Understanding reactions
20/04/16 05:29
In March of 1991, amateur video of Los Angeles Police Department officers beating Rodney King became a sensation on the television. I watched the scene several times. I didn’t know at the time, nor do I know now much about what preceded that famous beating. There had been a car chase in which King tried to evade arrest. With that video as part of the evidence, four officers were charged with assault with a deadly weapon and the use of excessive force. Three were acquitted of all charges. The fourth was acquitted on the assault charge, but a verdict on the excessive force charge could not be reached. The jury deadlocked at 8 - 4. After those trials, Los Angeles erupted in riots in which 53 people were killed and over 2,000 were injured. The governor finally called in the National Guard to end the riots. After the riots the four officers were charged with violations of King’s civil rights under federal statute. Two were found guilty and received jail sentences. Two were acquitted.
I have no inside information on what happened or the dynamics of the judicial process. What I do know is that there were several things that mystified me and that I still do not understand. What was it in the officers that caused them to respond to Mr. King with such violent force? Did he somehow pose a threat to their personal safety? Was the force required by the circumstances to provide for the safety of others or of the community? Was their training improper?
The reaction of the community was also mystifying to me. I can at least understand, at an intellectual level, the anger of the community over institutional racism, violence against a suspect before a trial, and generations of entrenched injustice. I can’t however, understand how that justifies destroying the businesses that serve a community, theft, wonton destruction of property, and violence against more innocent victims. What induces someone, who perceives an injustice to respond by creating another injustice? Why did the rioters destroy the businesses of their neighbors and the services that supported the community in which they lived?
Many years have passed and the Los Angeles police department has undergone a series of reforms and changes in which it conducts investigations of abuse by police officers. There are new training requirements in law enforcement agencies across the nation.
A decade later we all watched in stunned horror as the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon unfolded in a single horrible day. There were plenty of unanswered questions on that day and in the immediate aftermath of the attacks. Later, when we tried to see what could be learned from the events, it was discovered that several of the first responders who died in the tragedy had behaved in unexpected ways. They had violated department protocol and parked vehicles in the wrong places. They had entered the building without first donning proper safety equipment. They had ignored command structure and sometimes direct orders from superiors. While we were all awed at the heroism and personal sacrifice of firemen and police officers, we began to ask what might be done to alter the training of those first responders so that in the future tragedy might be mitigated. What is it in the psyche of a human brain that casts aside all caution when a friend or colleague is threatened? What makes us leave reason aside when a crisis occurs.
On the surface those two prominent events have little in common. However, as a result of those and other events, I have become more interested and involved in the training of law enforcement officers. As we work to refine our program of stress management training for employees of the Pennington County Sheriff’s Office my colleagues and I have reviewed video of officers acting and reacting under stress, interviewed dozens of officers about how they manage stress and family members about the effects of living with individuals who spend large amounts of time at the peak of the hypervigilance scale. Trying to improve the support and training we give to those officers has led us to read research articles by brain scientists and to try to understand what goes on in the lives of those who dedicate themselves to serving others.
One of the things that we have learned is that although we think of ourselves as thinking creatures that feel, biologically we are feeling creatures that think. Sensory information streams in to our brains through our sensory systems and is processed through our limbic system before it reaches our cerebral cortex for higher thinking. This process has deep roots in the development of the human brain. In generations where survival depended upon proper activation of the “fight, flight or freeze” impulse, humans needed to be able to react instantly to a threat and respond without taking the time required for complex analysis. In our contemporary setting, we expect law enforcement officers to train their reflexes and reactions so that their responses will be quick and effective. We train them by exposing them to various scenarios in which fast reaction is required. We constantly remind them that life and death hinge on instant reactions.
It is important to understand that the capacity to react quickly to a threat comes from the same region of the brain where feelings of sadness, joy, anger, frustration or excitement are generated. The cells of our limbic system link our reactions to our emotions. An officer who spends an eight or ten hour shift constantly alert and poised for the next possible danger who then goes home and snaps angrily at a family member for some trivial word or action is responding exactly the way we have trained that officer to behave. You can’t shut down your reactions just because the shift has changed.
