By Inspector Chris Butler (ret.) for Calibre Press | calibrepress.com
Part 2 of a 2-part series
Editor’s note: In Part 1 of this series, trainer Chris Butler shared in-depth explanations of the characteristics and differences between two types of aggression—“Primal” aggression which is easy to recognize and “Cognitive” aggression, which surfaces without warning. In this next installment, Chris dives deeper into the characteristics and cues of the second of the two.
Ambush and Unprovoked Attacks: The Extreme Expression of Cognitive Aggression
Data from the FBI’s Law Enforcement Officers Killed and Assaulted (LEOKA) program and related reports show that a significant portion of officers feloniously killed die in ambushes or unprovoked attacks.
Recent national data indicate:
From 2021–2023, more officers were feloniously killed than in any other three-year span in the last two decades, with many deaths involving firearms.
— Preliminary and annual summaries highlight ambushes and unprovoked attacks as leading circumstances in these killings.
— A study of 84 police officer murders in Canada found that over half of those murders involved ambushes and the majority of offenders had inferred traits consistent with psychopathy and/or anti-social personality disorder.
Ambushes, by definition, are planned, surprise attacks (that is, a surprise only to the officer), often characterized by:
— A staged environment (disabled vehicle, fake disturbance, or suspicious person call)
— Offenders who initially appear calm, cooperative, or non-threatening
— Use of distance, concealment, and timing to achieve a first-shot advantage against officers
This is cognitive aggression on full display. The offender’s goal is not to “win the argument”; it is to kill or seriously injure the officer. Their behaviour before the attack typically show almost none of the primal cues officers are taught to be vigilant for.
When officers equate “no visible agitation” with “no threat,” they become particularly vulnerable to these assaults.
Why Cognitive Aggressors Don’t Look Dangerous
Neuroscience helps explain why certain offenders can stay calm and even charming as they prepare violence:
— Psychopathic individuals frequently show altered amygdala functioning and impaired emotional learning, including reduced sensitivity to others’ fear and punishment.
— They are more prone to instrumental (planned) aggression than reactive aggression.
— Paralimbic and prefrontal abnormalities facilitate a style of decision-making that is cold, calculating, and detached.
In practical terms, this means that cognitive aggressors typically:
— Don’t feel the kind of fear and anxiety most people do when confronting law enforcement.
— Aren’t physiologically “lit up” by their own violent intentions—so classic fight-or-flight cues may be minimal or completely absent.
— Can use deception, flattery, and feigned compliance with little internal distress.
For officers who have learned to equate danger with visible emotional arousal, the cognitive aggressor is the worst possible adversary.
Cognitive Aggressor Cues Officers Commonly Miss
While there is no single “tell” of a cognitive aggressor, certain patterns are worth emphasizing in officer training:
- Overly Friendly or “Too Nice” Behaviour
– Excessive attempts at rapport: jokes, compliments, feigned respect.
– Incongruence between the seriousness of the situation and the subject’s casual, almost rehearsed calm.
– Undirected Over Compliance – over-eagerness to “help” the officer, including suggesting where to stand or how to handle the scene; bizarre body language such as a driver holding their left arm far out the window on a traffic stop, holding both hands in the air upon the arrival of the officer as if to say, ‘there’s no problem here, officer!’
- Strategic Positioning and Movement
– Subtle efforts to move the officer: “Come over here where it’s quieter,” “Let’s talk by my car,” etc.
– Stepping to close distance under the guise of cooperation (e.g., leaning in with documents, moving closer while answering questions, smiling and joking).
– Steering the interaction toward areas with poor lighting, cover, or escape routes, or toward concealed weapons or accomplices.
- Controlled Body Language with Micro-Signals
– Overall calm but with brief, sharp glances to hands, waistband, or specific environment points.
– Minimal fidgeting, but small preparatory movements timed with officer distraction (e.g., hand drifting toward a pocket while the officer looks away).
