Annie Lowrey: Defund the police. Many training programs take recruits out of civilian life and put them in a boot-camp atmosphere. Years on the job have a tendency to reinforce this separation. I left the University of Chicago to become a police reporter on the South Side of that city. The first thing I learned, during that brief stint, was that the detectives in the Chicago Police Department were just as intelligent as the professors back at school.
The second thing I learned is that cops have a profound sense of service, but have to spend their days among people who are at their worst moment, and often among individuals when they are at their worst—responding to domestic violence, rape, drug dealing, and murder. The pressures are intense. Though quotas are illegal in some states, many cops are urged by their superiors to ramp up their production—issuing more tickets and making more arrests.
Officers are also encouraged to respond to calls more swiftly. Constant hyper-vigilance and stress become the background tone of life. The organizational culture of their departments too often turns them into street warriors, occupying soldiers. Decades ago, the social scientist James Q. Wilson wrote that there are three types of police officer: the watchman, the legalist, and the service provider.
In the videos, we saw cops armored in riot gear. American law-enforcement agencies have acquired billions of dollars in surplus equipment, including bayonets and grenade launchers. The person on the other side of the equipment is rendered less visible.
Almost all cops resist this pressure most of the time, and we owe them our respect, honor, and gratitude. Many of us know warm and compassionate police officers, who have rejected the worst parts of their environment—but the cultural pressures are there, nonetheless. Some organizational cultures take a final few steps to instill a depersonalized worldview: The use of jargon, nicknames, insults, and euphemisms, all the linguistic tricks people use when they want to achieve moral distance from their surroundings and turn off the personal lens.
The collective repression of emotion—the masks of cynicism, constant irony, and dark humor that groups adopt together. Cultural norms encourage officers to ignore their own vulnerability. Then there is the constant presence of unacknowledged fear. And they are afraid because they are constantly barraged with the message that they should be afraid, that their survival depends on it.
They often feel like they are desperately trying to impose order on chaos. Some officers no longer see a human being. They see a perp. Even hiring a diverse police force is no panacea. A Justice Department investigation into the Baltimore Police Department found consistent racially biased policing, in a force where, in , more than 40 percent of the cops were African American.
The problem lay not only in the minds of individual police officers, but also in the culture of the departments into which the officers entered. We all construct reality according to the way we see the world. Cops are human, and live on the jagged edges of a society that has deep racial disparities.
The social construction of the reality too many officers inhabit is a core problem here—when the woman sitting cross-legged on the street is not a daughter or a sister, when the man on the ground is not a Christian or a neighbor—some officers start to see them as just objects they can kick or crush. T hree lines of reform have been popping up these days. Department of Justice to investigate the behavior of two district attorneys previously assigned to the case.
The U. Department of Justice also was investigating whether the killing was a hate crime. If hate crime charges are going to be brought in the Arbery murder, they must be brought at the federal level. My research offers two major changes to law and practice to reduce police brutality. First, officers who have been terminated due to police misconduct should not be able to work in law enforcement again.
This recommendation is receiving bipartisan support at the federal level. Second, we need to restructure civilian payouts by moving them from taxpayer money to police department insurance policies. This is starting to occur in some ways at the local level. New York state lawmakers proposed that individual officers carry liability insurance. Eventually, there will be a large civil payout for the death of George Floyd. Due to qualified immunity—the legislation that often prevents officers from facing civil culpability—officers are typically immune from the financial impacts of these civil payouts.
Since , St. What if this money was used for education and work infrastructure? Research suggests that crime would decrease. In health care, mistakes happen. But, physicians and hospitals have malpractice insurance.
In law enforcement, when there is a mistake, the city is typically on the hook. This was adapted from a podcast interview with the author. Structural changes are desperately needed in law enforcement. I think they start with restructuring civilian payouts for police misconduct. Defund does not mean […]. Starting in mid-April, anti-COVID lockdown protestors stormed and shut down everything from statehouses to Subway restaurants with assault weapons and pipe wrenches. These protests are being framed around gun rights and free speech issues.
Protests are allegedly about fully re-opening the economy following state-sanctioned shutdowns. Protestors appear to perceive that quarantine measures to keep them […]. Ryan Nunn and Jay Shambaugh explain whose wages are rising and why many Americans are experiencing weak wage growth. Darrell West explains the different vote-by-mail systems and addresses fears over the political consequences of mail voting and potential for fraud.
Voter Vitals Non-partisan, fact-based explainers on important issues for American voters. Racial profiling may help to explain this phenomenon. Racial profiling refers to assuming guilt based on race or ethnicity, a problem that mostly affects those individuals who have a higher lifetime risk of dying as a result of police brutality.
For example, police officers may use stereotypes when trying to determine the suspects in a crime, or they may perceive persons of certain races such as Black men as more aggressive or threatening when faced with a confrontation. How can we work to reduce police brutality?
There are a number of different steps that can be taken to reduce the risk of this phenomenon from an organizational and psychological standpoint.
In , President Barack Obama signed an order to appoint a task force on 21st century policing. The task force developed a list of recommendations such as improving training and education, reducing bias among police officers and departments, introducing and improving crisis intervention training , and promoting cultural sensitivity as well as compassion. Implicit bias training takes the approach that police officers operate with subconscious biases that they may not even be aware of.
When these biases are activated, they may handle a situation differently than they would if, for example, a person was White instead of Black or driving a BMW instead of a old beat-up pickup truck. The premise of this training is to help police officers understand that everyone grows up with subconscious biases, even if someone doesn't feel like they have any prejudice. The goal is to make police officers aware of their biases so that they can manage them in the moment.
