Recently, I read Blink - The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, by Malcolm Gladwell. Mr. Gladwell is also the author of The Tipping Point. I highly recommend both of these books, if only for the new perspective reading them will inevitably provide.
After reading the chapter entitled "Seven Seconds in the Bronx," I was bothered by the conclusions reached, but couldn't put my finger on why for several weeks. Now, MSU is reading the book and he said something - whatever magic phrase it was - to help me finally name my discomfort: the chapter focuses on what happens when "thin-slicing" goes awry and uses law enforcement as an example. The premise of the book is that good decisions aren't generally made by analysis, but by neurological processes which take small "slices" of information and process - 90% of the time!! - the right decision... IF you don't analyze too much. This chapter outlined a shooting incident wherein 4 Street Team Officers shot an innocent man who was taking his wallet out of his waistband. The elapsed time for the entire incident, from contact to the end of gunfire, was seven seconds.
The point of this entire chapter is that under stress, our brain processes information differently. Anyone familiar with the works of Lt. Col. Dave Grossman (On Killing)or familiar with highly adrenalized situations understands the magnitude of the effects of stress on critical thinking processes. Our bodies, under extreme duress, automatically limit the amount of information that can be processed. In life-threatening situations, our brains forgo sound, visual clarity, and broader social awareness in favor of heightened awareness of the immediate threat. But there is a caveat - optimal performance range in such situations is dependent on heart rate - about 145 beats per minute for optimal awareness - and adrenaline dumping into the system will quickly elevate even a seasoned performer into a range well above 200 beats per minute.
A higher heart rate than about 145 beats per minute will launch a human's brain into mid-brain hijacking (the limbic system shuts down the neocortex). Complex motor skills break down. At about 175 beats per minute, cognitive functioning breaks down completely and visual acuity is almost non-existant. Blood is withdrawn from extremities and sent to the core, to harden the core muscles into a type of armor, leaving the body clumsy and helpless.
In this state, we are what Gladwell calls "mind-blind." We are fundamentally austistic, meaning that we are unable to pick up the visual cues that our brains depend on for accurate information about another person's intentions.
Police training is designed to teach officers how to keep themselves out of trouble - how to give themselves ample time to observe visual cues, how to avoid that temporary autism that is often the result of too little time, too little space, and too much adrenaline. Officers in training are subjected to "stress inoculation," training which enmires them directly in worst-case scenarios and forces them to function through the "mind-blindness" over and over again until they can function in the situations without ever reaching the critical heart rate. This is the gift of training. The gift of experience comes later. The two gifts together are a glorious combination that allows an officer to stay in the optimum performance range in life-threatening situations and take full advantage of the adrenaline in the system - the slowing of time, the visual acuity on the threat, and the blocking of outside distraction such as sounds and social assumptions. In this state of inoculated awareness under duress, officers are able to judge the visual cues of a life-threatening situation AS ACCURATELY (90% of the time) as "regular" citizens in day-to-day interactions that don't require snap decision-making to prevent harm to themselves or others. This is a truly amazing finding, and I hope that you will take a moment to really let it sink in.
Here, I'll finally get to the point: In California, we are inundated with a critical focus on police conduct. Law Enforcement agencies are held in public scrutiny every time there is a use-of-force incident that results in injury or death. Not only do these Officers have to undergo the rigorous "tests" of their agenices and of the District Attorney's Office, they are publicly "tried" in media circuses that provide little actual information and much political spin. This publicized scrutiny is at the convenience of "regular" citizens, most of whom have never suffered a critical incident and have no idea how incredibly quickly their own body will become a cognitive traitor, shifting easily and without warning into berserker rage. Invariably, there will be a witness to a shooting who goes public on the news with his or her opinion that the shooting was unnecessary, that the officers acted brutally and deadly force was not warranted regardless of the weapon or threat the deceased suspect was presenting. Invariably, there will be public outrage. Invariably, the media will dredge up officer-involved shooting statistics for the community in question, and conduct polls asking "regular' citizens if they believe that their local agency is racist/biased/trigger-happy/unsympathetic. Invariably, there will be news group forums on the Internet wherein "regular" citizens vent their frustrations with law enforcement personnel and complain that their watchdogs are too quick to pull the trigger, too quick to place someone in handcuffs, too mean to listen, too slow to respond, too quick to judge, too "by the book" to negotiate. Invariably, "regular" citizens will judge the outcomes of shooting situations that they were not involved in to have been avoidable, and will publicly decry their respective police agencies to have been hasty, lacking judgment, and assumptive.
