With the proliferation of cell-phones, live-streaming, dash-cameras, and police body cameras; Americans have been inundated with footage of police incidents that often leave people wondering what happened, who was to blame, and what can be done to fix the problem. A few years ago, two incidents with police in St. Paul, Mn & Baton Rouge, La were taped or streamed live for the world to see and react. I am not going to waste anymore cyber space on another article trying to figure out who is more to blame for these incidents but there was an angle to this huge problem that I have not heard anyone bring up yet that I think is vital for us to discuss and consider.
During the many interviews and town hall debates that have been conducted over the past several months, I have heard both sides explain in brutal honesty the reality of what life is like policing and living in the inner cities of America. Residents have explained in brutal detail the realities of living in a crime and poverty ridden environment; often detailing the pain and fear they have every day of losing a loved one to street crime. Even more poignant was a recent CNN town hall discussion where residents described their history with the police and how many young black men and women experience intense fear and anxiety going out for a drive because they might get pulled over just because of the color of their skin.
On the flip-side of the coin, you have police officers describing what it is like to patrol on a daily basis these very same areas. You hear the officers who patrol these areas describe what it is like to patrol high crime areas where every traffic stop carries a higher degree of risk of getting hurt or encountering a criminal with a weapon and nothing to lose. Furthermore, the deteriorating relationships with police officers and the communities they patrol have added a whole new layer of fear; knowing how angry the citizens are with them and those emotions spilling over into more contemptuous interactions. In the same CNN town hall, current and retired officers described the difficulty of wearing multiple hats in these communities and have the feelings that they are being asked to do too much and provided little to no resources or training to handle it. Just last week, an article came out reporting that 49 Dallas police officers have quit due to many of these issues.
One has to ask ourselves, what kind of cumulative effects does all of this have on police officers and the citizens in these communities? What effect does long-term chronic stress, fear, anxiety, crime, and trauma have on the human brain and personality? The human brain has the ability to adapt to its environment to ensure its survival called plasticity. As we have seen in soldiers, the brain is exposed to a long-term and chronic life threatening stressors and it believes that this is how it is going to be forever. As a result, the brain decides to change and adapt so the person can react to the environment in ways that will improve the probability of surviving. In a soldier, they become more vigilant, react faster, quicker anger responses, better attention and focus, etc. Because the brain has changed, when they leave the environment the brain is still operating under the impression that nothing has changed and therefore causes all of the problems that we see when they leave the battlefield and come home. They struggle with anxiety, are quick to anger, hyper-vigilant, easily startled, insomnia, etc; often turning to drugs and alcohol to cope.
Do any of these sound familiar? Do we not hear the same exact things from police officers and citizens living in these communities? Think about that for a second…what down-stream problems would that create of people? How many times have we asked ourselves why the police officer was so quick to become agitated and use force? How many times have we asked why the citizen who was pulled over was so quick to be angry and confrontational? How many times have we asked why the officer shot somebody or why they used so much force to stop somebody who was not armed? How many times have we asked why the citizen who was shot didn’t just stop running or made a certain quick movement?
We can easily just say that the officer was racist or the citizen was a criminal and had it coming. That seems to be the debate that we see playing out in the news currently and there are cases where this might be true. However, if we look at these incidents through the lens that both parties as a result of living/working in a high crime & poverty stricken area are struggling with symptoms of PTSD than we have a different explanation for why these incidents are happening and perhaps a new approach to dealing with these incidents.
Of course they are a multitude of factors that go into this problem but what I am suggesting is a new perspective of looking and dealing with the problem. It is important to explore this hypothesis because if I am right, all the police training and socio-economic fixes may never stand a chance of working if the brains of the parties involved have changed and are causing the misperceptions, reactions, and emotions that perpetuate these incidents. We owe it to our police officers and citizens to figure this out and get them the help that they need because our country cannot afford to have these incidents keep happening.
