Center for Advanced Vehicular Systems

Spotlight on Research - Law Enforcement Research Initiative

It isn't every day that you get to shoot at targets in a research lab. Researchers in the Human Factors and Ergonomics laboratory at CAVS are preparing to do just that. Law enforcement officers recruited from local, regional, and state institutions are being invited to participate in a series of experiments taking place at the lab this spring. The officers are going to be asked to perform a number of tasks wearing different types of body armor and carrying different types of equipment.

Officers will fire a modified weapon during some tasks so researchers can examine the impact of body armor on shooting performance. Researchers will be recording how the officers move and where they look as they perform the tasks. By analyzing this data, the researchers hope to describe exactly how the different armor and equipment impact officer performance.

The armor research project is only one of many research projects that CAVS researchers hope to explore with law enforcement. Mark Thomas and Teena Garrison, Applied Cognitive Science PhD. students, are developing future projects looking at cognitive aspects of officer performance. Mr. Thomas is particularly interested in visual discrimination of targets and decision making during critical events such as raids performed by police tactical teams. Ms. Garrison is investigating driver performance during emergency response scenarios.

For all of these projects, CAVS researchers rely on expert officers in the MSU and Starkville police departments. Officers Terry Wheeler (MSU PD), Bryan Laffoon (SPD), and Aaron Bennett (SPD) have provided valuable insight into the difficult tasks police officers must perform every day. By working closely with local and regional law enforcement, CAVS researchers hope to support the law enforcement mission to protect and serve the public. At the same time, the dynamic and complex tasks that officers perform present an enticing research challenge to members of the Human Factors and Ergonomics laboratory.