Police Psychology | Officers Disproportionally Killing Black Men: Another False Narrative

Posted: June 29, 2015 in Public Information Bureau
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Police Psychology | Officers Disproportionally Killing Black Men:  Another False Narrative

Guest Blogger Ron Martinelli, Ph.D., is an internationally renowned forensic criminologist and police expert directing the nation’s only multidisciplinary Forensic Death Investigations and Independent Review Team at www.martinelliandassoc.com.  His perspanl website is at www.drronmartinelli.com

 

martinelli image

One difficult topic discussed in police psychology is with regards to racial profiling.

Among several prominent false narratives being unethically forwarded by anti-law enforcement activists and an uninformed media is that police officers kill black men at a rate that is disproportionate to other races. Those who criticize police following officer-involved shootings and in-custody deaths immediately allege racism is the root cause. But is this factually accurate and fair? A recent study by University of Toledo criminal justice professor Dr. Richard Johnson shows that this is not the case.[1]

 

In researching the most recent data from the FBI on homicides nationwide from January, 2009 to the end of 2012, of the 56,250 homicides reported during that period, 1,491 were the result of police uses of force. [2] This equates to roughly 372 persons a year dying as a result of police force intervention.

 

 Of the 1,491 persons who died as a result of police uses of force, 61.4% were white males, 32.2% were black males and 3.2% were males from other races. Females dying as a result of a police use of force comprised the final 3.2% of deaths.

 

 By comparison, of the 56,259 homicides reviewed from 2009 – 2012, 19,000 or nearly 39% involved the killing of black males. Of these, only 2.5% involved the death of a black male as a result of a police use of force. In contrast to police officers, private citizen killings of black males in self-defense justifiable homicides at 3.4% were higher than black male deaths attributed to police. What stands out as a significant and shocking statistic is that 17,719 criminal homicides (murders) of black males, or 93.3% from 2009 – 2012 were at the hands of other criminals who were predominately other black males (89.6%).

 

 In sharp contrast to the false narrative that police officers have some racial motivation to kill black men, from 2009 – 2012, nearly 41% of police officers were murdered by black males; whereas only 32.2% of homicides of black males were attributed to a police use of force. This is significant, given the fact that blacks as a whole comprise only 13% of the U.S. population of 316,128,839 persons and there are less than 500,000 peace officers in this country, many who do not work in a street patrol capacity.

 

To put this study into perspective, an average of 120 black males, or one out of every 173,871 black males die yearly as a result of police uses of force. This is compared to 2,369 black males being killed in motor vehicle accidents and 2,532 committing suicide each year. [3], [4] This means that the chance of a black male in the U.S. being killed by police during a use of force is roughly 0.00078% of one percent. In fact, when all homicide of black males statistics are considered, black males are 35 times more likely to be murdered by another black male; 20 times more prone to die in a motor vehicle accident or by suicide; and 21 times more susceptible to being killed in a self-defense justifiable homicide than killed by any police use of force.

 

Whereas, an average of 120 black males die each year as a result of a police use of force; 373 persons a year are struck by lighting. In essence, the chance that a black male dying as a result of police force intervention is considerably less than their chances of being struck by lighting.[5]

 

Just to provide some further context to this discussion, from 2009 – 2012, 224 police officers were murdered and nearly 60,000 sustained injuries from assaults by violently assaultive and/or resisting suspects.

 

The anti-law enforcement sentiment is rapidly growing in America and a number of false narratives are being forwarded by those who would seek to undermine the daily contributions of our brave men and women who honorably wear the badge and put themselves in harm’s way to keep our communities safe. Our best strategy is to remain vigilant, keep the uninformed masses and media informed and to keep the faith.

References

1 “Examining the Prevalence of Death from Police Use of Force,” Johnson, Richard, Ph.D., © 2015, University of Toledo

2 U.S. Dept. of Justice, FBI Uniform Crime Report Supplemental Homicide Reports and U.S. Center for Disease Control death classifications, Jan. 2009 – Jan. 2012.

3 National Safety Council, Injury Facts (2012), www.nsc.org

4 www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/suicide/statistics/aag.html

5 www.usatoday.com/weather/resources/basics/wlighting.htm

 

Gary S. Aumiller, Ph.D. ABPP

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Police Psychology | How to Create Focus

Posted: June 18, 2015 in Mastering Effort
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Police Psychology:  How to Create Focus

 

Losing focus3

Creating focus is important both for police psychology, and for anyone who wants to increase efficiency and productivity.

