I also wasn’t aware of The Third Wave experiment. That was pretty interesting.

If you’re not already familiar with an experiment known as The Third Wave, you might find it of interest. The link is here.

This is consistent with things that I’ve said to you previously. You may, or may not, have meant this point literally. However, it’s a simple fact. It’s the most important factor in human interactions.

I gather that you actually ordered The Lucifer Effect, as opposed to The Lucifer Principle. There’s some ambiguity, because both Big Apple and you have mentioned both books.

For some remarks related to The Lucifer Principle, see post 12 on this thread. You might find it interesting to read the two books together.

I think you make a good point about it being easy to fall into that trap of an “asshole cop.”

Humans do have a pack dog mentality.

That is why it is important to ensure proper leadership. It all starts from the top.

First, I was trying to keep the post a reasonable size so I edited out certain portions of my original text and apologize if it is not exactly coherent.

Second, in no way was I trying to justify the behavior of myself, my fellow officers, or law enforcement personnel in general. If someone crosses the line, they should be reprimanded, period.

Finally, I was going to mention the Stanford prison experiment in my initial post as a way to reference how easy it is to lose perspective. I was reading a summary of The Lucifer Effect on Amazon and saw the author is actually the same guy who orchestrated the SPE, and had this to say:

“His troubling finding is that almost anyone, given the right “situational” influences, can be made to abandon moral scruples and cooperate in violence and oppression.”

Much more clear and succinct than my rambling…

I’ve always been a very laid back, extremely liberal and docile fella. At 6’6 and 300+ pounds, perhaps a gentle giant. Hell, I haven’t even been in an actual fight since elementary school.

I was employed for approximately two years as a correctional officer for the state of WV. In that short time period several people (mainly my wife) noticed a huge change in my personality and behavior.

In a mere 6 months I’d become an aggressive, assertive, well…um…asshole.

While not a valid defense, it was a high stress job, compounded by a shortage of staff and an overcrowding of inmates. At times we were 75-100 inmates above capacity and 10-15 officers short of full staff. Constant pressure from duties as well as administration would cause frequent (the frequency is almost shocking) abuses of power.

Without going into too much detail (I could write for days about all the fucked up stuff happening in that jail), the moral of the story is this:

It’s much easier than people realize to get sucked into a power-trip, us vs. them mentality.
It’s stunning how quickly a little bit of power can corrupt a person, and a lot of times (as in my case) the one being corrupted doesn’t realize it’s happening.

I look back on those days now, objectively, and am pretty ashamed of myself, but it can and does happen very easily.

Good people do go into law enforcement but they rarely remain that way for long.

And for the record, I’ve now been away from that hell hole for 4+ years and am back to my lovable old self.

If you’re still out there, this is an important issue. You should talk about it further. No sarcasm is intended. However, understand that personally, I’d be pleased if the officer who joked about the murder of Tyisha Miller were to be harmed (the link is here). The police shot a sleeping girl to death. She was black. Her relatives came and cried over her corpse. They were black. So an officer said (over the radio, if I remember correctly), “It’s like Gorillas in the Mist here”. I don’t believe that it’s at all unreasonable for me to feel this way. It’s been a decade or longer, but my feelings haven’t changed.

Some people outside the profession are going to see insensitivity of the type demonstrated in the Tyisha Miller case and other cases as evidence that the moral sense of the officers involved has deteriorated to the point where they can no longer be thought of, or should be thought of, as human.

Obviously, you view this kind of thing differently. You should address the issue from a broader perspective, because it happens all the time. If the victim is Asian, the police will make Kung Fu jokes, and so on. There’s plenty of jokes about other races, physical characteristics, and so on. In my opinion, this kind of thing not only affects but utterly destroys sympathy for the LEO point of view.