Virtually all controversial police shootings
arise from misperception and over-reaction to the situation. These are results
of bodily tension and high adrenaline levels, which in turn cause perceptual
distortions and out-of-control shooting. The good news is that adrenaline
levels can be recognized and monitored on the spot. And methods now exist for
reducing one's adrenaline to a manageable level.
From studies of violent situations, we have
learned the following.
Face-to-face conflict raises bodily tension. At high levels, opponents
become clumsy and inaccurate. This happens through a sudden rise in levels of
adrenaline and cortisol, the stress hormone. These are triggered by the
primitive fight-or-flight center of the lower brain, an undifferentiated arousal
for rapid action that can go either way.
Heart rate is an easily accessible measure of
adrenaline arousal. Ordinary resting heart rate is about 60 BPM (beats per
minute) in adults, about 100 BPM in moderate exercise. Optimal athletic and
physical performance is around 115-145 BPM. As heart rate goes up, the big muscle groups are energized,
while fine muscle coordination is progressively lost. You can see this for
yourself at the gym on a machine that monitors heart rate: trying writing with
a pen when your heart rate is 145 or more. The effect of emotional tension and
fear are stronger than vigorous exercise alone.
At levels around 150-175 BPM, perceptual
distortions tend to happen. These experiences are typically reported by combat
troops and police who have been in shoot-outs. Time becomes distorted-- both
speeded up or seemly slowed down to dreamlike walking under water. Vision
becomes blurred, surroundings are lost, tunnel vision narrows in. Hearing tends
to shut down-- a cocoon-like experience in which one can't hear the sounds of
one's own gun, or the voices of people around you.
Virtually all controversial police shootings
show signs of these perceptual distortions. A traffic stop in which the officer
misperceives the driver reaching for his wallet as reaching for a weapon. In
the Tulsa, Oklahoma shooting of Terence Crutcher in September 2016, the officer
said she temporarily lost her hearing just before she fired-- even though there
were sounds of sirens and a police helicopter overhead. I am not addressing the
point here of whether this makes her legally culpable or not, but noting that
it fits the pattern: perceptual distortions are the immediate flashpoint for
out-of-control shootings.
Having more police on the scene increases the
chances of uncontrolled shooting. Tension is contagious. Cops who are tense
tend to make officers around them tense.
On New
Years night 2009 in Oakland, California, a white police officer put a gun to
the back of the head of a young black man who was lying of the ground being
arrested, and killed him with one shot. The incident began with reports that
groups of young black men were fighting on the train; at the station, four
police began making arrests. There was much loud shouting on both sides, about
who was or was not involved in the fighting. The young men argued and struggled
with police officers; one of the four cops, not the officer who did the
shooting, was particularly aggressive, throwing black youths against the walls,
pushing them down, and yelling the word ‘nigger’ at them. The officer who
eventually shot his pistol was relatively restrained, trying to calm both the
excited cop and the men being arrested; one photo of him, a minute before the
shooting, shows a perplexed expression on his face. The officer said afterwards
he thought he was reaching for his Taser but pulled his pistol by mistake. In a
state of high adrenaline arousal, this is entirely plausible. If the most
out-of-control cop in the group had been calmer, the killing most likely would
not have happened.
Some officers get impatient about what they
feel as indecisiveness or confusion, and act to resolve the situation by
opening fire. This is apparently what happened in the Charlotte, N.C. September
2016 shooting of Keith Lamont Scott, a black man who was apparently high on
drugs, possibly displaying a gun, and ignoring police orders. The shooting officer had initially been
calm, waiting until other police business had been taken care of. Several
officers first watched their suspect before finally attempting to get him out
of his car. As the situation became more stalemated, it also became louder.
More officers arrived, as well as the suspect's wife who kept telling the
officers he was harmless and also on medication. One officer (a plain-clothes
black cop) who had been there since the outset apparently grew exasperated to
the point where he couldn't control himself.
To these kinds of distractions, add the effect
of adrenaline arousal on hearing. In the cocoon of high tension, voices disappear.
The more persons who are present-- cops, suspects, friends and family members,
vocal bystanders-- the more likely sounds blur into a babble of raised voices.
Clear communications break down.
With more people on the scene, the higher the
tension of the police officers, and the higher the chance that one of them will
begin firing. This can set others off as well: the sound of firing may be
misperceived as coming from the suspect, or directly by emotional contagion. In
the Charlotte incident, the standoff comes to a climax just after another
officer (who has arrived to support) tries to break the windshield of the
suspect's vehicle with his baton-- a loud crashing noise. The officer who has been on the scene the
longest now fires a burst from his pistol, even though the suspect has made no
sudden move.
Such circumstances are also dangerous for the
police themselves. When a suspect is surrounded by large numbers of police in
different directions, police sometimes shoot each other, especially when they
are in plain clothes. About 10% of police killed or wounded on duty are victims
of friendly fire.