In police psychology losing focus can be a life or death situation for a police officer.  Focus is thus extremely important for police psychology and dealing with police stress. Ever since you started school, all those many years ago, you probably heard the words, “pay-attention!” “you need to focus more!” “stop getting distracted!” These statements, along with many others just like them, have probably become internal voices as you grew up. No longer is your teacher snapping at you to pay attention, nor are your parents telling you to do your homework. Now you are responsible for telling yourself to keep working. Everyone experiences moments of intense focus (even if that focus is directed on the TV screen during a sports game, or on the pages of a book when you’re at an exciting part of a novel) and moments where distractions seem to be everywhere. In fact, everyone’s brains are different, and some people will have an easier time focusing than others.

Types of Distracters

Where to find focus is difficult for many people because they keep getting sidetracked by small things. Some people are all set to power-through and complete a major task, but then they keep getting distracted by smaller jobs they need to complete, like answering emails or eating lunch. Other people have a problem weeding out noise, and they get distracted by things as innocent as a phone ringing across the hall, or a dog barking outside, or even the typing of the individual in the next desk. The worst is when you can’t get something done until you get something else done, and then to get that done you have to get something else done, etc. People have a hard time finding focus because they have other, competing things on their minds, like their marriage, the welfare of their kids, a death in the family, or their pet dog. Others have trouble focusing because of interruptions from external sources, like they keep getting phone calls from their spouse or friends.

 Sometimes people just procrastinate their real work, and go to some other task they have to do instead (like taking a lunch break, or updating your social media, or watching YouTube videos. There are many reasons people have trouble focusing, and yet if you give into these distractions, you are preventing movement, allowing yourself to become inactive and unproductive and that will cause you grief later on.

3 Steps for Creating Focus

procrastination2Here are three steps for helping you create focus in order to increase work productivity and efficiency.

  1.  Determine your barriers. The first step to creating focus is figuring out what is preventing you from focusing. Remember, there is not necessarily a unitary cause for things. You may have multiple barriers, or you may have one barrier that changes depending on the task. Also, they will be different for every person. My clients in police psychology will have completely different distractors than stay-at-home parents. In order to create focus, you first need to spend some time considering what things are your personal biggest distractors.
  2.  Reduce the barrier. Once you figure out what distracts you, you need to reduce the distracters, or reduce your exposure to the distracters. There is no one way to reduce the barriers, but some suggestions include: make sure your work environment is distraction free—put your phone away, make sure your desk is clean, go to a quiet room, etc. It also helps to set up a reward system for when you complete a certain amount of work. If you tell yourself that you just need to finish three more pages and then you can take a break, you are less likely to get distracted during your working time. I used to lock myself in my house with 4 days’ worth of food, put the clocks away, block out the windows and shut off the phone when I was writing a book. When I was hungry I ate, when sleepy I slept. Another thing you can do to reduce your barriers is to set up a schedule for yourself. In this schedule include everything that needs to get done, and everything you want to get done, and don’t forget to leave yourself break times as your reward. Cross off each item as you finish it so that you can see your progress. The technique you use to reduce your barriers will really depend on the individual barrier you have. So, for instance, if you get distracted by calls from your family, communicate with your spouse and children that when you are at work, you cannot answer your phone. If you get distracted by music or other noises in the office, consider wearing earplugs or headphones that block out the noise.
  3.  Set a Reward/Punishment System. There is old research in psychology that says people can be rewarded for a lower frequency activity by a higher frequency activity. Now what exactly does that mean? Simple. If there is something you want to do, make it contingent on completing something you don’t necessarily want to do. This is called the Premack Principle named after David Premack who experimented with Capuchin monkeys who found if animals went “ape“ over something, they would do less desirable behaviors to engage in the desired behavior. By the same token, you can punish yourself with a lesser desirable behavior like working on the retaining wall or cleaning the extremely moldy Tupperware when you have been distracted. It is essentially the theory of relativity applied to “monkey business,” so to speak. Enough of the puns, reward yourself with something you really want to do, punish yourself with something you really hate and that will create focus. People often say if I do “XYZ” I can go on a vacation, and those people get focus. Make your activity a means to an end that you desire.

If you follow these steps, you will be on your way to finding focus in both your life and your work. If you have any other tips, or would like to share your own story, please comment below!

 

Gary S. Aumiller, Ph.D. ABPP

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Police Psychology | When a Child Dies

Posted: June 16, 2015 in Stories
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Police Psychology:  When A Child Dies

 

Anne Bisek, Psy.D. is our first guest blogger. She is a police psychologist in Freemont California. Her specialty is calls for service involving the death of a child. For more information on this topic visit www.whenachiddies.com.

