The psychology of police bias and violence

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/between-the-lines/201204/studies-unconscious-bias-racism-not-always-racists

http://rt.com/usa/217239-black-police-racial-profiling/

These were some interesting stories about detrimental police psychology and practices.

Phillip Goff from UCLA studied a sampling of police deadly force incidents (not sure the date range and selection criteria), and over 80% of those incidents involved the shooting victim making direct "threats to the officer's masculinity." So it wasn't just a disrespect for his authority ("F you, pig!"), but a challenge to his manhood. In the case of Ferguson, it was alleged that Brown told Wilson, "You're too much of a [pansy/fag/etc.] to shoot me." If true, obviously that was a bad move on Brown's part, but also reveals the dangerous attitude that some officers feel the need to demonstrate their toughness/masculinity/etc. to the public (like Marty McFly when he's called "chicken"). This is not Tombstone where gunfighters call each other out to defend their names and settle scores in the street. The bigger man is sometime the one who doesn't respond, and cooler heads need to prevail (not to mention cops are legally bound by certain restraints, though it's very hard to prosecute excessive force). Cadets and officers who display this inferiority complex, insecurity, and prideful behavior should never be permitted to have a badge and gun.

This part is a little fluffy - but this behavior could reflect the stereotypical white-black male tensions of more racist eras: white men may feel especially threatened by black strength, black genitalia, black revenge for slavery, black men taking their white women away, etc. Again, this is not evidence-based and mostly the domain of racial humor, but I think these fearful undercurrents may still be alive in the American psyche. How much of an effect they have on police actions is unclear.

Also, incidents of police-on-police violence were also studied. In cases where an on-duty officer shoots an off-duty plain-clothed officer, the victims are overwhelmingly black/brown and the shooters are overwhelmingly white. Sorry that is so vague; Reuters got the data from a police internal study, but did not provide the #s. So it's not just a cops vs. civilians thing - cops are killing each other and it seems that race is a major factor associated with the decision to shoot. Much more numerous than shootings are of course the racial profiling for routing traffic stops, stop-and-frisk, harassment, etc. Again, this is much more of a problem for plain-clothed minority officers than white officers. And these incidents may lead to tempers flaring and a violent incident.

The Horne case with Buffalo PD

Sorry to keep harping on this, but there's a lot of material out there. I guess this was going on all the time, but it's only reaching our eyeballs now due to the media attention and high-profile cases.

https://news.vice.com/article/buffalo-cop-loses-job-and-pension-after-she-intervenes-with-fellow-officer-choking-a-suspect?utm_source=vicenewsfb

I think this episode summarizes what is wrong with police accountability (or lack thereof). According to this Vice report, Cariol Horne, a female black officer with the Buffalo PD (19 years tenure) saw another white male officer striking and choking a suspect who was already in handcuffs. She told him to stop, and may have put her hands on the other officer. The other officer punched her in the face in the presence of 9 other officers. Sounds open and shut, right? She was charged with obstructing an arrest, was fired, and got her pension annulled. Meanwhile, the alleged abusive officer was unpunished.

He later was implicated in 2 violent incidents with other officers (which led to his "forced retirement"), and was recently indicted for past civil rights violations relation to treatment of black youths. Horne is still trying to recover her pension.

So let me get this straight, a violence-prone racist cop gets no discipline and full pension from his department, but the "whistleblower" cop who tried to look out for the rights of a suspect gets fired with no pension? Cops and crooks both seem to espouse the philosophy that "snitches get stitches." Some PDs seem more interested to root out disloyalty/threats rather than actual misconduct. It's a cop's "duty" to look out for each other and cover up crimes if necessary. If they don't, and if they dare go against the blue line, then their career is finished. For the benefit of doubt, there could be more to this story. But still, Horne must not have been that bad if she was on the job for 19 years. As a black female cop, she had a much smaller margin for error on the job. So I don't think this is a case of her just crying wolf.

Obviously, this is not how a public agency (or any org) should function.

What some ex-cops think about police violence

Some perspectives on this issue from ex-cops.

A black man from StLPD who basically felt that most of his peers were racist and quick to violence:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/12/06/i-was-a-st-louis-cop-my-peers-were-racist-and-violent-and-theres-only-one-fix/

His thesis is basically that training won't fix things; there is already a ton of training that officers don't take seriously - because they know there are above punishment (leave with pay is the worst it gets). There has to be independent oversight and real accountability. DAs won't really represent the best interests of the public to investigate and punish police misconduct, as we've seen from the Eric Garner grand jury. Same how the military won't really look into sexual assault within its ranks (so the Senate is trying to pass a law and create an independent investigation office).

A South Asian man from LAPD (who also has a PhD) on why it's the public's job to prevent police use of force:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/08/19/im-a-cop-if-you-dont-want-to-get-hurt-dont-challenge-me/

Heck, the title of his op-ed is "I'm a cop. If you don't want to get hurt, don't challenge me." That demonstrates the power trip, confrontational attitude pervasive in their ranks. I agree with a lot of what he was saying, but not his expectations for the public. Yes, it's true that people will be safer if they just do everything that the cop tells them to do. But what does that make us, slaves? Cops are not our overlords. And what if the cop asks us to take our clothes off, or steals our property (which has happened before in the US)? If we value our lives, we just let it happen and then seek redress later? Well that might work in theory, but the people most likely to be abused by the cops can't afford legal representation and likely don't have the ability to go through these protracted channels of justice (with no guarantee of success at the end). And frankly, "just do everything he says or you'll get hurt" sounds like terrorism to me. We have to be submissive and not provoke a guy with his finger literally on the trigger. And of course the author expects the communities that have the worst history of prejudice and injustice against them to behave like Gandhis through humiliation and aggression, right?

