Police abuse of power, it's not just race - The Stanford Prison Experiment

[NCcoast]

I haven't seen anything posted about the Zimbardo experiment at Stanford as it relates to our current policing problem. Forgive me if this is repetition, but it does bear repeating.

If you're anywhere close to my age, mid 50's, your psychology 101 text was most likely written by Philip Zimbardo. Zimbardo became very famous for an experiment gone awry at Stanford Univ. in 1971. Two groups of male students were randomly selected to serve, one group as guards, one group as prisoners for I believe a week. The guards were given the trappings of authority, uniforms, mirrored glasses etc. and they were given a scheduled of tasks to preform. Take a look for yourself and see what happened.


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What this experiment says to me is that we all have the potential to slip into abusive behavior given ultimate authority over others. People who seek out that authority are probably more inclined to be abusers. When people are put in the position of having ultimate authority over others they have to be constantly checked and monitored.

After 9/11 the Bush administration took the gloves off of policing in America. From that time forward, we the public have been expected to acquiesce to all official authority immediately and without complaint. Any resistance is an open invitation for the abuse of power. And that attitude has caused the mess we're in. It's not just a race thing, although race can always be an element and accelerant.

Authority must be reasserted over beat cops by their upper command to let them know that abuse of the public is unacceptable. That's assuming that it not longer is.

[zeemike]

1. He proved that power corrupts absolutely

That was the conclusion that he learned, and that we should recognize.

[valerief]

2. This would also apply to multi-billionaires and their agents who serve as world leaders. nt

[suzanner]

4. or Republicans in congress/senate

like Gohmert trying to assert that, like accessory to a crime is punishable, ergo the President is an accessory to genocide if he supports Palestine.. like Republican Presidents haven't done the same thing and regardless that his assertion was pure speculation. There are examples of right wing authoritarian callous too numerous to count.

[valerief]

5. Yep, they're agents of the multi-billionaires as are the media. nt

[maindawg]

3. It was not 9-11

The police in America have a long history of violence. But the past is not the issue. The issue is the lack of training the lack of oversight the complete acceptance of corruption. The sacred rules they keep secret is the problem. Then the courts refuse to do their jobs and prosecute criminals who just happen to be police. Its as if they have a license to kill people. Especially poor people. Its open season on poor people thats for sure.
So the answer is to give oversight of the police to the FBI. Because no one oversees the FBI either, the police should have that job. That way they will be busy investigating one another. Another idea I have is to take their guns away from them. They obviously cannot be held accountable or act responsible. They can keep their gun in their car. They dont need to have a gun. All cities should try this .England cops do not have guns. People in England are just as crazy as Americans. In all of Europe I think they have 20 or 30 people killed by police. We have 500 a year I think, something like that.Its crazy.
When they pushed through the patriot act, they militarized the police. Thus violating the Posse Commodes act they forbids military use against the citizens. When the Ferguson cops rolled out the military style response to a few people protesting that was an illegal act. But they did that at Kent St. 40 years ago and no one went to jail or faced any punishment at all. They Killed JFK where is the police? Who was arrested? To this day, not one. We need fewer better trained better qualified with less weapons police.