It was obvious to the crowd of neighbors and in-laws that the young babysitter standing over the dead child was responsible for the toddler’s death. The woman was rambling incoherently about bugs, snakes, spiders and smoking a cigarette. Her thin face was covered in scabs and pockmarks; some were bleeding. The porch was littered with empty beer bottles and the front window had been smashed, leaving broken glass to cover the pack-n-play.

From his squad car Jake could see a muscular man in a white tee shirt approaching the house with a baseball bat. His stride was purposeful, his shoulders hunched.

“Oh here we go,” thought Jake as he exited the vehicle, “Let’s not make this any worse.”

 The man glared at the babysitter and skipped two stairs up the front porch toward her. From behind the man Jake grabbed the baseball bat just before it struck the bewildered babysitter. The small crowd of onlookers seemed to have the same idea as the man with the baseball bat. Jake was outnumbered. He grabbed the babysitter and whisked her away through the shouting, crying crowd to his squad car. He saw his back up arrive, followed by an irrelevant ambulance.

For days following the call, Jake had a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach; the kind of guilty sickness he hadn’t felt since he broke curfew as a kid the night his younger brother was badly beaten by some older boys. Jake reviewed his report over and over trying to remember any other detail he could add to it.

 Pedro the Peer Supporter noticed that Jake had not been joking around in the locker room as usual and was now quietly doodling during briefing. Pedro walked out of briefing behind Jake and asked him to meet up for lunch. “Yeah sure,” Jake replied as if he had not heard Pedro at all.

 At the end of the shift, Pedro sought out Jake in the locker room. “Up for a quick pick up game?” Pedro asked tapping his basketball.

 “It’s been a long day,” replied Jake.

“Come on man, I can tell you are off your game today, and I don’t mean basketball. What’s up?” Pedro sat down next to Jake who was changing his shoes.

“I’ve been thinking maybe I’m not right for this job.” Jake sighed.

 “Oh, one of those days. We all have them.” Pedro bounced the basketball twice.

Jake looked surprised but then told Pedro about the dead toddler and having to protect the suspect from a “mob of righteously angry family and friends.”

 “I get it Jake.” Pedro nodded. “In this job we are the sheep dogs. We feel good about protecting the sheep from the wolves. But we can’t always do that.”

 “No you don’t get it Pedro. It isn’t like that. Never mind.”

 “Give me another shot at it then.” Pedro tossed Jake the basketball.

Jake spun the ball in his hands. “If I was a good sheep dog, I would have protected the sheep not the wolf. I protected the suspect, not the victim, Pedro. I got it all wrong.”

 “So you think you are a bad cop because you put the suspect in the car instead of letting her be slaughtered out there?” Pedro asked.

 Jake tossed the ball back to Pedro and his shoulders slumped. “I was useless on that call. Didn’t even interview the R.P. I can’t shake this feeling in my stomach.”

“And that means you aren’t right for this job?” Pedro asked.

 “Maybe.”

 “Want my opinion?” Pedro asked, rolling the basketball toward Jake.

 “Sure coach.” Jake stopped the ball with his foot.

 “You are a good cop Jake. You are a good person. A good sheep dog usually protects the sheep from the wolves. But in this case you had to protect the wolf. Sometimes you have to do that and when the tables get turned it can feel pretty messed up. But it doesn’t mean you aren’t right for this job. It was the call that was messed up, not you.”    

 Cognitive dissonance is the feeling of uneasiness, which results from holding two conflicting beliefs. Leon Festinger proposed this theory in 1957. Everyone holds ideas about the world and themselves. When a belief and concept collide with reality, it is unpleasant so we want to make it consistent again, sometimes by adapting unhealthy or irrational beliefs.

Bisek 1

As a law enforcement officer, Jake wants to believe he is a good person. Jake’s concept of a good law enforcement officer is someone who protects the prey from the predators, not the other way around.

Bisek 2

Since Jake cannot change the reality of this call for service, he changes his belief, “I’m not a law enforcement officer, or I’m not right for this job.” Woulda coulda shoulda thinking enters the scenario as Jake goes over and over the report.

Bisek 3

 Jake may not realize it, but he is acting like he believes he is not a good law enforcement officer, or a good person. Pedro the Peer Supporter notices the change in his colleague and can help Jake by listening, and reflecting this belief back to him. Pedro points out that the healthier concept is “a law enforcement officer usually protects the sheep from the sheep dog,” and shows Jake that the call for service was messed up, not Jake.

 

 

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Police Psychology | Labels

Posted: June 10, 2015 in Mastering Thoughts
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Canned Soup Has Labels, People Shouldn’t

 

rumpelstiltskin

In police psychology, among other areas, naming things and putting a label on it, has come at a huge detriment to society.