The key descriptor in all of this is "regular citizen."
Regular citizens rarely find themselves in life-or-death situations. Regular citizens rarely find their heart rate to be over 175 beats per minute unless they are running, on the treadmill, or horribly out of shape and forced to climb several flights of stairs, none of wich are adrenaline-induced states. Regular citizens don't routinely walk into other people's houses without being invited in order to intervene with a husband who is systematically beating his wife to death with their baby's Tonka truck while said baby sits nearby in a diaper that hasn't been changed in days watching with calm wonder. Regular citizens don't place themselves smack in the middle of hostile situations - in fact, they tend to avoid such situations whenever possible. Regular citizens don't regularly find themselves on the receiving end of a gun barrel, confronting a meth-crazed person carving at himself with a Bowie knife, or chasing armed street terrorists into the fishbowl of a dark and maze-like apartment complex.
Perhaps most telling is the fact that regular citizens don't walk a dark world that is populated entirely with criminals. Law Enforcement Officers do. And we do it so you, the regular citizens, don't have to.
We make the same amount of ACCURATE decisions based on little snippets of information in our dark and sinister world that you make in your vastly nonconfrontational world. We make the same amount of ACCURATE decisions in critical, life-threatening incidents that you make in day-to-day decisions about normal conversations and everyday events. We make the same amount of ACCURATE decisions in split-second reactions to threats as you make in split-second reactions to the packaging of your coffee. The decisions we make on a moment-to-moment basis are very different that the decisions you make on a moment-to-moment basis, but we are still able to do it with 90% efficacy.
Hey, I don't expect anyone to change their mind about their particular view on police brutality... I'm just offering a different perspective. Think about the decisions you make in the course of a day and how they are made. Then think about the decisions a police officer makes in the course of a day. Perspective??
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
I don't know how to word any of this, so I'll just jump in head first.
I think most of the time in officer related shootings my first instinct is to be angry about it, just like the other 90% of regular people who are fed by our generous media circus. At the same time though I know while I'm watching the video of three officers gun down a man throwing away a banana peel that given the same situation there is no way I'd have time to slow down and access the situation any better then the people directly involved. The men and women who are trained to handle this.
When it all comes down to the wire if you see a threat to your body/family/life, and you have a bare trace of survival instinct, AND someone puts you behind a way to enforce deadly force, there's no way in hell to slow to enough to scope out the banana peel. I mean really, who wants to get their head blown off because they thought the other person who could very well be holding a banana peel, ISN'T?! At that point it's too late. If I'm making any sense here... So, shoot first, ask questions later? Yes. If your drive to survive is even barely functioning.
Can people on the outside say they would have done it differently? ALWAYS. Would they? Maybe. Maybe they would have been willing to go over and poke the banana peel with the theoretical stick, but chances are kinda unlikely.
Does knowing that make me any less queasy about listening to the news fill me in on officer involved shootings? Hell no.
Anything that could even remotely put me in the situation of throwing away my banana peel, and getting my beloved parts shot off makes me physically angry. Why? Because of the will to live. Which is why, and I believe this too, the masses are easily angered at people with the ability, and duty to use deadly force. No one wants to imagine their selfs on the flip side of a tragic accident. I mean holy shit that's real!! And faced with our own mortality brought on by another human being makes us little more then animals... animals that are afraid and angry because they want to survive. Times all of that by at least 200% thanks to the media putting the worst spin on the situation to sell more news.
Sometimes I think that the people who know what's really going on, and who have the power to stop the bad things from going bump in the night, should do so with no regard to what the public will make of it, and then the public should never be made aware of the situation that has already been taken care of. More then a lot of us in life aren't very bright, and teamed up with a couple hundred of other not very bright people, they are a mass of writhing stupidity looking to blame the first available source that can't be traced back to them or theirs. The choice should always be made by people that have access to the most available information at the time that action needs to be taken.
Can I say any of that out loud, or even be proactive in trying to bring that change about in society? Not a chance.
Why? Because no one knows better then I do in that kinda situation. And that thinking is what gets people angry about officer involved issues.
It's all a huge catch 22.
