Tulsa Police officer Betty Shelby was charged with first-degree manslaughter in the shooting death of Terrence Crutcher on Sept. 16, 2016. On May 17, 2017, a jury found her not guilty. Part of the defense argument was a familiar phenomenon to many in law enforcement: auditory exclusion. Problem is, some people aren’t buying it.
Auditory exclusion—the idea that under extreme stress a person will sometimes not perceive noise that would be otherwise obvious. It’s not a physiological explanation, as I understand it, but a psychological one: The brain under stress focuses what it perceives to be critical at the exclusion of other stimuli. It’s the auditory equivalent of stress-induced tunnel vision.
Then, in the course of research, I came across an article from Oct. 7, 2016, with the following headline: “The Murky Science Behind Killer Tulsa Cop’s Temporary Deafness Defense: Attorneys for Officer Betty Shelby may become the first to bring so-called ‘auditory exclusion’ into a criminal courtroom.” The article cites a bevy of experts, many of whom called into question both the admissibility of this defense and the science behind it. Quoting the article:
Those ThinkProgress reached who study the brain’s physiology said they know of no research supporting it. “Stress does all sorts of things to sensory systems,” wrote Stanford [neuroscientist] Dr. Robert Sapolsky, “but the idea of deafening is ludicrous.” Dr. Andrew Steptoe at University College London, who studies “peritraumatic dissociation” during episodes of intense fear or stress, said the idea is plausible “but I know of no solid evidence for this.”
Professor Philip Stinson (a former cop) of Bowling Green University was blunt: “From my standpoint, it’s completely nuts … I don’t see this being admissible at all.”
So is auditory exclusion not a real thing?
I know anecdotally that many police officers have experienced what they would describe as tunnel vision and auditory exclusion during extreme stress. I’ve heard it described countless times as officers recount traumatic encounters.
Here’s a particularly vivid example. Cleveland Police Officer Anthony Espada and his partner Michael Tracy discovered Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus, and Michelle Knight after a decade of brutal captivity at the hands of Ariel Castro. The conditions of their captivity and their state were horrific—beyond horrific, to hear him tell it—and it was an incredibly overwhelming and surreal call for all involved. Espada moved through the house, aware of dangers lurking, attempting to process the instruments of captivity and torture that were all around him.
When another officer arrived on scene one of the first things he said to Espada was: “How can you work through this music?”
“What music?” said Espada. It only then dawned on him that loud music had been blasting through the house the entire time he’d been there. (It was Castro’s way of keeping the women’s noise from being overheard by neighbors when he left the house.)
“Until someone said something to me, it was like it wasn’t there,” Espada told me. “I was so focused on these little girls, who I would find out later were grown women, that I didn’t hear any music.”
I believe Espada.
But it takes more than belief to have the public and criminal justice system accept something as real and admissible in court. Lt. Col. David Grossman has written on it. Dr. Rich Gassaway and others have studied it, and there are certainly accepted corollaries in sports psychology. But apparently that’s not enough. When I Google “auditory exclusion,” few scholarly articles come up and those that do aren’t widely cited. Other experts say it doesn’t exist.
If you’re an officer who has experienced this first-hand, tell me about your thoughts. If you’re a researcher who can shine some light on this or who would like to look further into this topic, let’s talk. Email is best, which is my first name @CalibrePress.com. (It’s research for a book project.)
As the great writer and neuroscientist Oliver Sacks once wrote,
I accepted that I must have forgotten or lost a great deal, but assumed that the memories I did have—especially those that were very vivid, concrete, and circumstantial—were essentially valid and reliable; and it was a shock to me when I found that some of them were not.
How much in the realm of criminal justice that we think we know is actually invalid and unreliable? I look forward to hearing from you.
It certainly does exist. When I was involved in my shooting, the gunshot sounded like it was miles away, barely audible. I only heard it full volume when I got to sleep after 30 hours and the replays continued in my head. My first dream was a shooting. The gunshot was so loud it woke me up and my ears were ringing, ringing from a gunshot I heard in my sleep. It is real. Time slowing down while simultaneously speeding up is also real. Paradoxes become real in shootings for reasons I can’t explain, like the perception of time. It happened so fast yet happened so slow. So slow I watched the gun smoke wisp lazily out of the barrel like a stale cigarette. The gun smoke and my hammer being back (DA/SA pistol) told me I was the shooter, not my partner. There is no way to test this theory other than asking officers that have been involved in shootings what they experienced. No simulation will ever come close because you go into it knowing you won’t be harmed with the safety gear you are wearing and the sim guns you are using. Nothing is like the real thing.