– Testing officer awareness by making subtle movements with the hands towards areas where a weapon is concealed to determine the officer’s level of responsiveness
– Carefully modulated voice—neither defensive nor submissive, but smoothly persuasive.
- Information Management and Deception
– Providing elaborate explanations that were not asked for, or that feel rehearsed or overly detailed for simple questions.
– Answering questions quickly and smoothly, but with gaps around critical details (weapons, other subjects, destination, relationship to the scene).
– Contradictory statements that appear minor, tempting the officer to ignore them rather than dig in.
It is always the totality of circumstances which creates the important context in which an officer assesses risk and makes decisions. None of these cues, alone, prove a subject is dangerous. But in context—especially on high-risk calls or in ambush-prone situations—they may be far more relevant than whether the subject is “yelling or clenching fists.”
Building Cognitive-Aggressor Awareness into Officer Safety
To reduce assaults and ambushes, officer safety training can deliberately expand beyond primal aggression indicators and include specific cognitive-aggressor concepts.
- Train Against Presumed Compliance
— Explicitly teach that improper compliance is a tactic, not a personality trait.
— Use scenarios where “model citizens” suddenly attack after positioning the officer poorly.
— Train role players well to know how to exhibit the common cognitive aggressor behaviors prior to initiating attacks
— Use Socratic questioning to direct officer attention and intention to ensure they can describe the cues they observed and what they meant.
- Keep Tactics Independent of Subject Demeanor
— Contact-and-cover roles, distance, cover, and weapon awareness should not be relaxed simply because a subject is calm and polite.
— Policies and training should emphasize subject demeanor doesn’t change your tactical excellence.
— Supervisors and FTOs can reinforce this by critiquing “nice but tactically sloppy” encounters as seriously as overtly dangerous ones.
- Highlight Ambush and Unprovoked Attack Patterns
— Incorporate current LEOKA and national fatality data into training—especially case studies involving ambush – such as fake disabled vehicles, staged disturbances, suspicious person calls or seemingly benign contacts.
— Emphasize that the absence of visible agitation is typical and presence of cognitive aggressor behaviors will be present in pre-planned attacks.
- Expand “Pre-Attack Indicators” to Include Deception and Setup
Traditional pre-attack indicators (bladed stance, target glances, clenched fists) remain vital.
But training should add:
— Environmental pre-attack indicators: suspicious positioning of vehicles, unusual requests to move the officer, unexplained presence of other people or objects.
— Deception cues specifically linked to imminent aggression, as previously mentioned, and style training to include dedicated deception/pre-attack behaviors.
- Integrate Neuropsychology into Scenario Design
Obviously, we do not need to turn officers into neuroscientists, however trainers must understand these principles at a deep level and be able to explain to officers that:
— Some offenders (especially psychopathic or highly antisocial) may not show normal nervousness around police.
— Their aggression is instrumental, not emotional; they will smile, overly cooperate, and remain calm while planning to kill and even while carrying out the attempt.
Scenario training can then intentionally feature “charming” suspects who suddenly launch an attack after drawing officers into a tactically poor situation.
Conclusion: The Silent Killer: Seeing the Threat That Isn’t Shouting
Primal aggression is typically loud, messy, and emotionally obvious. Cognitive aggression is quiet, controlled, and often hidden behind friendliness. Both can kill officers, but our traditional training and intuition are usually highly tuned to the primal, not the cognitive, threat.
The science of psychopathy and instrumental aggression explains why some offenders can calmly plan and carry out violence without displaying the amygdala-driven fight-or-flight signs officers are used to watching for. LEOKA data and officer safety literature on ambushes, pre-attack indicators, and presumed compliance show the tragic consequences when these threats are missed.
The path forward is clear:
— Keep teaching primal pre-attack cues—but don’t stop there.
— Explicitly train cognitive-aggressor awareness and the dangers of presumed compliance.
— Anchor tactics excellence—distance, cover, positioning, contact-and-cover—in sound procedure, not subject demeanor.