As we grow in our understanding of how our brains work we are learning more techniques for training officers to deal with the stressors in their lives and to make different decisions in the heat of a threatening moment. Maybe we can learn from the public incidents lessons that will decrease violence and save lives in the future.
I have no inside information on what happened or the dynamics of the judicial process. What I do know is that there were several things that mystified me and that I still do not understand. What was it in the officers that caused them to respond to Mr. King with such violent force? Did he somehow pose a threat to their personal safety? Was the force required by the circumstances to provide for the safety of others or of the community? Was their training improper?
The reaction of the community was also mystifying to me. I can at least understand, at an intellectual level, the anger of the community over institutional racism, violence against a suspect before a trial, and generations of entrenched injustice. I can’t however, understand how that justifies destroying the businesses that serve a community, theft, wonton destruction of property, and violence against more innocent victims. What induces someone, who perceives an injustice to respond by creating another injustice? Why did the rioters destroy the businesses of their neighbors and the services that supported the community in which they lived?
Many years have passed and the Los Angeles police department has undergone a series of reforms and changes in which it conducts investigations of abuse by police officers. There are new training requirements in law enforcement agencies across the nation.
A decade later we all watched in stunned horror as the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon unfolded in a single horrible day. There were plenty of unanswered questions on that day and in the immediate aftermath of the attacks. Later, when we tried to see what could be learned from the events, it was discovered that several of the first responders who died in the tragedy had behaved in unexpected ways. They had violated department protocol and parked vehicles in the wrong places. They had entered the building without first donning proper safety equipment. They had ignored command structure and sometimes direct orders from superiors. While we were all awed at the heroism and personal sacrifice of firemen and police officers, we began to ask what might be done to alter the training of those first responders so that in the future tragedy might be mitigated. What is it in the psyche of a human brain that casts aside all caution when a friend or colleague is threatened? What makes us leave reason aside when a crisis occurs.
On the surface those two prominent events have little in common. However, as a result of those and other events, I have become more interested and involved in the training of law enforcement officers. As we work to refine our program of stress management training for employees of the Pennington County Sheriff’s Office my colleagues and I have reviewed video of officers acting and reacting under stress, interviewed dozens of officers about how they manage stress and family members about the effects of living with individuals who spend large amounts of time at the peak of the hypervigilance scale. Trying to improve the support and training we give to those officers has led us to read research articles by brain scientists and to try to understand what goes on in the lives of those who dedicate themselves to serving others.
One of the things that we have learned is that although we think of ourselves as thinking creatures that feel, biologically we are feeling creatures that think. Sensory information streams in to our brains through our sensory systems and is processed through our limbic system before it reaches our cerebral cortex for higher thinking. This process has deep roots in the development of the human brain. In generations where survival depended upon proper activation of the “fight, flight or freeze” impulse, humans needed to be able to react instantly to a threat and respond without taking the time required for complex analysis. In our contemporary setting, we expect law enforcement officers to train their reflexes and reactions so that their responses will be quick and effective. We train them by exposing them to various scenarios in which fast reaction is required. We constantly remind them that life and death hinge on instant reactions.
It is important to understand that the capacity to react quickly to a threat comes from the same region of the brain where feelings of sadness, joy, anger, frustration or excitement are generated. The cells of our limbic system link our reactions to our emotions. An officer who spends an eight or ten hour shift constantly alert and poised for the next possible danger who then goes home and snaps angrily at a family member for some trivial word or action is responding exactly the way we have trained that officer to behave. You can’t shut down your reactions just because the shift has changed.
As we grow in our understanding of how our brains work we are learning more techniques for training officers to deal with the stressors in their lives and to make different decisions in the heat of a threatening moment. Maybe we can learn from the public incidents lessons that will decrease violence and save lives in the future.