My name is Guy Minnis and I am a retired Evansville Police Detective in Evansville, Indiana. I served for 33 ½ years. I am a former SWAT Team member, Bomb Technician on the Bomb Squad, training officer, firearms instructor, and Firearms Training Coordinator. I have a boatload of training schools under my belt. I have founded, owned, and operated two firearms training companies and I have trained hundreds of civilians.
Auditory exclusion is definitely real and I have experienced it many times. Let me explain why I am so positive it is real.
In 1985 I was involved in an on duty shooting. I fired one round at the man that had furthered his crime by using a knife to ward off a civilian that was chasing him and when I encountered him some time later he refused to comply with my orders and he attempted to flee in a residential neighborhood behind a Christian School.
I fire one shot and that shot struck him in the spine and severed his spinal cord. He survived his lethal wound because he was very close to a hospital and he received treatment well within an hour of being shot. When I fired the shot it sounded like a pop and my ears did not ring as they had before when I had fired a shot without hearing protection. During my shooting the sound of the shot was very muffled, almost inaudible.
Another thing I experienced was, what I call – hyper vision. I actually saw the .38 caliber lead hollow point bullet in flight just before it struck the suspect. I estimate that I was approximately 20 to 25 feet away from the suspect when the shot was fired. I also estimate that I saw the bullet in flight just before striking the suspect about five feet from the suspect.
This shooting occurred in March, it was a sunny day, but the sun did not backlight the bullet so there was no unusual lighting conditions. I was told by our crime scene techs that it was not possible for me to see the bullet in flight, but I can promise you I did. One important fact to consider is that I had practiced a considerable amount of time “point shooting” at 21 feet and closer. When I shot the suspect I never saw my front sight because I was using a “point shoulder” shooting technique where the gun is well below your line of sight. I was totally focused on a point on the suspect when I fire the shot and the shot hit that point that I focused on.
The reason I say this is important has to do with the fact that I was not focused on my front sight when I fired my duty revolver. I was focused on the target and I believe that allowed me to see the bullet with my enhanced vision from the adrenaline dump that I suffered.
Now back to auditory exclusion. Because I was a firearms instructor for the EPD and I owned two firearms training companies. I had a great deal of experience with Simunition Force on Force training. In many of the scenarios I played the role of the bad guy so I knew exactly what I said and I paid close attention to what the officer or civilian student said during the lethal force encounter.
Time and time again the student in the role of the shooter, did not hear things that I said moments before the shooting and or during the time that shots were fired at me. The other students that were watching the scenario heard what was said, but the “target” student could not remember hearing anything to only partial parts of sentences. In other words, the student’s hearing was shutting down under high stress.
I have participated in hundreds of Simunition Force on Force scenarios so I got really good at making the scenario as real as life. When the scenario was over we would observe that the “target” student suffered the shakes, breathing rapidly, accelerated heart rate, and had time and time again suffered auditory exclusion.
One last observation. I also witnessed numerous times that students that came back to go through our Force on Force scenarios got much better at not suffering from any of these affects. The more they were trained and the more we explained what was happening to them and how to combat it, the more success they achieved.
I for one say there is no doubt about it. Auditory exclusion is real. Hyper vision is real, and false memories of what happened is real. I have seen it with my own eyes and no one can convince me otherwise.
I hope this was helpful.
Guy Minnis
Check out my Guy Minnis – The Gun Guy Facebook page. I sell nothing. I offer my experience, training, and education for free on this page on different gun related topics.
Considering all the drivel and fabrication involved in Officer Shelby’s prosecution, I find it amazing that anyone even remotely cares about this. There never was a basis for what was done to her, and the cowards in the upper levels at Tulsa PD should have been fired and if they have state laws similar to those under which I work, prosecuted. I have experienced it under far less stressful circumstances, and seen others who can’t or won’t hear very loud voices and other noises, again under far less stressful circumstances.
If you believe this, and you believe that this is an excuse to justify or explain away shootings of unarmed suspects, subjects, or citizens, then you need to look at your self in a mirror and repeat the following.
” I am too dangerous to patrol, I am too dangerous to patrol, I am too dangerous to patrol, I am too dangerous to patrol” and so on until you get it. The modern LEO is too dangerous to patrol. You cannot be trusted to hold fire when you should. She shot an unarmed man without cause. He had no weapon on him, there was no weapon in vicinity, except that in arms of police officers on scene. No shortage from LEO community of excuses and explanations , to transfer responsibility for unnecessary deaths , from LEO onto the suspect who is more often is the victim. Here is a sampling, tazer confusion, single event latent diagnosed PTSD, and now auditory exclusion.