Yes, it's true that cops have to deal with a lot of hate, threats, and other crap too. It's not right, but they knew that coming into the job. If they have thin skins and short tempers, maybe they should have joined a monastery? And statistically these days, being a cop has less chance of death on the job than the average American worker (as we discussed in a previous email). So why are they freaking out? If the anxiety over bodily harm (from minorities) is making them unable to do their jobs and fulfill their obligations to society, then they should be deemed unfit for duty. I wonder if this is like the military - the job sucks so much that they need to relax hiring standards to fill the slots. Is it hard to become a cop? Well it should be a lot harder, obviously. Clearly we need more psych and behavioral exams. And maybe police need higher pay also to attract better candidates.

But all the shootings and beatings can't be just the public's fault.

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I'm pretty tired of these police unions demanding apologies after pro athletes have made pregame statements about the wave of high profile police killing incidents. If you have such thin skins, don't become cops.

Do you want everyone to love you all the time? Then maybe treat people with respect. And what about all the victims of police misconduct? Apologize to and compensate them first, and then I am sure these athletes will say sorry a hundred times if you like. What's worse: hospitalizations and funerals, or getting your fragile feelings hurt over a t-shirt? These people have no clue, and yet we've given them guns, pensions, and the full power of the justice system behind them.

http://www.sbnation.com/nfl/2014/12/15/7397201/andrew-hawkins-browns-statement-shirt-police-demand-apology
http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/nfl-shutdown-corner/rams-exec-denies-apology-to-police-chief-over--hands-up--gesture-044001777.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/10/sports/basketball/i-cant-breathe-tshirts-in-the-nba-how-jayz-lebron-james-and-others-made-them-happen.html

No indictment for Eric Garner's killer either

Unfortunately the NYC grand jury will not indict the white officer (and his accomplices) who choked the unarmed, nonthreatening Eric Garner to death. And they have video! "I can't breathe, I can't breathe!" What was his crime - being big and black and male and upset in NYC? Did he "deserve" it too, like Brown? Did the officer have no choice?

The officer probably didn't have intent to kill, but he was using a prohibited tactic (chokehold) and I have trouble believing that this was all by the book. No manslaughter, no negligence, nothing? Would the ruling be the same if the deceased was famous? And they wonder why people are upset - totally tone deaf and living in their bubble.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/04/nyregion/grand-jury-said-to-bring-no-charges-in-staten-island-chokehold-death-of-eric-garner.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j1ka4oKu1jo

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Why Commonwealth nations have done away with grand juries - they are ineffective for justice and too easily manipulated by the prosecutor

http://www.pri.org/stories/2014-12-04/england-abolished-grand-juries-decades-ago-because-they-didnt-work

The NY grand jury may have failed to indict the chokehold cop (because he got to defend himself for 2 hours in court and professed that it was an accident), but they have indicted the man who filmed the incident (on an unrelated weapons charge), plus his wife. Coincidence or petty cop retribution?

http://ringoffireradio.com/2014/12/grand-jury-indicted-the-man-who-filmed-eric-garners-killing/

The fascinating psychology behind bias, how it sometimes still gets the better of people who are actively trying to not be biased. This is good material for another thread, so let me know if you'd like to discuss.

http://billmoyers.com/2014/12/02/science-cops-shoot-young-black-men/

Police brutality greatest hits

Police brutality greatest hits: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9u2gjGuwxIk&list=PLeE5ieq-30Chh8qRhezGpzOofiynUTshZ

If ISIS released video like this, we would rightly call them deranged barbarians. I know these incidents may be "taken out of context", but is there a reasonable explanation for all of them (each suspect unarmed and no imminent threat to anyone)? You can see the officers have a predatory/chase mentality - they are hunting prey and need to dominate their suspects (low-brain functions vs. higher reasoning/ethics). It's not about upholding the law and protecting public safety anymore. Heck, it's not even about their own safety, as they are engaging unnecessarily closely with the suspects.  

These people are the menaces to society, not the Oscar Grants and Trayvons of the world. It's also a shame that taxpayers have to fund their salary, equipment, and pension. We are clearly not getting our money's worth. How the laws are written, it's very hard to get an excessive force conviction.

You might say, "there are good cops out there." That is true, and I hope they would be pissed to see some of their comrades behaving like this and hurting the public. I would hope they clean out the rot from within their departments. But they don't, because "the brotherhood in blue" protects its own even when fault is clear (just like other corrupt, opaque orgs like the Catholic Church). And maybe they don't enact tough police conduct laws because they don't want to be the subject of an investigation some day.

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A coworker who grew up in NYC told me that the NYPD acts like an occupying army at times. This could be a reflection of that.

https://news.vice.com/article/anger-grows-as-nypd-blasts-protesters-with-controversial-and-painful-noise-weapon?utm_source=vicenewsfb

The Pentagon previously commissioned research into "non lethal" mass urban pacification weapons, and I guess LRAD is one of the results. I think it was originally meant for Iraq, but now they are using it against US residents and citizens, some of whom are not breaking any laws and assembling peacefully. Supposedly there are longer-term effects of the weapon, such as headaches and head ringing for up to a week. Who knows if it contributes to mental illness, brain/ear damage, or worse? I suspect the vendor and Pentagon did not really do much safety testing. It reminds me of Agent Orange in Vietnam. The brass just told soldiers to use it, and didn't know about the health risks or didn't care.

"We want to know did they have training? Do they have a written formal policy? A Freedom of Information Law request was done in 2011 and we got the results in 2012. As of then the NYPD claimed not to have any written documents."