The Psychology and Acceptance of Abuse

A thirteen year old boy steals away from his home in the early morning hours, steals a car, engages in a police pursuit and loses his life in a hail of bullets. At the very least, the incident is a sad commentary of modern life and an indictment of a trained police force. Written responses about the incident ranged from outrage over the death of a young boy to the parents being chastised for “allowing” their child to be on the streets at four in the morning. What moral compass steers the vitriol of a respondent to blame the parent for their child’s brutal death?

The answer can be found deep within the hearts of each of us. Over the years, from the time that we were children we have been taught to respect and obey authority. The greatest authority in any of our lives today is the uniformed man or woman in the squad car behind us. Without a doubt, these uniformed men and women place their lives on the line for us everyday. But as citizens, our tacit acceptance of police over-reaction extending to police brutality is never closely examined or even demanded because as law abiding citizens, we believe that whoever is involved in aberrant behavior should be first and foremost, punished, and the belief continues in that the more severe the punishment the greater the likelihood that that individual will be dissuaded from committing such crimes in the future. This idea of the acceptance of cruel and unusual punitive treatment for law breakers runs a deep course through American society. Many of us are frightened by the images of violence and mayhem perpetrated against others, others that could easily be someone we know and love, therefore when the offender is apprehended, many of us have very little sympathy for the individual and care far less about the treatment the perpetrator might receive after being arrested. Even after someone has paid their debt to society, served a term in prison, maybe even paid restitution, few people in our society feel that these people have the right to resume or resurrect their lives and that they should forever be treated as second class citizens.

As citizens, we have a moral and social responsibility to make sure that our public servants adhere to civilized treatment of everyone. Unfortunately, most of us cannot, or will not, understand that each of us can be transformed in to monsters within certain powerful social settings and not just the men and women who have taken on the burden of being our protectors. It is true that policemen and women deserve our respect and admiration, but in turn, they must guarantee us that they don't willing protect those within their ranks who routinely abuse their power. The problem with many individuals in law enforcement, the so-called “good cop” breed, or even common citizens like you and I can suffer from an unexamined human reaction called “quiet rage.” The inability to effectively change negative events in our immediate “now” in other words, to be placed in a situation whether with or without our consent where we are completely powerless to change those conditions for the better, creates emotional dissonance which allows us to slip into a transformation of character. That transformation of character allows individuals to perpetrate heinous acts against other human beings or simply allows otherwise moral people to condone the actions of policemen who kill a child or a defenseless, homeless woman whether innocent or not of committing a crime.

The fragility of the human psyche is largely ignored by most people. As human beings, we are swayed by powerful desires to be accepted, hence the need to conform to the pressures of society. To ensure that individuals conform, society exploits our deeply ingrained behavioral patterns of obedience first instilled by our parents, church, and school. When people react to fear, whether imagined or real, their responses are colored by an imagined fear and their specific need to ensure that they are never vulnerable to that situation in the future. Public censure and public shame are strong motivators for people to conform when they are essentially powerless in a society. So, powerlessness allows people to become morally disengaged and in that disengagement, people psychologically minimize the evil of their actions; such as the writer to the Letters to The Editor who found it necessary to blame the parents for their son’s death.

There are ways that each of us can begin to change the complacency or “quiet rage” that grips our nation today. If we begin to understand that if we just simply begin to believe and act as if all men are equal and deserve fair treatment, then we will begin to ensure a more peace filled future. If we see injustice and inhumane treatment of other human beings, then it is time to step up and demand that the treatment cease. And this is the hard part of completing a formula for change, because many of us recognize when authority figures have transgressed and broken public trust, out of fear we turn a blind eye to the transgression because many of us feel that we have to sacrifice personal safety in order to stand and decry the mistreatment of someone else. As dangerous as the job of being a law enforcement agent is, nothing can be more dangerous than working in an environment where good cops and bad cops close ranks against we, the people, who need and deserve to trust them. Killing a child at four in the morning, a child who it appears was no threat to the officer’s lives was killed. This killing, among other questionable acts on the part of certain officers has indeed threatened the public trust and needs to be reviewed by an independent panel who can honestly evaluate the real threat to the officers involved and what other means they should have used to avoid killing this child.