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Old October 27, 2013, 06:46 PM   #6
pax
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Join Date: May 16, 2000
Location: In a state of flux
Posts: 7,520
Aggression is not the appropriate way to respond in all instances. Learning the skills of verbal de-escalation, learning how to communicate more effectively, learning how to understand how other people think – all of these skills can help you avoid violence. They can help you avoid violence directed at you, and they can help you avoid the necessity to direct violence at anyone else.

However. The fact that aggression is not the appropriate way to respond to all instances, does not mean that all instances can be avoided without violence. Particularly when we talk about EDP's, being able to avoid violence is a noble goal, but it is one that may not always be available to us.

For those who seriously wonder about such things, I have a strong book recommendation: Rory Miller's book Force Decisions, which articulates the issues extremely well indeed.

Here is a brief excerpt:

Quote:
This is one of the areas where the real world, the natural world, refuses to fit into a box that civilized people, people who believe in justice, would like. More than any other area, these are the uses of force that outrage citizens.

Here are the facts:

1) About citizens and what we want to believe: it is written into our laws, and maybe our genetics, that motive matters. We distinguish between accidental manslaughter and premeditated murder. The taking of life in self-defense is justifiable. The taking of the same life out of boredom is callous indifference. So we want to believe, maybe need to believe, that the man charging his children with a knife because he feels that he can do what he wants with his children (and they broke the lamp) should be treated differently than the same man doing the same thing because his medicines failed and he can't resist the voices any more.

That's what we want.

2) Force stops violence. The man slicing a woman's face with a razor may be an emotional disturbed person (EDP) whose medicines failed, but he will not be stopped by a kind word. In the time that you could formulate the thought and get the words out, the victim will be filleted, choking on her own blood.

The collision of these two facts is what outrages people. Force will be used, will have to be used, on EDP's unless our society changes to the extent that we no longer protect the innocent.

Emotionally disturbed, mentally ill or just suffering from a bad drug reaction, they do not deserve force, not in the sense of justice, not as some sort of punishment for their choices because the behaviors may not be choices. But society needs to protect the victims, and often the EDP as well.

However, it is even worse than that. As you remember from section 1, the threat chooses if force is to be used. At any point, merely by stopping bad actions and letting himself or herself be handcuffed, the threat can prevent force from being used. The threat also decides when he will give up. That is what ends the force.

Both of these are rational choices. Decisions. The nature of an altered state of consciousness is that the decisions made may not be rational.

If the threat is not responding to words, then verbal skills are off the table. Even if there was time to talk, which there often isn't. If the threat is not responding normally to pain (sometimes not feeling it, but sometimes not responding to the bargain inherent in pain compliance), then a low-level technique may be off the table as well. The threat may not even respond to exhaustion in a normal way. No other option but damage may be available.

This is hard to accept – with any sense of justice, someone who is not in control of his behavior deserves less force than someone who is choosing to be a threat. He certainly doesn't "deserve" more and it is unfair that he is more likely to die, not less, because of a rare inability to surrender.

It is NOT fair, but force is NOT ABOUT FAIR. It is about getting the job done and keeping people safe with the least injury that you can. It is horrible that a kid with a mental illness, and all of those cards stacked against him, is also at greater risk to die after hands of the men and women sworn to protect him. It is NOT fair, and in this case it is nature, life itself, dispensing the injustice, not the officer.
Miller has a lot more to say on this topic. I strongly recommend the book, and mourn the fact that I agree with him on the subject. Sometimes life sucks.

pax
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