What started presumably as a simple theft and an encounter with a marked police car and a uniformed police officer has turned into racial rioting in Ferguson, Missouri and elsewhere around the country. It is a tragedy that an 18 year old African-American young man was shot and killed by a white police officer. This young man had a potential future ahead of him, and whether or not he stole some cigarillos from a store, and whatever his encounter may have been with the officer, it is a tragedy that his life had to end so soon.
At the same time we consider the actions and state of mind of the police officer in question, who was not indicted, but who will live with his actions for the rest of his life, and who must have gone through his own private and public hell, taking a life in the course of duty. This was a life, going through that tenuous period in early adulthood. But there probably was more to it than that.
The riots that have followed the incident in Ferguson and the decision by the Grand Jury are an unfortunate commentary on the manner in which society acts to resolve its problems. The issues in this case are complex. The issue goes to the core of what it means to be a police officer in a society where the officer is empowered to use lethal force and must, in some cases, at a moment's notice act to preserve the law and/or to protect his own life and well being.
How can society understand the lessons of the Michael Brown and apply them better? I will focus on a few broad areas that I feel led to the situation escalating quickly and then spiraling out of control into a series of demonstrations.
Cognitive Dissonance
One principle is the principle of cognitive dissonance that the police officer has to deal with in his position, whether it be as a beat cop, a patrol officer in a vehicle, or an undercover officer placed in an extraoardinarily difficult position. Cognitive Dissonance according to Wikipedia, is the "mental stress or discomfort discomfort experienced by an individual who holds two or more contradictory beliefs, ideas, or values at the same time, or is confronted by new information that conflicts with existing beliefs, ideas, or values." The officer has to deal with threats to his life, health and well being, as he balances his actions in enforcing the law and in maintaining a civil society. When these issues conflict, it creates cognitive dissonance.
Bayesian Thought Processes
Another principle the officer has to deal with is "Bayesian Thought Processes", which refer to a manner in which the brain processes information in order to perceive situations. The brain tends to be programmed in a fashion in order to do forward thinking threat and risk assessment based on prior probabilities, which are conditional. These conditional experiences represent the statistical evaluation of past experience in the brain. If the officer has come to associate the evolution of threats with certain populations, then when a threat situation arises, he will be more likely to act on the basis of that threat when those populations are involved. The associations may relate to personal experience, exposure to media, training or other exposures. The key to solving the problem, is to address these underlying associations. This is a difficult task and it is one that reflect's society's views and prejudices.
The Marijuana Symbol
Laws are getting more and more complex and this leads by itself to occasions of increased cognitive dissonance for the police officer. An example of this is that the officer noticed a marijuana symbol on the socks of one of the men and that impacted perception. Marijuana laws have become more complex, with some states (Washington and Colorado) legalizing it, while other states and the Federal government consider it illegal. Medical marijuana is allowed in some cases. For example, Missouri allows it for use for intractable epilepsy. These laws by themselves add considerable cognitive dissonance to a police officer who may consider marijuana a 'gateway' drug to other more harmful drugs (and it still may be). It is possible that the marijuana could be used for a medical purpose, a different association entirely. Did Michael Brown have epilepsy? I don't know.
An Officer's Sense of Space and Safety
The subjects approached the patrol officer's vehicle from behind, endangering the officer's feeling of control over his own space. This was probably the key element in the confrontation.
The race and age of the subjects in question, and the perception that they may be subjects in a robbery the officer had heard about probably also contributed to the officer's sense of personal safety. The issue in question, with the demonstrations, however, is the extent to which the officer's perception of risk to his personal safety was based on preconceptions based on race, which may have influenced the outcome.
The Subject's Behavior and the Officer's Behavior
The officer missed one vital point, the subject's behavior. If Michael Brown had committed a theft, as it appeared, then why did he challenge the police officer? Was he guided by outside forces to act in a manner inimical to his own feelings of safety? Was his intent to be caught? He challenged the police officer when his safest approach would have been to simply avoid the situation. Is it possible that the police officer's reaction, when threatened (by being surprised in his vehicle), triggered past memories of racial harassment in Michael Brown? Did an emotional memory of a past event trigger an action to challenge rather than avoid conflict (fight or flight?). At the age of eighteen, a number of issues could have been involved, including unknown existential issues.
Did Michael Brown attempt to surrender and the officer fail to recognize it for some reason? Why?
Perception of Police and Justice System
The issue in the community becomes the perception of the public towards the police and the justice system as they examine the various roles in a tragedy of a life that ended too soon and the feelings of the police themselves.
How to fix this? It is a good idea for people to have some understanding of police thought processes, especially understanding their concern about protecting their firearms and their physical space.
Police responses are to a certain extent wired into them by training, as in many fields. Police need to be trained to act very quickly in risky situations, something not necessarily true of all professions. In fact many of these hardwired thought processes are what have kept them safe in their jobs, so that seeking to change perceptions of police officers is fraught with many challenges, some of which involve the issues of cognitive dissonance alluded to above.
So the mystery of Michael Brown remains, how do you solve the problem? You can educate the public, but the public is such a large body to educate. This is a challenge. Police training needs to continue to incorporate the importance of psychological factors, perceptions, including the types of issues discussed above.
It is very possible that the subjects anomalous behavior led to a situation of cognitive dissonance in the officer where it generated a 'fight or flight' situation that the officer reacted to and resolved with his training and his capability to protect himself from potential harm. It's possible the officer resolved the anomalous situation as only a challenge to his authority when there were other factors as well. Time will tell as analysis of the situation proceeds.
One thing we do know, and that is suppressing a vulnerable, poor and disadvantaged population can have impacts that reverberate beyond the immediate situation in question.
It is difficult to comment on the legal tactics employed with the grand jury proceeding. The results speak for themselves.
A community mourns and it is time to heal and try to fix the problems.
