Archive for the ‘Police Psychology Theories’ Category

Police Psychology | Killer Klowns! Who Are All These Bozos?!

Posted: October 20, 2016 in Public Information Bureau
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Police Psychology | Killer Klowns!  Who Are All These Bozos?

by Gary S. Aumiller, Ph.D.  ABPP

Killer Clowns!  What evil lurks behind the mask and the florescent green hair?  I saw one down the street and he had a big knife to hack teens into little bits that can be fed to the street dog and cats.  Sound like a summerclown campfire story.  An urban legend at it’s best.  Well they’re here, in Long Island New York, in Fishers Indiana, in New Orleans Louisiana, Albuquerque New Mexico and even in Hollywood California where the theatric meets the macabre.   Why are they here?  What do they want?  Who are these BOZOS? (more…)

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Police Psychology | Suicide By Criminal

Posted: October 11, 2016 in Motives and Opportunity
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Police Psychology | Suicide by Criminal

by Gary S. Aumiller, Ph.D.  ABPP

 

We have all heard of suicide by cop when a person takes a gun and points it toward a police officer hoping the officer shoots him.  Very clearly diagnosed in most situations and multiple cases seem to occur each year.  The suicidal person generally doesn’t have the ability to pull the trigger himself, but can put themselves in a position to die.   So, he brings a police officer into the situation as a method of suicide.

Well last week, I became aware of a new method of suicide that I had never seen before, and I am afraid of it for police officers.  You see there was this story about a female cop that told of an officer’s attempt to save her family by allowing herself to be killed, if necessary.  In psychologist circles, that is called an altruistic suicide, because they are killing themselves to let others live better.  But in this case, I call it “Suicide- By-Criminal.” (more…)

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Police Psychology | Divorce in Cops and Corrections

Posted: October 4, 2016 in Public Information Bureau
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Police Psychology | Divorce in Cops and Corrections

by Gary S. Aumiller, Ph.D.  ABPP

I just spent the past week at the Society for Police and Criminal Psychology meeting.  I had been the first executive director of the group and was the president the year before that, so I (with two others) totally ran divorcethe organization from October 2002 until this year where I passed the leadership role.  This year I actually got to watch the presentations first hand since I wasn’t organizing a special meal or lost luggage or whatever “hissy fit” complaints come up at a conference.  It is a great conference of law enforcement officers and psychologists.  I suggest you schedule it next year.

I had also helped organize conferences at the FBI academy in the late 90’s to attack some of the myths of policing such as the high suicide rate and the high rate of domestic violence.  Hell, when I started this job, one was led to believe that the world took their most screwed up group of people and gave them a uniform, badge, and gun, then stressed them out to the max and said “protect the public.”   Problem was, I was seeing a lot of cops and they were pretty normal, in fact they were good friends, relatively smart and mostly family men.  I mean, I came across some “players,” but most were doing overtime, complaining about their wives and husbands like the rest of us, and had decent relationship with their kids.  Turns out from the FBI conferences, rates of domestic violence are not that high, in fact below the general population.  And suicide rates are below the general population.  We never got to finish the triad and look at divorces.  We never had a definitive study of divorce.  Until now!  And the real data is not that bad! (more…)

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Police Psychology | Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics

Posted: September 20, 2016 in Public Information Bureau
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Police Psychology | Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics

by Gary S. Aumiller, Ph.D.  ABPP

 

I can’t wait to see the polls this week.  Two weeks ago Trump was behind by 10 points, earlier last week by 5 points, the end of last week by 2 points and yesterday he was ahead by 3 points in the states that mattered.  Yeah right!  I can’t wait to see what kind of fantasy the news wants us to buy this week.  Not that these really aren’t the polls, but the metholine chartds and presentation do not seem very accurate anymore.  In fact, statistics do not seem accurate anymore in general.  You can’t trust them.  It brings back the old quote from Mark Twain “There are three types of lies:  lies, damned lies and statistics.”

In 2001, a student and professors dealt with rumors that Greek Hospitals were doing large number of appendix operations on Albanian citizens.  It was not reported in the statistics.  So they studied the rumors in six hospitals and in fact an Albanian was 3 times more likely to have a healthy appendix taken out of them than a Greek citizen.  Three times more likely to undergo an operation that wasn’t needed!  It was reported in an article called “Lies, Damned Lies and Medical Science.”  What would a “lies, damned lies and policing” look like?

It has been said that 92% of statistics are made up on the spot.  Sound a little high, maybe it is more like 76% of statistic are made up on the spot.  Actually, I have seen from 26% to 92% when talking about what is made up on the spot – sort of evidence that the premise is true whatever the number is.  So let me just point to four ways statistics can lie to you by looking at some of the myths of policing. (more…)

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Police Psychology | Morale

Posted: September 16, 2016 in Rank and Leadership
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Police Psychology | Morale

by Gary S. Aumiller, Ph.D.  ABPP

 

My very first job and first elected office, I was voted president of the Mighty Mouse Club by the kids in my neighborhood.  Mighty Mouse was a cartoon mighty-mousesuper hero mouse character that beat up cats in the 40’s 50’s and early 60’s.  The club members talked behind my back and all got a penny from their parents and each gave me a penny for my being the president.  I was so honored.  They didn’t tell me I was going to be paid!  I remember I was about kindergarten age at the time.  I remember I snuck to the ice cream truck when it came by later in the day, and I spent that seven cents on seven ice cream cones and gave one to each of the seven kids in the club.  I remember I didn’t order one for myself because I didn’t think I had enough money, but the ice cream man gave me one anyway.  (When I look back, my mother probably really paid for the cones, she had to watch while I went into the street).  I thought I was doing something that made all the kids happy.  I remember a girl named Margery, who lived two doors down from me, saying before we left that day that it was the best club in the whole world.

I had a conversation this week with an officer from a Midwest state who called me out of the blue.  He said he was a reader and that he wanted to get it across to his superiors that morale was very low and the trainings they are having don’t seem to address this issue or things that were important to the officers.  He said there has been a little bit of research in their department that showed that job satisfaction was in the low 20 percentiles and that was a major issue.  It was heart wrenching to have a guy say that 80 percent of his department isn’t crazy about their job anymore, a job many of them probably dreamed of taking.  He asked me how do I get a training on something that really mattered to his officers doing the job.

I personally have seen low morale across the country lately and want to spend a couple of paragraphs to address this issue. (more…)

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