Bad Cop Psychopathy & Protective Politics: The Misuse of Force and Power

By H.L. Nixon

The goal of this book is to sharpen the light on police aggression and police brutality. The focus of it is on unscrupulous cops and the question: When do police aggression and brutality enter into the realm of police psychopathy?

For many years, there has been enormous tension in the American society between the police and some of its citizens. Thousands and thousands of examples demonstrate that the police too often have violated the civil rights of too many Americans. In the past, we viewed the atrocious acts of these cops as an aberration. With the advent of dash cams and the advancement of camera technology now on almost all of the cell phones of the millions of people who own them, we have come to recognize that these atrocities are not isolated incidents. In addition, YouTube is full of images that show just how gruesome some of these police beatings and killings are. Dare it to be said; today police brutality has progressed beyond vicious beatings to the murder of unarmed people.

Moreover, guns in the hands of a psychopath is bad for the entire society. That applies to an ordinary citizen or a cop. Leaders in police departments, in the mayor's office, on the city councils, in the State and Federal legislatures, and in Governors Offices can fix this problem. They must; however, have the courage and the conviction to make the necessary changes that eliminate police violence and gun access problems. When legislatures fail to act on these issues, their ideologies are incongruent with the majority of us.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Oct 15, 2019
• ISBN: 9781543987010

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Preface

My participation in marches and demonstrations is over primarily because of my age. Earlier in my life, I participated in several phases of the social justice movement, although not in a very big way. Today, I have asked myself, short of demonstrations and marches, what else I can do to show my displeasure about some of the issues I hear and read about every day. Thus, I chose to write this book because I believe that I should join in with the other critics in pointing out the inequities seen every day in the name of Justice. I use the word justice here; however, only because that is what it is typically called, not because I believe that integrity exists in that system. In short, I determined that I would express my grave concern regarding bad policing and the flawed court system that protects it in this book and the others I will write in the future.

Social injustice in America manifests itself in many forms. The form that has been prevalent in the public eye most recently is the legal system and policing. It is clear that there is an enormous problem in the treatment of African Americans and Latinos by America’s Legal System and law enforcement agencies. Bad policing and its protection have exceptional significance to me because I am a father, grandfather, father-in-law, uncle, brother and cousin of more than 100 Black men and boys. Additionally, when I think about the thousands of Black, Latino, White, Native American, Asian and international children whom I spent 40 years helping to educate, I realize that they, too, could be killed by out of control cops. The police have killed defenseless and non-resisting dads and granddads. They have also killed little boys who were seventh graders.

My observations have shown me that age and ethnicity do not always matter. They have killed defenseless Black men and women as old as 92 and Black children as young as 12-years old. They have also killed unarmed White men and women. To me, it is unthinkable for any of us to stand by without trying to do more to help stop the senseless killings that the legal system perpetuates.

As wicked as it is to end the life of any innocent person, I believe there is a special place in hell for people who kill children!!!

Introduction

This book is about unscrupulous cops. The spate of police shootings in the last five to six years of Black people who pose no true threat to anyone has brought to the national spotlight the seriousness of this glaring problem. People of color have complained about police mistreatment for years. Police leadership, heretofore, has arrogantly ignored their complaints with impunity.

New technology, i.e., camera phones, and dash cams, has brought to light numerous cases that show that the amount of force used by police in many cases is egregious. Before citizens began using cell phone videos, the cop’s version of what happened at the scene was more likely to be believed over the victim’s account. Cameras and videos are changing that dynamic. The ease in which police leadership can dismiss a victim’s complaint has diminished because of the damaging evidentiary images of what really happened is being brought into full view for the whole world to see and challenge. Moreover, today, cable news, MSNBC and CNN are looping scenes that show law enforcement savagely beating or shooting unarmed victims to death. Regular news programs such as ABC, NBC, CBS and others are reporting these incidents more frequently and in more detail. Each of these news outlets has assigned investigative reporters such as Trymaine Lee and many others to regularly go to the scene, gather information and report in real time what witnesses are saying about the tragic event. In addition, and perhaps, even more revealing is the huge number of videos viewable on YouTube and personal web pages.

The media outlets are also uploading their news reports about this matter to videos and posting them on their web pages, which can repeatedly be seen by the public. Further, many individuals and groups are publishing their own web pages that graphically demonstrate the solemnity of police brutality. As the public learns more and more about police transgressions, the louder it cries out for more transparency. Citizens are now demanding that body cams be worn by police so that their interactions with people will be recorded.

Collectively, the convergence of the camera and video technological advancements, news outlets and personal recordings have shed more light on this subject and has spawned strong negative social media reactions. Now, many people are asking, has the egregious manner in which the dispensers of such force crossed the line into the realm of psychopathy?

