and reaction are slower and more fragile than we wish. Effective safety requires planned responses, clear communication with the subject, and policies that tolerate delay. Presume confusion and divided attention. Do not assume perfect perception or instant compliance.

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