14 Year Old Boy Choked by Miami Police

[Phaetonic]

_http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/30/tremaine-mcmillian-14-year-old-miami-dade-police_n_3362340.html

A 14 year old boy was with his puppy, family and a friend on a Miami beach, when police started to harass him for roughhousing with his friend in the water, as teenagers tend to do. They asked him to point out his mom, which he did, and as he started to lead them that way, as he was asked, he was laid out on the ground and choked (injuring him and his puppy ), all for giving them a "look." So apparently now it's illegal to give cops "dehumanizing stares." I guess they expect to be treated like humans, while not offering the same in return. It's unbelievable to me that people like this are given guns to walk the streets and "keep us safe." Perhaps the police screening process should include screening for psychopathy, but that may be a long shot.

 

[whitecoast]

:( That's really disappointing behaviour on the part of those police. Sounds like some hyperactive combative/defensive programming. I wonder if people in those jobs are attracted to them to express it, or if they are inculcated with that conditioning once they step in the door? I heard once that, in prison brain scans, the guards almost universally came up with up-regulated sympathetic pathways, and the prisoners all had up-regulated parasympathetic pathways (the dissociative kind, not the empathic kind). I wonder if a similar test between police and citizens or residents of run-down neighbourhoods would reflect a similar pattern...

 

[Richs]

I notice that just as all bullies they always seem to beat up on someone who is generally in the defenseless category. Predators in the wild instinctively know which animals to leave strictly alone because to mess with them is pretty much suicidal. But, picking on women, old people, kids, that's pretty safe for bullies!

 

[Phaetonic]

I wonder if people in those jobs are attracted to them to express it, or if they are inculcated with that conditioning once they step in the door? I heard once that, in prison brain scans, the guards almost universally came up with up-regulated sympathetic pathways, and the prisoners all had up-regulated parasympathetic pathways (the dissociative kind, not the empathic kind). I wonder if a similar test between police and citizens or residents of run-down neighbourhoods would reflect a similar pattern...

Yeah, I guess there's some of both, and maybe those that are attracted to the power of being a police officer are more susceptible to that kind of conditioning? Certainly there are decent cops, but there seem to be a lot of not so decent ones as well, the recent Baltimore incident comes to mind...

I notice that just as all bullies they always seem to beat up on someone who is generally in the defenseless category. Predators in the wild instinctively know which animals to leave strictly alone because to mess with them is pretty much suicidal. But, picking on women, old people, kids, that's pretty safe for bullies!

True, it seems like a form of cowardice to me; maybe it's related to the up-regulated sympathetic pathways whitecoast mentioned? Like a fight-or-flight response gone haywire?

 

[whitecoast]

I notice that just as all bullies they always seem to beat up on someone who is generally in the defenseless category. Predators in the wild instinctively know which animals to leave strictly alone because to mess with them is pretty much suicidal. But, picking on women, old people, kids, that's pretty safe for bullies!

It's like people who justify domestic abuse by saying "people just get angry sometimes." Because those people NEVER beat up their own bosses. Or police. They know who they're allowed to abuse in the system and who they're not.