The problem with the police - it's not just about race [View all]

[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.