The Purpose

The goal of this book is to sharpen the light on police aggression and police brutality. The focus of it is on unscrupulous cops and the question: When do police aggression and brutality enter into the realm of police psychopathy?

For many years, there has been enormous tension in the American society between the police and the citizens. Thousands and thousands of examples demonstrate that the police too often have violated the civil rights of many Americans. These rights violations have involved police brutality that can be traced back to the mid-1800s when the city of New York formed its first police department. Back then, the brutality consisted mostly of clubbing people. Today, it consists of clubbing, kicking, stomping, breaking limbs and murdering people.

When questioned about the atrocious acts, police leadership and prosecutors usually respond by saying that the culprit cop acted within his training and authority. They might also say that this was an isolated case. Therefore, these bad cops are rarely prosecuted in court. District Attorneys generally play politics with the grand jury process to avoid bringing charges against cops who hurt innocent people. The few times that prosecutors have brought these perpetrator cops to trial, many juries have not convicted them.

While the legal system rarely condemns them, it does not mean that their aggressive and brutal behavior toward innocent people meet human or in some cases animal standards of decent treatment. Frequently there are news reports that indicate that a person has been arrested for animal cruelty for kicking, beating or otherwise mistreating a dog or other animal. In 1991, the media shocked us by showing just how cruel cops could be when it brought the vicious beating of Rodney King to our attention. Approximately Four cops kicked and stomped king while he lay helpless on the ground.

We viewed the atrocious acts of these cops as an aberration. With the advent of dash cams and the advancement of camera technology now on almost all of the cell phones of the millions of people who own them, we have come to recognize that these atrocities are not isolated incidents. In addition, YouTube is full of images that show just how gruesome some of these police beatings and killings are. Dare it to be said; today police brutality has progressed beyond vicious beatings to the murder of unarmed people.

Generally, individuals who mistreat animals are labeled as misfits in our society because beating or killing defenseless animals is deemed emotionally unbalanced. Given that we harshly judge people for inhumanely treating animals does a badge privilege individual who wear it from being judged unstable when they brutalize or kill people who do not deserve such treatment? Thus, returning to the question above: When do police aggression and brutality enter into the realm of psychopathy?

The psychology literature defines psychopathy as a significant behavioral disorder. Hirstein (2013) says that many scientists distinguish between a sociopath and psychopath. The term sociopath describes "less dangerous people who are seen more as products of their environment, including their upbringing. He says further, the term psychopath is used to refer to a more serious disorder that is linked to genetic traits that produce more dangerous individuals."

Other scholars make a distinction between primary psychopaths, whose condition is thought to be genetically linked, and secondary psychopaths, whose condition is believed to be environmentally linked. Nonetheless, all definitions share a common thread, i.e., a mental disorder. For more information on psychopathic disorders, go to:

(http://www.sociopathicstyle.com/psychopathic-traits/

Conceptual Framework

Police brutality has been written about for a long time by many investigators. In their book, Race and Police Brutality, Holmes and Smith (2008) explored two questions: 1) why would cops risk severe punishment for using excessive force in Black neighborhoods and 2) why are citizens residing in impoverished neighborhoods the primary targets of extreme police aggression? They could not find answers in criminology research, so they investigated social psychology literature on intergroup interaction and found the threads that answered their questions. For the most part, those threads were linked to the lack of accountability.

Skolnick and Fyfe (2003) in their book Above the Law, Police and the Excessive Use of Force indicated that there are no simplistic answers to the complex problem of police brutality. They tried to put police brutality in perspective by addressing the issues raised by the Los Angeles police beating of Rodney King. In Part One of their book, they examined the occasions for police brutality. In that part, they scrutinized the circumstances in which police exceeded the limits of the law to control a group. In Part Two, they looked at how brutality could be explained. In that part, they found a causal relation in the sort of values and understanding street cops learn as they assume their jobs in many police departments. In Part Three, they wrote about how it could be remedied, i.e., they discussed administrative reform of police from both historical and managerial perspectives. They also discussed how police have and have not been made accountable by the courts.

Lawrence (2000) in her book The Politics of Force: Media and the Construction of Police Brutality, analyzed media coverage of police use of force because she was interested in the political dynamics in which marginalized ideas gain a symbolic and rhetorical advantage over more powerful opponents. In other words, she structured her study around the difficulty that police critics have in advancing what she called systemic claims about police brutality.

From a historical perspective, Johnson (2003), traced police brutality all the way back to 1894 in New York in her book, Street Justice, a History of Police Violence. She says, While the definition of police brutality has continually shifted, the relationship between police perpetrators and their victims remain the same. In earlier years, Jews and other Eastern Europeans were the victims, today it is African Americans and Latinos. She goes on to say that, supervisors of bad cops have always tried to conceal the brutality of their untoward personnel.

