ABSTRACT

Fatal police shootings are highly contentious and troublesome for normative standards of police legitimacy. Fatal police shooting investigations are often criticised because they lack impartiality, transparency and rigour. To assist policing practitioners and policymakers in the UK and beyond with managing these issues, we present a new analytical framework for investigating fatal policing shootings. We re-contextualise Shappell and Wiegmann’s ‘Human Factors Analysis and Classification System’ (HFACS) to test whether HFACS can be used during fatal police shootings investigations to identify contributory human factors. This study used HFACS to qualitatively analyse three high-profile fatal police shooting case-studies in the UK: (i) Jean Charles de Menezes in 2005; (ii) Azelle Rodney in 2005; and (iii) Mark Duggan in 2011. The results show that HFACS is a useful analytical framework. HFACS can be used to identify human factors and failures not discoverable by current methods for investigating fatal police shootings. We also offer the first empirical insights and contribute a more nuanced understanding of using HFACS to investigate fatal police shootings. We conclude by suggesting there are high-level and operational benefits in using HFACS and recommend avenues for further research to test HFACS in other policing contexts beyond the UK.

摘要

致命的警察枪击事件对于警察合法性的规范标准来说是极具争议和麻烦的。致命的警察枪击调查经常受到批评，因为它们缺乏公正性、透明度和严谨性。为了协助英国及其他地区的警务从业人员和政策制定者管理这些问题，我们提出了一个新的分析框架来调查致命的警务枪击事件。我们将 Shappell 和 Wiegmann 的“人为因素分析和分类系统”(HFACS) 重新情境化，以测试是否可以在致命的警察枪击事件调查中使用 HFACS 来识别促成人为因素的因素。本研究使用 HFACS 对英国三个备受瞩目的致命警察枪击案例进行了定性分析：(i) Jean Charles de Menezes 在 2005 年；(ii) 2005 年的 Azelle Rodney；(iii) 马克·杜根 (Mark Duggan)，2011 年。结果表明，HFACS 是一个有用的分析框架。HFACS 可用于识别当前调查致命警察枪击事件的方法无法发现的人为因素和故障。我们还提供了第一个实证见解，并对使用 HFACS 调查致命的警察枪击事件提供了更细致入微的理解。我们得出结论，建议使用 HFACS 具有高级别的操作优势，并建议进一步研究的途径，以在英国以外的其他警务环境中测试 HFACS。