People Aren’t Familiar with Violence Anymore
The fundamental disconnect between American citizens and their police officers explained
Most US citizens don’t encounter a whole lot of raw physical violence on a typical day compared to their ancestors1. To be clear, this is a good thing. It’s a sign of societal progress. But it has some drawbacks.
The present-day experience is unlike the pioneers and colonists of old who made the dangerous trek across the Atlantic Ocean to establish a life in America. Violence2 and struggle3 were far more common4 for them. Granted, that was the 18th century. A lot has changed since then. So, let’s look at a slightly more recent example: World War II.
Nearly an entire generation of American men were sent into the armed forces to fight fascism across the world in the 1940s. That same generation’s women stepped up by working factory jobs that were traditionally the domain of men at that time5.
Every generation prior to now has experienced a major violent event—or several6—together. To briefly highlight some of these moments from American history…we had a revolution, a civil war, two world wars, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Gulf War, and the Global War on Terror. And the Cold War was the backdrop for at least three of these violent events.
History is written in blood, it seems.
But since the end of the Vietnam War, service in our military has been entirely voluntary. It’s a remarkable feat that the most powerful country on the planet has been able to, thus far, run its military without enforcing mandatory service requirements seen in other countries7.
This has led to an interesting conundrum, however. The number of people in the US who have served, or at least know someone directly who has served, has dropped precipitously8. The typical American citizen is no longer capable of truly understanding the purpose and function of the military beyond a theoretical level because they have no direct connection to it.
An increasing number of Americans have become intellectually detached from the institutions that provide for their safety. Which means they’re becoming less familiar with what is required to ensure that safety.
Humans tend to distrust things they don’t understand9, and now institutions like law enforcement are contending with distrust from a growing segment of the American population, the likes of which they’ve never encountered before.
Law enforcement, as an industry, found itself under increased scrutiny after Michael Brown’s death in 201210. That scrutiny became severe after the death of George Floyd in 202011. I’ve touched on many of the issues that spawned from those events in previous articles.
Some scrutiny is justified in the sense that cops are public servants and are therefore answerable to the public. But a significant portion of public scrutiny appears to be borne out of a fundamental lack of familiarity with the reality of violence12.
Violence is a reality cops are exposed to regularly. That includes things like murder, domestic violence, sexual violence, gang violence, child abuse, human trafficking, drive-by shootings, home invasions, and a thousand scenarios in between and beyond. All of these issues can, and sometimes do, involve the use of necessary violence to solve a problem13.
Using force against a person, regardless of the reason, will look violent and messy. Making someone do something they don’t want to do, like taking a spousal abuser to jail, will rarely look clean and efficient. Movie fights involve choreography and rehearsals. Street fights involve alcohol and poor decisions. Even professional fights in a boxing ring or a Mixed Martial Arts gym aren’t pretty.
Because we live in a polite society that rarely experiences violence on an individual level compared to much of the world, the everyday citizen lacks the ability to fully understand why a police officer must sometimes resort to violence to solve a problem14.
However, the everyday citizen is so detached from the reality of violence that when they see a viral video spreading online involving police officers using violence to solve problems, they automatically react negatively toward the officers, even if those officers are responding to a legitimate threat.
It’s good to point out when bad cops do bad things. However, it’s become common practice in American media to automatically blame the police when violence occurs rather than the people who created the circumstances that forced the violent encounter in the first place.
This can be observed outside law enforcement as well. Jordan Neely’s death on a subway in New York City was an excellent example of this phenomenon. Below is an excerpt from a news article wherein a witness to the incident described the actions of Daniel Penny on the subway that day15:
“he’s a hero,” said the passenger, who has lived in New York City more than 50 years.
The witness, who described herself as a woman of color, said it was wrong for Bragg to charge Penny with second-degree manslaughter.
“It was self-defense, and I believe in my heart that he saved a lot of people that day that could have gotten hurt,”
Despite this and other eyewitness accounts, a spate of news articles have been published by a cavalcade16 of media17 sources18 with negative slants regarding Daniel Penny’s actions.