Officers cannot afford to equate “calm and friendly” with “safe.” In a world where some individuals use charm, compliance, and planning as weapons, survival increasingly depends on recognizing the threat that isn’t shouting.
References
Neurobiology, Psychopathy, and Aggression
Anderson, N. E., & Kiehl, K. A. (2014). Psychopathy and aggression: When paralimbic dysfunction leads to violence. Current Topics in Behavioral Neurosciences, 17, 369–393.
Blair, R. J. R. (2001). Neurocognitive models of aggression, the antisocial personality disorders, and psychopathy. Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery & Psychiatry, 71, 727–731.
Blair, R. J. R. (2008). The amygdala and ventromedial prefrontal cortex: Functional contributions and dysfunction in psychopathy.
Blair, R. J. R., et al. (2006). The development of psychopathy.
Glenn, A. L., & Raine, A. (2009). Psychopathy and instrumental aggression: Evolutionary, neurobiological, and legal perspectives.
Raine, A. (2013). The Anatomy of Violence: The Biological Roots of Crime. Pantheon.
Siever, L. J. (2008). Neurobiology of aggression and violence. American Journal of Psychiatry, 165(4), 429–442.
Blair, R. J. R. (2006). The Psychopath: Emotion and the Brain.
Anderson, N. E., & Kiehl, K. A. (2014). Psychopathy and aggression: When paralimbic dysfunction leads to violence. (Chapter in Neuroscience of Aggression).
Officer Safety, LEOKA, Ambush, and Pre-Attack Indicators
FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program. Law Enforcement Officers Killed and Assaulted (LEOKA), including 2023 Special Report and related FAQs.
FBI LEOKA. Ambushes and Unprovoked Attacks on Law Enforcement Officers.
National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund. 2023 End-of-Year Preliminary Law Enforcement Officers Fatalities Report.
LEOKA / Peace Officer Safety Institute. Pre-assaultive Behavioral & Physiological Cues.
Police1 / Calibre Press. “10 non-verbal signs all officers should be able to recognize and interpret.”
POLICE Magazine. “Pre-Attack Indicators.”
Ti Training. “Pre-Attack Indicators: A Training Guide to Reading Body Language for Officer Safety.”
Idaho POST. Recognizing Pre-Attack Indicators course description.
Force Science Institute. “Rethinking ‘Show Me Your Hands!’”
Van Allen, J. & Parent, R. (2024). Unveiling a Tragic Reality: A Review of Police Murders from 1980 to 2023.
Presumed Compliance and Officer Safety Mindset
Blauer, T. “The Theory of Presumed Compliance.” Calibre Press.
North Carolina Justice Academy. Patrol Techniques / Officer Safety Readiness materials referencing presumed compliance.
Officer.com. “Presumed Compliance: Officer Survival Tip.”
Avila, B. “Presumed Compliance and Training.” The Backgate.
Peace Officer Safety Institute / LEOKA. Officer Safety Awareness Training materials.
Public Intelligence. Officer Safety Issues (examples of staged ambushes involving seemingly innocuous scenarios).
Calibre Press. Street Survival Series: Deception Cues and Pre-Attack Indicators.
About the Author
Chris Butler retired as an Inspector after 34 years in law enforcement. He has made presentations at National and International law enforcement conferences and has been qualified in court as an expert in firearms safety, police firearms training, law enforcement use-of-force training and evaluation. Chris has testified over 40 times as a use of force expert in criminal matters and coroner’s inquests pertaining to officer involved shootings and in-custody deaths.
As a result of working with some of the world’s best human performance researchers, coaches and practitioners, Chris developed the Advanced Methods of Instruction (MOI) for Training Practical Professional Policing Skills course.
Chris was honored to be inducted into the National Law Enforcement Officer Hall of Fame in 2025 as Trainer of the Year.
You can learn more about Chris here.
Chris can be reached directly at chris@raptorprotection.com (for Raptor Canada)
or chris@raptorpublicsafety.com (For Raptor USA)
