Thin Blue Mind / Smokey Heroes

Police Psychology | MS-13 by Gary S. Aumiller, Ph.D.  ABPP Last week four young men were murdered on Long Island, brutally murdered with machetes.  Rumors say their tongue were cut out and they were castrated.  It is obvious some sociopathic pleasure was derived from their mutilation.  Could it be an initiation for a gang, an […]

Police Psychology:  Can We Sense Danger? Gary S. Aumiller Ph.D.  ABPP I was working with my daughter on a science fair project for fourth grade.  She laid out five different colored pieces of paper and put a treat on each, then separately let go of our cat and dog and recorded which color they went […]

Police Psychology | “Inside the Mind” of Donald Trump by Gary S. Aumiller, Ph.D. ABPP   Let me start by saying that this profile article is my professional opinion based off behavior.  I have not met the President yet, and I do not have anything other than his public behavior to base this profile on. […]

Police Psychology:  Are You Biased, Of Course… By Gary S. Aumiller, Ph.D.  ABPP   Just when you thought all the stupidity in the world was surrounding the election this year, I thought I would tell you some more bad news. Judicial Watch just released an article that states that police departments can no longer stop […]

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 […]

Police Psychology | Inertia:  Video Post by Gary S. Aumiller, Ph.D.  ABPP A principle of motion in Physics that can be applied to police work in a psychological way  

Police Psychology | Managing Your Inner Zombie by Doug Gentz, Ph.D. All of us have a complex, pervasive, extensive network of habits that we might as well think of as our “Inner Zombie.” It’s responsible for most of our behavior. That turns out to be a good thing because most things we do are best […]

Police Psychology | Get Thee to a Conference by Gary S. Aumiller, Ph.D.  ABPP   My first experience with a professional conference came when I was 35 years old.  My partner and I had started a newsletter for mental health of police officers in the late 80’s.  In an attempt to get it out to […]

Police Psychology | 30 Dates in 30 Days   This is an area where few police psychologist have ever gone.  In fact, only two that I know. When we started the book, Red Flags!  How to Know When You’re Dating a Loser we, Dan Goldfarb and I just wanted to give some advice to girls […]

Police Psychology | Why Do I Do That!   Police psychology is sometimes very complicated, but sometimes it is not. Let’s spend today’s post back to the Psychology 101 classical conditioning roots. The funny thing is, this whole discovery and all its implications was actually the result of an accident. Pavlov set out to research […]

Police Psychology | Are You Cooperative or Competitive?   This question resonates for all police psychology from testing to operational to consulting to working with the officer in a therapeutic role.  Are you cooperative or competitive? In order to understand this question better, we need to understand the specific differences between these two mental attitudes. […]

Police Psychology | Mental Shortcuts   Lately police officers are are being accused of using a lot of shortcuts in their psychology and mental processes.  Profiling, prejudice and discrimination are buzz words for mental shortcuts and they have been used with police personnel all too much.  This is a major concern in police psychology and […]

The Principle of Relativity (or something like that)   I like to teach that scientific principles and theories have mental health correlates that we should pay attention to in both police psychology and all denominations of the mental health field. Scientific theory is highly dependent on observation (both inside and outside of experiments) and many […]