Assessment is the goal of some parts of police psychology, but certainly not if you are working with the police officer on fixing their problems. When my brother was younger, he was known as a rambunctious child, the class clown, always running around, crazy with very high energy. People would have said he was “minimally brain damaged,” because at the time that is what they later called “minimal brain dysfunction.” A little later he would have been called “hyperactive,” then “emotionally disturbed.” If he was born now however he would be called “attention deficit disorder with hyperactivity” (he’s over 60). No longer was he just a noisy and fun-loving child—now he was something more: an individual with a syndrome that had to be treated. And of course, since he has the proper label, you know a lot about the cause of the problem, right? No way.

Rumpelstiltskin Effect

This is what I call the Rumpelstiltskin effect, a name I adapted from the Grimm’s fairytale character. In the story, this man is a pathological liar, and lies that his daughter can spin gold, like her blonde hair, from straw. Well, the king catches hold of the lie, and puts the girl in a room and says spin gold from straw or I will cut your head off (not quite the nose job she wanted). He agreed to marry her if she could in fact spin gold from straw. Well, the girl looked at the options, to become the queen or walk around headless, and decided she would rather become the queen. She paced and fretted and downright cried until this imp appeared and said he would spin gold from straw if she agreed to give him her first born child. Well she did, and they did and she got pregnant as the new queen. When it was time to collect on the bargain, however, the now-queen did not want to give up her child. Rumpelstiltskin agreed that if she could guess his name within three days, she could keep her child. On the final day, the desperate queen rides around outside looking for the imp to beg mercy, and she overhears Rumpelstiltskin singing his name. With this information in hand, she names the creature and gets to keep her child. The imp goes away forever and she and the king live happily ever after. Because naming the imp made everything better! Just like in life, if I name the problem the other questions in life get answered.

 The problem is there are a lot of derivatives that come along with putting a name to something. There is a tendency among many people today to believe there is a singular cause of a business problem, psychological problem or a medical problem that has a name. When something becomes a syndrome the universal thing is to look toward someone’s diet, or bad market projections or a vitamin deficiency or an over-bearing mother. It is just plain human nature and we miss the proverbial forest for the trees because the symptom is the problem and the cause is really minor in fixing it. When someone is labeled with a certain diagnoses, it is very hard to lose it and what comes with it.

 

I’ve Been Labeled and I Can’t Get Out

A famous study by Rosenhan in the seventies proved this very point. In his article “On Being Sane in Insane Places,” he demonstrated that pseudo-patients (individuals who were perfectly healthy, with no signs of mental illness whatsoever) who checked themselves into mental institutions claiming they had schizophrenia were quickly pigeonholed into having many other problems, but they showed no symptoms. To illustrate, during the long hours when they were in the institution, there was often nothing for them to do so they often gathered outside the meal hall a half hour before the doors would open. Nurses and doctors who noticed this (very normal) behavior quickly labeled these individuals as having “oral inquisitory syndrome” or “an oral fixation” when it should have been “bored-out-of-their-wits” syndrome. Additionally, these pseudo-patients had been instructed to record what it was like in the mental institutions for the purposes of the experiment. Because of this, they constantly took notes throughout the day. The nurses and doctors labeled this “writing behavior” calling it from paranoia to obsessive-compulsion and recorded it in the patients’ charts. It is interesting to see how the behavior of these perfectly healthy and sane individuals was seen in a new way, just because they had been given the label “schizophrenic” when they checked themselves into the institution. None of the staff saw any of the 118 pseudo-patients as imposters, although mental patients in the hospital identified 35 of them as researchers checking up on the staff. By the way, it took the average pseudo-patient 19 days to be released with a high of 52 days, all because of a label put on them at admission!

 The point is there is very rarely one single cause of a problem. It is much more typical that there are multiple causes for any behavior, business fluctuation or medical symptom. Each individual is different with different experiences. Hyperactivity does not have to be due to a mental illness—it can just as easily (and more likely) be due to consumption of lead, or too much sugar, or genetics. In fact, most likely it is due to a combination of a couple of these causes! We need to move away from the assumption that giving a name to something means we understand it, or that we have diagnosed it completely. We need to move away from the idea that creating a name for something that is happening gives us any more than a name, and could hurt us considerably. And my brother is retired now after two wonderful fully grown kids and a long healthy career. And he had no labels.