You are simply wrong, and don’t know what you don’t know. Are you are a TPD command officer, or in the DA’s office there? You seem to be delusional enough. Use of a Taser was not and never could have been appropriate. Most agencies have Tasers and use them because the command level cowards are not willing to address the liars and crybabies who don’t and won’t understand that there is nothing wrong with shooting people who reasonably appear to present a lethal threat. To the extent that there was any auditory exclusion, an experience which does exist and has been shown to, it did not matter. Anyone who did not perceive Crutcher’s acts as consistent with a violent assault on a cop is simply wrong and completely off base.
American LE does not shoot or kill nearly as many violent criminals as it could (and thus, by implication, should) – by a factor of roughly TWENTY. Offender safety is and must be at the bottom of the priority of life, of course. The views of PERF and the other moonbats are flat out unethical. Further, of course, defensive force such as this is preemptive – one cannot wait until the offender actually has brought a firearm to bear on the officer, or even worse, fired.
Mr. Crutcher was acting like a violent, non-compliant criminal. He happened to be impaired by a lovely smorgasbord of drugs, and acted that way as a result. Had he not been impaired in that manner, he likely would not have acted like a violent criminal. I suggest you look for the excellent commentaries on the incident from Sr. Cpl. Whitaker of Dallas PD, herself a woman of color, and her outside and objective analysis of the manner in which Crutcher reasonably appeared to be a lethal threat. She is well educated and writes well – I don’t claim to agree with her on everything, but she’s correct almost all of the time.
So the guy was impaired by a cocktail of drugs. The impairment and hallucinatory effects, are signs of medical distress. This was a medical emergency. OK, she did not know that, but did she not observe a weapon in his hands, and shot him becouse she imagined that there might be, may be, a weapon inside the vehicle, with its doors closed. So when he turned around, perhaps to return to his vehicle, she shot him. Not based on threat , but on her imagination.
There was an incident in Florida, we were briefed on at AIT. A rookie cop took a cocktail of drugs ( prescribed ,according to his attorney ), which caused a hallucinatory cascade reaction. He got into a unit , drove at high speeds in early hours, either crashed or disabled his vehicle. When EMT , who got to incident location first, arrived, to cop shot and wounded them. He later claimed he was suffering from hallucinations, brought on by meds and was shooting at ‘demons’. He certainly proved that he was a threat, but the arriving cops held their fire . They were not willing to shoot a fellow cop, even though he was a threat, and had already wounded first responders through lethal fire. If he was a civilian, in medical distress, he likely would have been put down.
If you are wondering, why my group was briefed on this incident, it is becouse provost need to be acutely cognizant of medication and substance impairment. Ft. Rucker is U.S. Army aviation center. Installation commander issued standing orders that all duty posted personell , regardless of MOS or rank, be trained to spot chemically induced impairment, as layer of aviation safety.
He was reaching to go in through the window, and while it did turn out to be a medical/mental problem, when someone acts far enough into the violent criminal mode, that becomes a non-issue. Sad, sometimes, but true. It was not the first act in which he engaged that was consistent with being a violent criminal – he did so throughout the event. She waited as long as she could for him to comply, and any non-compliance is the first indicator of danger to the officer. Defensive force is preemptive, not reactive.
I am not familiar with the incident you describe in Florida and there may be lots of reasons why they did not shoot, including the fact that they knew him and could not bring themselves to. Don’t know. What we do know is that Officer Shelby’s response to Crutcher was reasonable as a matter of law and fact. I am not surprised that your training is substandard as to that sort of issue – I don’t think I have ever met a cop who was prior service as an MP/SF/MAA who had not found that they had been working in a totally different environment that did not translate well. Even better are those who keep doing both – they have a hell of a time with the poor standard in military LE for the things that matter.
Whatever is taught at Lost in the Woods or wherever that school is now is not consistent with modern knowledge of threat, and also reflects a hoplophobic culture. See Lt. Col. Bolgiano’s excellent presentation at the Army War College on youtube (it’s about an hour). He’s BTDT; a former cop with an OIS; lawyer in both JAG and federal LE advising. Go get a copy of the excellent book by Urey Patrick and John Hall, “In Defense of Self and Others — issues, facts & fallacies: The realities of law enforcement’s use of deadly force” (3rd edition, 2017). It is long, but a good read. Any LE command officer officer or legal advisor who does not know that book well is should be relieved for cause, as you would say.
