Police departments around the country are out of control. That is obvious. I've heard and read arguments that not all cops are "bad," but even the good ones seem unlikely or unable to make a difference in the cop culture as xxdr zombiexx's diary, this is why we dont get to hear about good cops, shows.
The entire situation is really reminiscent of a well-known psychological experiment conducted in the early 70s. It revolved around prisoners and prison guards, but obvious parallels can be made to modern policing.
If you haven't heard of that study, I recommend you check it out. A link and summary below the fold.
A cool website that goes through the entire study in detail can be found at
Stanford Prison Experiment.
A basic summary is that study participants were randomly assigned one of two roles: prison guard or prisoner. The experiment created such drastic responses in each group that the 2 week study had to be halted after 6 days. The prisoners had rebelled on day 2, the guards, of their own volition, began using physical and psychological tactics to supress the prisoners.
A couple of quotes from the website I linked above:
The prisoners' rebellion also played an important role in producing greater solidarity among the guards. Now, suddenly, it was no longer just an experiment, no longer a simple simulation. Instead, the guards saw the prisoners as troublemakers who were out to get them, who might really cause them some harm. In response to this threat, the guards began stepping up their control, surveillance, and aggression.
Remember that the "guards" were college students assigned randomly to the role of guards and the "prisoners" were likewise college students randomly assigned to their roles.
At this point it became clear that we had to end the study. We had created an overwhelmingly powerful situation -- a situation in which prisoners were withdrawing and behaving in pathological ways, and in which some of the guards were behaving sadistically. Even the "good" guards felt helpless to intervene, and none of the guards quit while the study was in progress. Indeed, it should be noted that no guard ever came late for his shift, called in sick, left early, or demanded extra pay for overtime work.
I think the parallels to actual police departments are obvious. One stiking result was the reaction of the oppressed prisoners. I think there is a parallel there to the oppressed (black) polulations that our police are, well, policing. Another striking result was the self-admitted lack of objectivity of the researcher conducting the experiment. During this experiment, he lost sight of the "experiment" and, just like the study participants themselves, became engrossed in the experiment.
Even normal people succumb to psychological pressures within a given intense social situation. How do we keep that from happenning? How do we reform our police departments? Even if a majority of people entering a police force are "good guys," they fall to apparently very human psychological strains. Can we build debriefings, maybe daily, into the days of our police personnel? Can we build in sanity checks? Some exercise to force them to view their actions objectively? If we could somehow change police culture for the better, budgetary arguments could be overcome.
I'm no psychologist and I'm no criminologist. BUt I really think we need to start looking at not only the psychology of the police (oppressors), but also that of the oppressed communities they are charged with policing. If the psychological experiment teaches us anything, it's that simply firing an entire police force and replacing will do nothing.