 

procrastination23 Steps to Help You Avoid the Rumpelstiltskin Effect

  1.  Avoid egocentricism. When people think they are the center of the world, they tend to believe that anyone who behaves in a way counter to their own is wrong, or deficient. This can lead people to naming others and incorrectly diagnosing their behavior. If you are a very composed person, when you see someone who can’t sit still, it is easy to prescribe a defect in the other person. You need to accept that there is always more to the story than you know, and just because they look or behave differently, does not mean they have a problem. Avoid spreading rumors or gossip about someone just because they don’t neatly fit into your definition of normal. Perhaps our columnists and news people should hear this.
  2.  Evaluate externally. Along the lines of avoiding egocentricism, you need to look at your own behavior objectively. If you are having an off day because of random circumstances, and you snap at everyone at work, or avoid eye-contact and don’t greet anyone, think about how that will look to other people. It is very possible they are evaluating your behavior and naming you as suffering from some mental illness, or syndrome or creating a problem employee. In fact, you are just having a bad day because you overslept and didn’t have time for breakfast, or there was no hot water when you tried to shower this morning, or you had a flat tire on the way to work. It is so easy to excuse our own behavior as being due to external causes, but we need to use that same mindset when we look at other people—perhaps their behavior, too, is not due to something internal, but to external circumstances. Cut down the judging and just evaluate the behavior for what is there now.      
  3.  Value the person not the Label. Even if someone’s behavior is given a name, you need to understand that they are still human and have feelings just like you do. If you value this person, then you should accept them for who they are, regardless of artificial names that can be places upon them. At the same time, if you feel other people are evaluating you, ignore their judgments—don’t let the pinball effect trap you in its claws. Leave Rumpelstiltskin to the Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm and make our world your happily ever after.

 

 Gary S. Aumiller, Ph.D. ABPP

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Police Psychology | The Police Candidate Interpretive Report

Posted: June 5, 2015 in Tests
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The Police Candidate Interpretive Report

 

I had one of the first cell phones for public consumption.  It fit in a bag.  The battery lasted minutes not hours, and it was essentially a car phone that could be moved around.  But visions of Dick Tracy’s watch and Agent 86’s shoe danced in my head, and I walked around feeling real important when I pulled out my bag phone and made a call.  How sweet those youthful delusions were!

While I was running around looking for my Agent 99, Steven Jobs was getting fired from Apple.  But Jobs had vision and timing.  He knew when something was needed and he saw sort of saw into the future.  When he was rehired, he was going to hire a Pepsi Executive for Apple and asked him “do you want to make sugared water the rest of your life or change the world.”  Jobs then designed a new operating system that became the basis for IPhone, IPods and yes, an IWatch that you could talk into, straight from the old Dick Tracy cartoons.  My old fantasies are sort of dumb given they now exist.

I sat with the Steven Jobs of Police Psychology in Orlando Florida at an IACP Police Psychologists happy hour.  He wanted to get the American Psychological Association to recognize police psychology and tie police psychology practice into research.  In my best “Pinky and the Brain” imitation, I wanted to rule the world, or at least globalize the profession.  Through the Society for Police and Criminal Psychology I started trying to define exactly what tasks were in the profession, what did police psychologists actually do?  Across the country, my friend was starting the same task, so we combined efforts.  He later spearheaded the work making police psychology recognized by the American Psychological Association.  But his recent activity may be the most poignant for the practice of police psychology.

He took an old standard test in police evaluations that was recently reconstructed, and took tons of data and put it into a computer-generated report on how police officers can be selected for police departments.  Then he made it so the computer would generate not only statistical properties for the test, but also a list of references in the back tying the research to the employee behavior.   Literally, you could say I got this result and here are the references that support the denial of a job, or the calling of this person unfit for duty.  Forensic evaluations are always supposed to be referenced but seldom are.  Imagine going into the court and having all the references at your fingertips.  And it is an entirely transparent process.

Gone are the days when a psychologist looks at the scale and gets a feel for them being a good cop or not.  Now we can directly tie scores on the MMPI-2 RF to police officer behavior.  I remember Dr. Mike Aamodt’s book with all the meta-analyses saying basically none of the tests, except at the far reaches of the spectrum lead statistically to any decision.  There is really a new world out there and someone has seen how to make it more viable.

I don’t do testing as a matter of course, so probably I have some things wrong, but the intent is correct.  Dr. Dave Corey with excellent researcher Dr. Yossef Ben-Porath has really achieved his goal.  He gave police psychology the recognition by the APA that it deserves and he is making the field which he works in, employee screening and assessment, highly attached to research.  Kudos to him and to Pearson for publishing the Police Candidate Interpretive Report (PCIR).  It’s the IWatch of our profession.

As for me, I am still trying to rule the world.  Maybe if I write a blog….

 Gary S. Aumiller, Ph.D. ABPP

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