By https://newatlas.com/author/malcolm-azania/
Publication Date: 2026-06-07 03:03:00
Imagine you are a police officer who comes into the chaos of a house where a husband is about to beat his wife.
That alone would be enough to scare anyone, but maybe you’re nervous because you’re new at the job, or because you’re overworked and exhausted, or because you’re unsettled by the last call you took and are having trouble concentrating, or because you’re a survivor of an abusive upbringing yourself. Regardless of your personal circumstances, once inside the suspected attacker’s home, you must de-escalate any conflict, search for weapons, protect children, and collect contradictory statements from the suspected perpetrator, victim, and witnesses. In doing so, you must ensure that you do not miss a single detail – or even a whole series of them – that could lead to the perpetrator escaping justice and the survivor… not surviving.
How do you do all of this while also battling your own possible anger, fear, exhaustion, and more?
“There is a huge cognitive load,” said Christina Shellabarger, a graduate student in Washington…
