While the proximate cause of any accident is usually someone's immediate
action-- or omission (failure to act)--there is often a trail of
underlying latent conditions that facilitated their error: the person
has, in effect, been unwittingly "set up" for failure by the
organization. This Brief explores an accident in policing, as a
framework for examining existing police practices. Learning from Error
in Policing describes a case of wrongful arrest from the perspective of
organizational accident theory, which suggests a single unsafe act--in
this case a wrongful arrest--is facilitated by several underlying latent
conditions that triggered the event and failed to stop the harm once in
motion. The analysis demonstrates that the risk of errors committed by
omission (failing to act) were significantly more likely to occur than
errors committed by acts of commission. By examining this case, policy
implications and directions for future research are discussed. The
analysis of this case, and the underlying lessons learned from it will
have important implications for researchers and practitioners in the
policing field.