Weapon Focus.. BLAHH

[clgustaveson]

LOL...
No I am not I just do not think Weapons Focus is really that big of a deal...

No I am not talking PTSD.

I am talking minutes to hours after debriefing on what has happened to determine whether it was a good Action or Not. Think more like what LEO's would have to do after they are involved in a Murder/Killing of someone.

I guess my PTSD comment was misplaced, I know your not. It is very relevant. Weapon Focus is relevant in many setting because it means you have even less than 20% chance of getting relevant details

 

[Bill B]

This is all I could find using EBSCOHOST academic search engine. It is from an article in 1993.

Weapon focus. Weapon focus refers to the notion that if a witness is confronted with a weapon he or she will focus attention on it for at least part of the time, thus reducing his or her ability to identify the face of the culprit. Ten years ago, although there was little evidence on this point, it still managed to find its way into some courtrooms. Today the literature is substantially larger; 12 studies permitting a total of 19 tests of the hypothesis were recently subjected to a meta-analysis (Steblay, 1992). Six of these tests showed a significant difference in the expected direction between weapon-present and weapon-absent conditions; 13 of the tests showed no significant difference. Overall, the meta-analysis showed that the size of the weapon-focus effect was small (.13) for the crucial dependent variable of accuracy of identification in a lineup. For the dependent variable of accuracy of featural description, the effect was moderate (.55). It should be kept in mind that these are measures of effect size; they are bounded by zero at the lower end, but are not bounded at the upper end. (In particular, a .55 does not imply an effect about halfway between zero and a maximum of 1.)
Steblay (1992) concluded that the weapon-focus effect is significant and “a worthwhile focus for research. There is a need to more precisely identify the mechanics of the process in forensically relevant settings” (p. 422). I agree completely with these conclusions. However, whether we know enough about weapon focus to speak usefully to a jury about it is not so obvious.

Source:

Egeth, Howard E. "What do we not know about eyewitness identification?." American Psychologist 48.5 (1993): 577-580. PsycARTICLES. EBSCO. Web. 29 Dec. 2010

.

The Steblay reference is an article in Law and Human Behavior but their online database only goes back to 1999, so I was unable to access it.
So weapons focus is more of an issue with details than generalities, as I read the article people had trouble with describing the person with the weapon, but not as much identifying them in a lineup.

Addendum:
I found this using the proquest database, but don't have time at the moment to really check it out:
http://proquest.umi.com.allstate.li...sid=1&Fmt=10&clientId=54498&RQT=309&VName=PQD

It's an article from 1999, I don't think the link will work unless you have an account, PM me and I'll email the pdf to anyone that wants it.

 

[elaw555]

Witnesses are crap anyways. 10 people might view the same event but remember it uniquely due to...

-Perspective---I was behind the attacker and never saw a weapon
-Emotional state---I was so scared I just closed my eyes
-Distance---I saw the guy running but he wasn't carrying anything (because I was so far away)
-Action by the witness---I saw the gun in his hands a drew my weapon and...(focus on the attacker and don't see anything else)
-Action by the attacker---He knocked down my father so I tried to help him (and saw nothing else)

I am sure there are many other causes for jumbled and incorrect witness testimony. People often have a desire to help the police so they fill in gaps in what they saw. Some witnesses will want to embellish their part in the incident to appear that they did more. I was one at the scene of an auto accident where the car was upside down and still running. This one guy broke the passenger side window to turn the car off, cutting his hand pretty bad in the process, while I got in the car and guided the driver out through the already broken back window. I later heard him recount the story to an officer that "Yeah, I got him out through the back window".

Weapon focus would likely have a large effect on most witnesses who do not deal daily with guns, and sadly that seems to describe the majority of people.

Now, on using weapon focus on the attacker? I dunno...

 

[clgustaveson]

Right, is an open weapon going to allow you to pull out your knife and knife someone.