Research, case studies, and legal analysis from the team behind FOCUS — drawn from years of officer footage, sentinel-cue data, and real-world case work. New articles roll out over time.
Legal & Case Law
By Tactical Behavior Science
An officer does not need to see a weapon before acting to protect himself. Courts, along with furtive-gesture case law, have put it in
Officer Safety
By Dr. Travis Yates
Under stress, the brain narrows attention to survive, and officers miss warning signs they would otherwise catch. The fix isn’t telling officers to “pay
Handy v. Jones: The Ninth Circuit Says Officers Don’t Have to Wait to Be Targeted In Handy v. Jones, decided September 15, 2026, the
Officer Safety, Research & Science
A concealed gun has weight, and weight changes how people move. Someone carrying a concealed handgun tends to touch it, guard it, walk around
Research & Science
“Show me your hands.” Every officer has said it hundreds of times. Most of the time, the person complies. Sometimes the hands stay in
Pre-attack indicators only protect you if you actually see and perceive them, and three decades of magic research show that looking at something is
By Tactical Behavior
Pre-attack indicators, also called pre-incident indicators, are behavioral cues officers are trained to read as signs that someone is about to attack. Nearly every
FOCUS Method
