In addition, the officers also believed that William was had a gun, and that the gun had been fired at them (Daily Reporter, 2015). .
Russell had sped past the headquarters of Cleveland police when the car backfired. The backfiring was construed to be gunshots (Daily Reporter, 2015). This shows that the officers failed to ascertain whether it was truly gunshots before launching the car hunt. The radio call that was placed was that for "shots fired", and this happened even before it was confirmed beyond doubt that gun shots had indeed been fired. This misleading radio call is the one that triggered the rush that was clearly fueled by adrenaline leading to other Cleveland police officers to join the car chase. The communication mishap led to an unnecessary pursuit that included 104 officers, 60 police cars and very high speeds of over 100 miles per hour.
The shooting death of Timothy Russell and Malissa Williams is an example of how misunderstanding in communication can lead to subjective decision making with disastrous effects. Ohio's Attorney General Mike DeWine notes that the job of police officers is a difficult one and the officers are expected to make tough decisions extremely fast based on the information they have at any particular moment (Daly, 2014). The speeding away by Russell was considered to be an emergency that necessitated the police to make tough decisions like whether to launch a car chase, to first make an investigation or to shoot at the supposed suspects. The police officers were under extreme stress, and this might have caused the subjective decision making. The misleading radio call from the Cleveland police headquarters that wrongly prompted the unnecessary chase is an example of a subjective decision making. The cop who had pulled over Russell wrongly believed that the couple had been buying drugs. This is an example of subjective judgment and is one of the factors that reinforced the wrong decision making.
