Thin Blue Mind / Smokey Heroes
Police Psychology: Why Protests Occur?
by Gary S. Aumiller, Ph.D. ABPP
The past few days there was rioting in St. Louis. It may have started as a protest but moved quickly to a riot. Riot [RAHY uh t} – a violent disturbance of the peace by a crowd. The subject was a judge’s decision of not-guilty for a cop that shot the driver of a car who led the cop on a high-speed chase. “He killed him because he was black!” “The gun in the back seat of the car wasn’t his.” A $900,000 settlement was made with the family by the city prior to the trial. The officer had said we’re going to “kill this motherfucker” on the car cam prior to the stop. The driver had all the marking of being a heroin dealer and had some drugs in the car. The judge just didn’t see evidence beyond a reasonable doubt for the cop being called a murderer.
At Georgia Tech University, a campus cop shot and killed a student who was wielding a knife and refused to drop it. Cops say she went closer and closer to the officers yelling “kill me.” The cop eventually shot her. This was after a 9-1-1 call when someone complained about an intoxicated person with a weapon. The female student was non-binary (identifying with neither sex) and had attempted suicide earlier. Protests are under way at this writing. (more…)
reactive, in particular, not reacting out of anger. We all experience moments of frustration—moments where we just feel like lashing out at everyone and everything around us because things aren’t working out for us in the ways we wanted. Frustration is the emotion we feel when we are being opposed, blocked from reaching a goal we want, or barred from doing something we want to do. Frustration is very common, and it is nothing to be ashamed of. Frustration can also range from mild to severe, depending on the circumstance. For instance, if you wanted to make it through a green light before it turned red, but by the time you got there it was too late, you’d probably experience minor frustration. On the other hand, if Notre Dame football has another defensive lineman injured on a jet sweep from a stupid cut block and the referee refuses to call it because he hates the Irish when they have a supposedly inferior opponent… wait I am losing it again. I need to find a wall to punch.
over, I call this “Cycling”—spinning the frustration into anger, saying the same thing over and over until anger builds from your frustration, and then frustration from your anger. Cycling is a never-ending mess which can have some dangerous consequences, especially if it leads you to say something you know you will regret later. It is not uncommon for this cycling to turn into something psychologists call the frustration-aggression-displacement syndrome (everything is a syndrome in psychology). Frustration-aggression-displacement is when you are frustrated at something or someone, but you know you can’t do anything about it. For instance, it is not going to be helpful to yell back at your boss or teacher when they do something that frustrates you, because they have a higher authority than you do, and getting angry with them won’t help assuage your frustration. So, what do you do? You go home and yell at your wife, or your children, or you kick your dog, or yell at a waiter, or go into a road rage by driving like an idiot—you lash out at people who can’t or won’t fight back. In doing so, you are alleviating your frustration through aggression directed at people who are not responsible for your frustration. This is not only unhealthy for you and the people around you, it is also dangerous, and can lead to a downward spiral of increasingly harmful behavior. And research shows it can lead to heart attacks, cancer, rashes, organ dysfunction, etc. Yes, the open expression of anger and frustration has been shown in statistical research to be worse than holding it in. Sort of the opposite of what shrinks have told us in the past.
and do not tend to favor either party, although they sit with the extreme left now and most often do. They look for a peaceful demonstrations and turn it into a riot. They call themselves anarchists, and they are not so much of a group as an instant mob, just add water. One thing is for sure, they make a demonstration uncomfortable, not only for police, but for the demonstrators themselves.