Decision making in policing environment often requires rapid and decisive actions, made under pressure in a rapidly changing environment (stress). Identifying an issue correctly is pivotal (situational assessment) in order to tailor a response.

Crichton and Flin (2002) discuss the Naturalistic Decision Making process (NDM). NDM has relevance with ‘real world’ decision making, with the user referring to experience and knowledge of an incident, applying a template style of action as opposed to an analytical time consuming process.

There are four decision making models a commander may use after the initial assessment. These strategies are listed in order based on the cognitive or increased mental concentration required to implement (Cricton and Flin 2002, p.215).

The first strategy is Recognition-Primed decision making (RPD). RPD is a process requiring minimal conscious effort with limited time and information. It is intuitive based, used by experienced commanders that quickly recognize the type of incident on hand, identify a solution based on a prior experience (Kerr, 1994 in Cricton and Flin 2002, p.215). This effective strategy is primarily used in dynamic situations. …show more content…
standing operating procedures (SOP). This process is used based on recall of a policy, procedure or from a manual checklist or book (or combination). The SOP’s are generally compiled by experts, are simple enough to commit to memory for ease of recall, or freely available to retrieve. Although a more structured approach, it can be limiting to those that are reluctant to deviate from policy or implore an alternative solution should an incident rapidly