Tyre Nichols
Video shows Tyre Nichols calling for his mother, beaten by officers now charged in his death
I have not yet seen the video of the horrible police attack on Tyre Nichols, but did hear just a bit of it on a news podcast - guess I'm too cowardly to watch it, at least so far.
After the murder of George Floyd by police, there was a lot of talk about reorganization and retraining the police, to help keep such a thing and others like it from happening again. But then an election approached, the Republicans characterized the idea as defunding the police, and everyone seemed to step back from the idea. They should not have.
Thinking of police brutality, I was reminded of a notorious experiment I learned about in a college psychology class: the Stanford prison experiment (there was a 2015 movie made about this too). Here's a brief description of the experiment from Wikipedia ...
The Stanford prison experiment (SPE) was a psychological experiment conducted in the summer of 1971. It was a two-week simulation of a prison environment that examined the effects of situational variables on participants' reactions and behaviors. Stanford University psychology professor Philip Zimbardo led the research team who administered the study ....
Those volunteers selected to be "guards" were given uniforms specifically to de-individuate them, and instructed to prevent prisoners from escaping. The experiment officially started when "prisoners" were arrested by real Palo Alto police. Over the following five days, psychological abuse of the prisoners by the "guards" became increasingly brutal. After psychologist Christina Maslach visited to evaluate the conditions, she was upset to see how study participants were behaving and she confronted Zimbardo. He ended the experiment on the sixth day ...
I don't doubt that most police try to do a good job, but it's just true that something bad happens to people, not all but many, when they are given a lot of power over others, along with a lack of accountability (qualified immunity). Democrats must keep trying to pass the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, which would be a start at addressing the problem. But nothing will bring the dead back to life.
I have not yet seen the video of the horrible police attack on Tyre Nichols, but did hear just a bit of it on a news podcast - guess I'm too cowardly to watch it, at least so far.
After the murder of George Floyd by police, there was a lot of talk about reorganization and retraining the police, to help keep such a thing and others like it from happening again. But then an election approached, the Republicans characterized the idea as defunding the police, and everyone seemed to step back from the idea. They should not have.
Thinking of police brutality, I was reminded of a notorious experiment I learned about in a college psychology class: the Stanford prison experiment (there was a 2015 movie made about this too). Here's a brief description of the experiment from Wikipedia ...
The Stanford prison experiment (SPE) was a psychological experiment conducted in the summer of 1971. It was a two-week simulation of a prison environment that examined the effects of situational variables on participants' reactions and behaviors. Stanford University psychology professor Philip Zimbardo led the research team who administered the study ....
Those volunteers selected to be "guards" were given uniforms specifically to de-individuate them, and instructed to prevent prisoners from escaping. The experiment officially started when "prisoners" were arrested by real Palo Alto police. Over the following five days, psychological abuse of the prisoners by the "guards" became increasingly brutal. After psychologist Christina Maslach visited to evaluate the conditions, she was upset to see how study participants were behaving and she confronted Zimbardo. He ended the experiment on the sixth day ...
I don't doubt that most police try to do a good job, but it's just true that something bad happens to people, not all but many, when they are given a lot of power over others, along with a lack of accountability (qualified immunity). Democrats must keep trying to pass the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, which would be a start at addressing the problem. But nothing will bring the dead back to life.
posted by crystal | 9:07 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home