Griffin and Bernard (2003) studied police behavior using angry aggression theory to explain police use of extralegal force. As applied to police conduct, angry aggression theory argues that the chronic stress of police work along with the inability to respond to the actual sources of that stress increase both the perception of threats and the aggressiveness of responses to perceived threats. Moreover, social isolation of police officers increases their tendency to displace aggression onto visible and vulnerable targets in their immediate environment.

The Society for the Scientific Study of Psychopathy indicates that there are 16 different expressions regarding the variations in the psychopathic personas. A common thread that runs through all of these expressions is a form of antisocial behavior. Griffin’s and Bernard’s findings regarding police use of extralegal force are corroborated by two of the aforesaid 16 expressions of psychopathy. Chapter 1 of this book goes into the details of those two corroborated findings.

Additionally, aggressive behavior has been studied in numerous ways over the years. Some scholars have developed models that illustrate that individual differences in aggressiveness can be discerned in very young children (Rose & Neidermeyer, 1999). These authors also say that some factors can be identified that underlie aggressive behavior, i.e., social learning, and activation of aggressive behavioral scripts. Obliviously, provocation, in one way or another, has been studied the most.

In several studies, Weiner’s (1986) attribution theory has been used as a method for studying aggressive behavior. Weiner’s theory is concerned with how individuals interpret events and how this relates to their thinking. The application of this theory in the case of anger indicates that the cause of rage is ascribed to some sort of action that is controlled by that entity. In the case of two people, one person becomes angry when the other individual, in the eyes of that person, does something that causes that person to become annoyed.

On the other hand, some psychologists say that anger can be aroused in some individuals even if something has not been directly done to them. Watching a disagreeable television show can arouse anger in some people. Other theorists say that anger can come from pent-up frustration that has been held inside. That type of frustration can cause some people to become irritable. In recent years, irritability has come to be accepted by psychologists as a symptom of depression, which is a psychological disorder. In short, theorists say that in many cases, irritability is a precursor to anger and rage. Other scientists say that at best, irritability should be at least categorized as dysfunctional anger.

Some cops seem to have so much repressed anger that the slightest thing seems to set them off. They appear to have frustration, anxiety, and edginess that are combined into an aggressive bomb waiting to explode. Many of them seem to be itching for a confrontation so that can discharge their rage. Since citizens have begun recording police behavior when engaging with ordinary people, it has been demonstrated that some police personnel have reacted in violent, uncontrolled malice at people simply asking why they were being detained.

The Internet has story after story caught on camera where law enforcement personnel have reacted in a fit of anger, rather than with a demeanor befitting human interaction. These stories detail more and more of their fury. It seems that as these extreme reactions occur, the more deaths caused by the brutality of bad cops come to light. Records show that police killed 991 people in 2015. However, University of Nebraska criminologist Samuel Walker (2014) said, The incomplete nature of this data renders the recent spike in such deaths even harder to explain. The University of South Carolina criminologist Geoff Alpert (2014), who has long studied police use of deadly force said, The latest number of justifiable homicides, most likely represent significant undercounting. Moreover, we know that the concept of justified police homicides is nebulous. Videos show that more often than not, police killings of any sort are determined to be justified by law enforcement officials, as long they believe that the story is justifiable to the public.

The increase in the number of deaths at the hands of the police has been one of the reasons that Amnesty International (2015) says that the abuse of the use of deadly force by the police in the United States may be a violation of human rights. Essentially this organization is saying that the irresponsible use of deadly force in the deprivation of life is a violation of international law. In fact all human rights, civil and political, are protected by international and national laws and treaties.

It is hard to deny that there is a serious problem with policing in America. The authors of the books mentioned on the preceding pages along with many, many others clearly show that police brutality and the misuse of deadly force exist in many police departments across the country. These and other investigators have written a significant amount regarding police brutality from several viewpoints. Nevertheless, there does not appear to be much written about the psyche of the police perpetrators who kill unarmed people. Murdering children and individuals who are not threats is uncivilized and inhumane. This book discusses the psychopathy of police who murder children and unarmed adults and the system that protects them.

Chapter 1

Psychopathy

Unentitled Privilege and Anger

Hare (1996) indicated, Traditionally, affective and interpersonal traits such as egocentricity, deceit, calculating, selfishness and lack of empathy, and guilt or remorse have played a central role in the conceptualization of psychopathy. Essentially, psychopathy is defined by Hare in the context of an antisocial personality behavior disorder. In 1980, affective and interpersonal traits were changed because personality idiosyncrasies were harder to validate, and