I think that it's sucks to be the dude with the banana peel. ALWAYS. It sucks to be his family, the people he works with, the girl at the gas station who was going to ask him out, his 5th grade teacher, even his barber. They get to see him killed for "no good reason" by men who was "rash to act" and no one should let that stand!
Continuing on the circle I've so completely worked myself into, if you replace that banana peel with a semi automatic gun, and the dude that was loved by everyone in his church choir with a drug crazed maniac, who was taken down by people the brave men in blue before he killed a room full of children, then everyone watching the tube can now be relieved that this monster of a man isn't going to sneak into their home later and disembowel them!
What's the difference? A man was still killed. He no longer exists. Whoever gave birth to him now has to bury him. So, are the police any less responsible for the action they've taken? No, but the people who didn't have to make a decision, in a split second, can still rake the people directly involved over the proverbial coals.
So, if you've followed my train of thought which has derailed just a tad, good post...
You've made me think.
I'm not sure if I've given you the response you were looking for but there it is.
:)
Anytime you need someone to ramble at you with the bare minimum of coherency I'm here for you babe!
Jen, I totally agree and so does the law enforcement community in general - ANY loss of life is considered a failure, necessary or not. Nobody (nobody sane, anyway) wants to hurt people or kill people. That's why the authorization to use deadly force is such a huge and sobering responsibility.
I think what the general public doesn't understand is that for every use-of-force incident - righteous or not - there are hundreds more similar instances in which everone involved comes out alive and well. It is always a tragedy to have to control a situation with force. It's worse when the guns come out. But the public doesn't seem to know or understand that these incidents unfold in a matter of SECONDS - not the 20-minute Scooby-Dooish standoffs you see in the movies.
The average evolution for a deadly-force incident is 3.5 seconds. And oftentimes it isn't the suspect that dies, it's the officer.
It's not much time to make a decision. In in that adrenaline-induced state of awareness - where the body becomes clumsy and sound ceases to exist and tunnel-vision takes over - all ANY of us have to rely on is training and experience.
Most people are so blessed to live in a state where decisions regarding life and death do not need to be made in the time it takes to blink. The fact that these decision are made ROUTINELY with 90% accuracy is amazing to me, and indicative of the effectiveness of training and experience.
Regardless, any loss of life is horrific and officers involved in deadly force incidents are often so traumatized that they cannot return to work for months or even years, if ever. Most law enforcement personnel go their entire careers without their guns ever clearing leather. I am just hoping that the ones that do have to make that nanosecond decision can get a little break from the public knowing that the decision had to be made at all. Having the responsibility and obligation of potentially making those decisions is almost as huge as having to actually make them.
I thought you were very coherent, by the way! It's a tough subject.
I had to give this one some thought. :)
I think being a police officer is like any other job. When your properly trained, MOST will perform up to their training. The training process of any job is suppose to weed out the people who aren't qualified and can't be taught to do the job up to a certain standard. Since no one knows how they will react in an unfamiliar situation there will always be some who, even if trained properly, just don't have what it takes for that job. I was surprised to hear how many soldiers never fired their gun on D day because they were frozen with fear.
Of course the is a difference in professions. A space shuttle pilot has one chance to land the shuttle. No mistakes allowed. A farmer can make a million mistakes and still may yield a good crop. A police officer is held to a very high standard. Not only do they have little room for error but their actions are constantly evaluated. So is making the right decision 90% of the time acceptable? Of course it's not. That's why the police are always trying different techniques to raise that number. While we can limit the number of shuttle pilots to just those who can do the job perfectly we do not have that luxury with the police. So under the present conditions I think 90% is DAMN impressive.
I personally always give the benefit of the doubt to the police. I figure, for the police to be involved the suspect must have done something that raised suspicion in the first place. After that the suspect is responsible for putting himself in the situation. As long as the police act within the law and their training I have little problem with the mistakes police make. They are human after all.
I do feel that if police officers aren't paid more in the future the quality of the individual wanting to be a cop will decrease. The job has to be worth the aggravation and the risk.
That's my opinion for what it's worth.
Your opinion is always worth a lot. :-)
I agree that cities are going to have to increase their wages to attract quality personnel... however, I know that my Department is having a difficult time recruiting because it seems that quality personnel aren't as easy to find as they used to be.
We routinely test about 200 applicants in each process - from that, we get about *5* who actually make it through the background investigation and further testing.
::::sigh::::
Post a Comment