Military LE, while similar to civilian LE, is not the same. You have multiple differences, including the UCMJ interests related to military needs that simply don’t exist to us. When I was in LE, I dealt with military personnel from E2 to O6 on many occasions. Their rank meant nothing to me, other than as an earned form of address to which they were entitled as a matter of respect. I also saw senior officers treat military LE personnel in an appalling manner based on rank. As a prosecutor, I have also dealt with JAG personnel whose operations overlapped with ours, and they didn’t have a clue about use of force, weapons law in our setting, or anything. Not surprising for a baby O3; horrifying in an O4. (My job duties, education, and experience are equivalent to those of an O6 JAG or higher.) I also dealt with a situation some years back in which a contract problem appropriate for an O5 or O6 was delegated to an E6. He had no more business doing that than I had trying to command a submarine, and putting him in that situation was disgraceful. That was not a reflection on him, but on the “leaders” who did that.
Everything you said, I believe you. Seeing how my fellow soldiers, and my self are treated by civilian LE. Educate yourself with South Miami case. IMHO, a dereliction of duty, by responding LEO. A case of cowardice or misplaced loyalty. By the time units arrived, the two EMT had already been under fireview and wereally wounded. The subject was still armed. They let him run out of ammunition , then brought him under control. They would not Shoot one of their own , to save another. Cowardice and dereliction of duty. I tell you this, if as member of Guard, I am called out by Governor , my inclination would be to put my and my guardsmen between police and the citizenry, and orient towards the police. You cannot be trusted to safeguard civilian life during normal citizen police contacts. God knows how many citizens you will bury , when situation is not under control. US does not need another Danziger Bridge ,NOLA, mass execution
Putting aside that NOPD and the rest of the city have a lot of problems that go back a long time, a small number of crimes committed by cops does not change the fact that the overwhelming majority of the very rare LE uses of force of all kinds are lawful and sound, contrary to the lies and distortions from lunatics and the apologists for the criminally feral. I’ll admit I’ve seen some appalling behavior, and when directly involved have taken action. I read an appellate case last year that made me livid – the cop should have been fired and prosecuted, yet the City kept him AND defended the civil rights action (without the slightest basis for doing so.) However, contrary to the public discourse – these are extremely rare. The same is true of the military – I know lots of good Soldiers, Sailors, Marines, Airmen and Coasties who howl in anger at some of the turds they have dealt with (and at all ranks) – look at Lt.Col. (formerly B. Gen.) Sinclair. We all have them.
There were also very serious ethical violations by DOJ in the course of that prosecution (go read the trial court’s opinion; at least two AUSAs were forced out and should have been disbarred, and at least supervisor in DC should have been fired, and all three potentially charged with civil rights violations). This is common, and was especially so under Holder, who was blatantly corrupt in his anti-LE efforts, and also went out of his way to gut the efforts to address the serious misconduct in the banking industry in the 2008 economic crash. Other prosecutions, such as that of Senator Stevens and the Blackwater employees, have revealed the same kinds of problems (fabrication of evidence, concealment of potentially exculpatory information, a lack of threshold minimum knowledge of the law, a lack of candor to the tribunal, etc.). This is similar to the prosecutions in Baltimore, Tulsa, Cincinnati, and other places (at least two of those DAs have Bar complaints pending, and all should be disbarred). DOJ OCR is among the worst in the country, with a history of fabricated grounds for consent decrees (Seattle, and as I recall, Albuquerque are both examples), among other misconduct, and the plaintiff’s bar regularly lies in police cases (go read Scott v. Harris, in which SCOTUS called out counsel for that, and frankly, should have referred him/her for Bar action).
I’ve been helping a friend with an amicus brief in the case of a wrongfully convicted soldier. The wrong person is in Leavenworth – multiple JAGS, from the advisor to the Convening Authority to the trial prosecutors, should be disbarred and themselves prosecuted. They lied to the Convening Authority, to the trial judge, and to the jury. This is a result of deliberate improper instruction at the JAG school(s), and efforts to address this misconduct by qualified retired senior officers have been rejected. Not just ignored – rejected.
So, this south Miami case you refer to … can you provide more information so we can locate and research it? Actual location, year, name of those involved, etc? The more the better. I tried running a google search but didn’t find anything in the first few pages that seemed to match what you describe.
As to what you would or wouldn’t do if your state’s Guard was activated, I’ll leave that between you, your NCO support channel and chain of command.
I imagine you recall, but those responsible for the bridge shooting in New Orleans were investigated, prosecuted, convicted, and sentenced. The same thing has happened to other officers who actually committed crimes.
You are sure officers, deputies, troopers, etc (750,000 of them) cannot be trusted to safe guard human life (about 330 million), I’d really like to hear more about your theory on this. What research you have done and the documentation you have gathered. Given that we hire from the human race, we aren’t perfect however we are no where as flawed as some claim.