This is more effective than calling out police officers as racist, as most officers would not consider themselves to fall into that category. Rather, this approach takes the stance that all officers need training.
The idea behind implicit bias training is that those who are better able to manage their biases will be safer, more effective, and fairer in their role as police officers. However, there have been very few studies on the effectiveness of implicit bias training for police.
Only one study has looked at impacts on real-world behavior. While implicit bias training seemed to improve officer knowledge of implicit bias concepts and motivation to act without prejudice, the study found that training had little to no effect on racial and ethnic disparities in police enforcement.
In other words, implicit bias training alone was not enough to change behavior. One way to reduce the risk of police brutality is to hire individuals who have a lower risk of becoming violent on the job. Personality psychology can be helpful in making these decisions, as there are assessments that can be used to predict how individuals will respond to stressful situations as well as predict their behavior when on the job.
The use of personality assessments can also be a way to level the playing field for minorities, as it can be an unbiased way to determine who is the best fit for the job. If a police officer engages in the use of excessive force, or even deadly force, and there is no punishment, this sends the message to the rest of the department that the behavior is tolerated or even acceptable.
Instead, adequate supervision to identify police officers acting in inappropriate ways before that behavior gets out of control, as well as disciplinary measures to send the message that the behavior is unacceptable, are necessary to identify and reprimand police officers who are the most likely to use excessive or deadly force.
The use of such measures will also deter other officers from acting in the same manner, and it can also set the tone for the overall behavioral expectations of police officers in a department.
In other words, police departments should begin to lead by example, and that starts with enforcing the law for police officers in the same way that it would be for civilians. When police officers are better able to manage their emotions under stress, understand which emotions they are experiencing, and communicate well despite being in high-stress situations, they will be better able to de-escalate complex scenarios rather than to react by using excessive force.
In other words, there is a tipping point at which excessive force begins to be used, and this tipping point can be dialed backward when police officers receive adequate support for their mental health needs. Additionally, given the fact that PTSD can be a risk factor for the use of excessive or deadly force, providing swift and adequate support to officers who have experienced trauma on the job seems to be a necessary prerequisite to preventing the use of excessive force.
This begins by providing adequate funding to support the mental health of police officers, and it also means reducing stigma and encouraging police officers to come forward when they are struggling with their mental health. As a society in general, mental health is still surrounded by stigma , so it is doubly important that police officers are made to feel that it is acceptable for them to talk about their mental health struggles.
Rather than feeling isolated with their trauma, stress, or unmanageable emotions, police officers should be made to feel that they know exactly who to speak to for support and that those supports will be in place and easily accessible when they are most needed. This also means the police departments should be trained to recognize the symptoms of PTSD so that they can intervene and offer support when an officer may not recognize their own symptoms of post-traumatic stress.
In order to reduce the use of excessive and deadly force, it is important to improve the relationships between the police department and the community, particularly the Black community, as this sector is generally the one most affected by police brutality and subsequent anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress. This could take the form of programs and initiatives that place police officers out in the community in a helping or educational role instead of a policing role.
It could also mean having the police department work with the community or participate in marches and rallies to show their support and understanding. This was seen taking place when some police departments chose to attend Black Lives Matter protests and marches and kneel in support instead of taking a combative stance.
When both the police officers and the racial minorities can begin to see each other as individuals rather than as groups to fear or cast stereotypes upon, then real change will begin to occur in those implicit biases that fuel racial tension among police officers and also a general distrust of the police force among racial minorities.
In addition to the above measures, it is also necessary to continue to conduct research to understand the psychology behind police brutality. Which personality factors are most likely to correlate with excessive use of force? Which mental disorders show the highest correlation with deadly use of force? What forms of training help most to reduce implicit bias and improve the situation? Ongoing research on these and other topics is the cornerstone of moving forward and improving the situation when it comes to the excessive use of force by police officers and the disproportionate impact that it has on racial minorities.
What about defunding police departments? This is a tactic that has been brought up as a solution to police brutality. Defunding the police means taking money away from funding the police department and instead sending those funds to invest in the communities that are struggling the most and where most of the policing occurs.
It's very much similar to the concept of directing money toward prevention instead of dealing with problems after the fact. While not a simple solution, there is merit in funding programs and communities that are struggling instead of putting more people behind bars.
Understanding the psychology behind police brutality is the first step toward fixing the problem. Unfortunately, the situation is inherently one that needs to be fixed from the top down, beginning with the systems of government and how they allocate their funding.
When better training and education is in place for police officers, as well as better mental health supports, then better outcomes may result.
It's also worth noting that while this problem seems to be most prominent in the United States, other countries may have their own racial tensions for example, in Canada and Australia there is tension between government and Indigenous people. The United States, however, struggles more than most with the use of deadly force in the form of gun violence. For this reason, the psychology of police brutality is only one piece of the puzzle.
The other piece will be understanding the problem of gun violence in the United States, and how it compares to rates of gun violence in other countries. Learn the best ways to manage stress and negativity in your life. Amnesty International. Police violence. Department of Justice. Contacts Between Police and the Public, Published December J Soc Soc Work Res. From theoretical to empirical: Considering reflections of psychopathy across the thin blue line.
Personal Disord Theor Res Treat. Why it's so rare for police officers to face legal consequences. Published June 4, American Bar Association. Qualified immunity. Published December 17, D'Amore R.
Breonna Taylor: What we know about her death, the investigation and protests. Global News. Updated June 6, BBC News.
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