Why is that? Why did all these news organizations and opinion blogs immediately counter information provided by a person who was there when it happened?
Recall the title of this article and consider the fact that most people in polite society are unfamiliar—and therefore uncomfortable—with the reality of violence.
If the public has no informed basis from which to judge the circumstances that lead to violence, they will invariably take issue with anyone who is forced to resort to violence in order to solve a violent problem. Since that’s part of the job description for American police officers, this presents all of us who want a just and safe society with a serious problem.
References
1. Shermer, M. (2011, October). The Decline of Violence: Be skeptical of claims that we live in an ever more dangerous world. Scientific American. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-decline-of-violence/
2. Steil, M. & Post, T. (2002, September). Hundreds of Settlers Killed in Attacks. Minnesota Public Radio. http://news.minnesota.publicradio.org/features/200209/23_steilm_1862-m/part4.shtml
3. Digital History. (2021). Death in Early America. Digital History. http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/topic_display.cfm?tcid=72
4. Backus, P. G. (2022, January). "Medicine has Scarcely Entered its Threshold": Medicine in the 1700s. American Battlefield Trust. https://www.battlefields.org/learn/articles/medicine-has-scarcely-entered-its-threshold-medicine-1700s
5. National Archives. (2016, August). Women in the Work Force during World War II. US National Archives and Records Administration. https://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/wwii-women.html
6. Frommer, F. (2023, May). Greatest Generation. Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Greatest-Generation
7. World Population Review. (2023). Countries with Mandatory Military Service 2023. World Population Review. https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/countries-with-mandatory-military-service
8. Pew Research Center. (2011, November). The Military-Civilian Gap: Fewer Family Connections. Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2011/11/23/the-military-civilian-gap-fewer-family-connections/
9. Kenrick, D. T. (2011, July). Why the Human Brain Is Designed to Distrust. Psychology Today. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/sex-murder-and-the-meaning-life/201107/why-the-human-brain-is-designed-distrust
10. AP News Wire. (2022, August). New oversight plan means closer scrutiny of St. Louis police. The Independent. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/ap-michael-brown-jason-stockley-louis-black-b2150761.html
11. Dimeo, J. (2022, May). Police Oversight Boards Proliferate After George Floyd's Death. Route Fifty. https://www.route-fifty.com/public-safety/2022/05/police-oversight-boards-proliferate-after-george-floyds-death/367567/
12. Gramlich, J. (2020, November). What the data says (and doesn’t say) about crime in the United States. Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2020/11/20/facts-about-crime-in-the-u-s/
13. Grant, T. & Faul. A. (2023, April). Nashville police officers speak about response to mass shooting: 'Training is what kicked in'. ABC News. https://abcnews.go.com/US/nashville-police-officers-speak-response-mass-shooting-training/story?id=98354865
14. Friedersdorf, C. (2023). Enforcing the Law Is Inherently Violent. The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/06/enforcing-the-law-is-inherently-violent/488828/
15. Rosenberg, Rebecca. (2023, May). Witness to Jordan Neely chokehold death calls Daniel Penny a 'hero'. Fox News. https://www.foxnews.com/us/witness-jordan-neely-chokehold-death-calls-daniel-penny-hero
16. Carroll, J., Jimenez, O., & Levenson, E. (2023, May). Family of Jordan Neely criticizes subway chokeholder’s ‘indifference’ as prosecutors meet with medical examiner’s office. CNN. https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/08/us/jordan-neely-subway-chokehold/index.html
17. Shuham, M. (2023, May). How the Media Made a Villain Out of Jordan Neely. HuffPost. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/jordan-neely-daniel-penny-homicide-new-york-media_n_64625ebae4b005be8ff529cb
18. Cramer, M., Meko, H., & Nierenberg, A. (2023, May). What We Know About Jordan Neely’s Killing. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/05/nyregion/jordan-neely-chokehold-death-subway.html
Very good job on this article. Your points and considerations explain how the public consumes information from either news video, cell phone and police body cam footage.