FERGUSON, MISSOURI –
THE TRAGEDY OF THE TIMES
THAT KEEPS REPEATING
ITSELF
James R. Fisher, Jr.,
Ph.D.
© August 18, 2014
REFERENCE:
Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager, was shot to death
by a white police officer with at least six bullets entering his body,
including two to his head.
Riots,
looting, police tear gas, and the State’s National Guard entered the fray to
restore order, but without much success.
In the twinkling of an eye, Ferguson, Missouri became a war
zone with National Guard armor vehicles, police and National Guard in riot gear
cordoning off mainly black protesters, while the world watched in stunned horror.
This was not supposed to happen in the United
States of America. But it does, only too
often.
Predictably, the rhetorical righteous rushed in to express their moral outrage, point fingers and make wild accusations that
served no interest other than their own.
Instead, these talking heads gave tacit approval to the looting and burning by these otherwise
law abiding citizens, people caught up in the heat and confusion of the moment.
Once quiet is restored, nothing changes. That has proven to be an absolute. The series of cosmetic interventions that are
likely to follow are proposed by those programmed to lead from behind because they know no other way. I have
some acquaintance with this disposition and leaders so inclined.
A READER WRITES:
Dr. Fisher,
Missouri has resulted in what I fear is going to result in
the loss of reason. This sad event,
following the results of the Florida trial that left feelings of unfairness, I
fear will result in possible unfairness to the police officer.
I could say more about how I felt the jury verdict was wrong
in Florida, but now the police officer has been declared completely wrong and
with no defense.
Sad situation, but just
wanted to tweak you on your thoughts in the matter.
How can the
officer defend himself in this climate?
Or is there no defense? Seems
they are not waiting for any explanation, right or wrong!
C.
DR. FISHER RESPONDS:
Dear C,
Yes, the death of the teenager in Ferguson, Missouri cut
down by the bullets of a police officer, on the surface, is hard to understand.
While you are worried about justice for the police officer,
I would imagine the victim’s family wonders why this police officer has not been arrested as they are being told that six bullets shot by the
police officer were lodged in Michael Brown’s body, two of which entered his
head and proved fatal.
The circumstances are murky at this point, but if the
teenager was unarmed, no matter what the nature of the criminal act or violence against the
police officer may have been, I have trouble understanding why deadly force was
used in any case.
I have seen many
instances where police officers used considerable restrain under intense and
threatening circumstances, and never fired a shot.
I have also known police officers with the
reputation of “cowboys” who, given the opportunity, may have not demonstrated
that restrain.
That said police behavior is highly correlated with
community standards. Often communities play
Russian roulette with people's lives when racial undercurrents are not
addressed but instead are allowed to fester.
This makes it practically inevitable for eventual spontaneous emotional combustion.
*
* *
If you will permit me, in the spontaneous combustion of coal
dust in a stockpile, following the mathematics of a differential equation,
gradients of temperature, oxygen concentration, and pressure variations in a
coal bed can contribute to this unstable state.
I learned this in my work in South Africa in 1968 when I had
to acquaint myself with the coking process, used by South Africa to generate
oil from coal.
At the time, many nations
boycotted South Africa for its apartheid policy, and with no natural oil
deposits, but with an abundance of coal, South Africa had no choice but to convert coal
to coke, and then to oil.
By a curious projection, I could see the same formula
applying, in a relative sense, to human combustibles, going from safe, unsafe,
or conditionally safe, to spontaneous combustion.
Returning to the United States in 1969, I would spend the
1970s going to graduate school to earn my Ph.D., while consulting on the
side.
My consultancy was mainly with police organizations along the eastern coast of the United States from Stanford, Connecticut to Miami,
Florida.
Police organizations became my
laboratory writing my M.A. thesis (A
Social Psychological Study of the Police Organization, the Anatomy of a Riot,
1976) and my Ph.D. dissertation (The
Police Paradox: Systematic Exploration in the Paradoxical Dilemma of the Police
and the Policed, 1978).
For my master's thesis, I spent nine months in Fairfax County,
Virginia unraveling a riot in the black section in a largely upscale white
suburb.
There a
white police officer unloaded his service revolver on an unarmed 27-year-old
African American in a Seven/Eleven store after the young man attempted to
defend himself with the officer's nightstick.
A riot followed.
The American
Management Association was given the contract to find out what happened, why it
happened, and what could be done to avoid it happening again. I was hired to be embedded in the Fairfax
County Police Department to study how they discharged their duties in an attempt to find answers to these questions.
Commuting back
and forth between Fairfax, Virginia and Tampa, Florida every week to attend classes at the
University of South Florida was an
arrangement some of my professors didn’t favor but tolerated.
This was all before the Information Age and
laptops and smart phones.
My Ph.D. dissertation was based on studies of several
communities. These data revealed a consistent trend showing communities essentially get the police they deserve, as police appear to be a mirror image of the community they serve.
One of the interventions in this
study was that of the police force of Raleigh, North Carolina. I was brought in when the police force of
some 550 officers essentially mutinied by refusing to protect and serve the
community because of grievances against the chief.
The Free Press Publishing Company showed an interest in publishing my
master's thesis as a book, but a reviewer said it read too much like a novel
and not like social research.
The possibility of publishing was shelved when I joined Honeywell,
Inc. in 1980. But I have bounded copies of these
studies, and they are housed in my library.
This is all offered as preface to your remarks and my comments, which follow.
*
* *
From what I have read, and I am privy only to that, Ferguson, Missouri was a perfect differential
equation to have a spontaneous combustible episode.
In the Ferguson City Police Force of some fifty officers, 90
percent are white and 10 percent are African American.
Complicating the matter further, nearly 70
percent of the community is non-white with job opportunities for young people
far below the national average, adding to the festering mix, a high
percentage of black youngsters, especially young men are grade and high school
drop outs.
I have no data on the educational level of members of the
Ferguson City Police Department, but I know from experience that the higher
percentage of college graduates on a police force the higher the flexibility
and tolerance of the officers to execute their duties in a nonviolent and
non-confrontational manner.
Conversely,
the lower the educational level, the greater the potential for untoward police
behavior and therefore the potential for human combustibles.
As for the Trayvon Martin case, that was a tragedy not unlike
what happened in Herndon, Virginia those many years ago when I was brought in
to study the cause of the riot.
The
officer who killed that 27-year-old man served no jail time, but left the
police force. I would imagine in the
minds of many in Herndon today of African American descent that was not right or just or appropriate to the action. There is no palliative for that kind of pain.
A theory in psychology called “reaction formation” has much in common with theories on, or relating to physical combustion.
What triggers an act, an unconscionable act,
an act inconsistent with the general timbre and temper of the person, can have
been festering in the subconscious for a long, long time.
Then something happens, which can be totally unrelated to the precipitous behavior, and emotional control is lost and restrain is snapped!
Something said or done, or experienced triggered this spontaneous
release of pent up emotions.
A life can change in a single instant.
Here in Tampa, a man was using his cell phone
in a movie theater and a 77-year old former police officer, told him to turn it
off. The man threw popcorn at the old
man. The old man unloaded his revolver
on him and killed the young husband and father of three children.
The 77-year-old man is out on bail as this is being written, and
is using the same defense as George Zimmerman used in the Trayvon Martin case to
receive his acquittal, the Florida “stand your ground law.”
How popcorn was life threatening is beyond me,
but we all live in an insane age which has a lot in common with the novel of
Anthony Burgess, “A Clockwork Orange” (1962), where the criminals become the
police. Read it and you will see my
point.
* * *
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