A sign that the shooting is caused by
out-of-control adrenaline is overkill: when an officer fires many more shots
that necessary to disable the apparently threatening suspect. In New York City,
February 1999, four undercover police looking for a rapist saw a man duck back
into a hallway, then reach for what turned out to be his identification. The
four cops rushed from the car and fired 41 shots at a range of 3 meters; 19 of
those shots missed. Both the poor aim and the overkill are results of
adrenaline rush, amplified by contagion among the four officers. (case of
Amadou Diallo)
Overkill usually brings public outrage, and
tends to be interpreted as evidence of police racism and malice. Such
controversies are hard to settle. Whatever else it is, overkill is a sign of
adrenaline rush.
What can
be done?
First, recognize the danger of perceptual
distortions in high-tension situations. Recognize the danger of getting
confusing non-verbal messages and emotional contagion from fellow officers on
the scene, and from other people present.
Second, check your adrenaline level and bring
it down to the level of effective performance and clear perception.
A method for reducing heart rate is via
breathing. (The following is from US Army psychologist Dave Grossman.)
breathe in four counts;
hold your breath four counts;
breathe out four counts;
hold your breath four counts;
repeat
until heart rate comes down.
This does not mean simply "take a deep
breath." The key is to repeat the entire sequence until a slower bodily
rhythm is established, with feedback to bring down the adrenaline level. The
periods of holding your breath between breathing-in and breathing-out are
crucial.
Practical
steps for more cool-headed cops
Wear a heart rate monitor. These are easily
available now, on wrist devices used for exercise.
Practice observing one's own heart rate in
various situations. You can train yourself to recognize high adrenaline levels
by the feeling in your body--- especially the feeling of one's heart pounding
and the quality of one's breathing.
Practice the four-part breathing exercise to
reduce heart rate.
In a tense situation, check your heart rate,
and bring it down if necessary.
But what if there is no time for this? What if
it is an immediate, kill-or-be-killed situation? In police work, sometimes this
may be the case. But such
situations do not arise very often. Many instances of police shootings-- and especially
those which turn out to be based on misperceptions-- take time to develop. The Charlotte N.C. confrontation built
up over an hour, and could have been resolved peacefully with better management
of emotions.
Some officers speed up the situation unnecessarily.
In Cleveland November 2014,
the officer who shot an adolescent carrying a toy gun on a playground had raced
to the scene and fired within 2 seconds after jumping from his car. Better
trained officers would be aware of their own body signs and the danger zone of
perceptual distortion, and would not attempt to fire until they had a clear
view of the situation.
Checking your heart rate and controlling it by
a breathing exercise may not be possible in some fast-moving situations. And
some victims collude in their own death, in suicide-by-cop, by pretending to
aim a weapon at officers in order to be shot. Some such events may be
inevitable. But even here, very situationally-aware officers may be able to
sort some of them out.
The large majority of the police do not shoot
anyone. Among those who do, some are unlucky in being in a bad place at the
wrong time; some are the workaholics of the force; some are tough guys looking
for action; some have poor control over their tension levels. Research by sociologist
Geoffrey Alpert on escalated police encounters found that cops who handle
situations better have a better sense of timing. Many cool-headed cops exist, who have better situational
awareness, better control over their tension levels and adrenaline arousal. Our
aim should be to increase the proportion of cool-headed cops.
Police shootings of unarmed or unresisting
persons have brought huge controversy. Most proposed solutions focus on more
body cameras, more release of video data to the public, and more criminal
prosecution of officers. These proposals have spiraled into more conflict, in
the form of demonstrations, riots, and angry politics on both sides. In the
balance of political forces today, none of these has been successful in
reducing police shootings.
Another route can be tried. Rather than
reacting after police shootings happen, and concentrating on ways to pin the
blame in court, we can take steps so that out-of-control behavior in police
encounters does not happen in the first place. We do not have to solve huge
problems like racism or political gridlock to achieve this.
It is in the interest of all police officers to
ensure that their tension-control skills are high. Individuals cops do not have
to wait until a government agency, or their own police chief, orders them to
wear a heart-beat monitor. Everyone can get it yourself easily enough; and do
your own training in controlling heart rate and adrenaline level.
Thinking outside the box is often advocated.
But most policy people automatically think in terms of top-down solutions. It
is at the bottom level-- each moment people encounter each other on the
street-- that the problem arises. Better emotional awareness can help to head
it off, on the spot.
Goodreads Book Giveaway
Civil War Two, Part 1
by Randall Collins
Giveaway ends May 24, 2018.
See the giveaway details at Goodreads.
References
Geoffrey P. Alpert
and Roger G. Dunham. 2004. Understanding
Police Use of Force.
Randall
Collins. 2008. Violence: A
Micro-sociological Theory.
Dave Grossman. 2004. On
Combat. The psychology and physiology of deadly combat in war and peace.
Jennifer C. Hunt. 2010. Seven Shots.
David Klinger. 2004. Into
the Kill Zone. A Cop's Eye View of Deadly Force.
Note: Research by Min-seok Pang and Paul Pavlov
("Armed with Technology: The Impact on Fatal Shootings by Police",
2016) has shown, paradoxically, that police wearing body cameras act more
aggressively than those without, because they believe the video will back up
their perception of the situation. In other words, their emotions tend to
overrule their perceptions here too.
