Stay Cool, Man...
...by Mark Drake
Descriptions of a few recent encounters with police in our region prompted a review of some of the statements accumulated in our files. They suggest it's time to make the following observations:
Police are recruited from the general human population, and they come equipped with a variety of different temperaments. Presumably, psychological screening weeds out the massively pathological candidates, but people do change with time -- and anyway, tests are notoriously imperfect to begin with.
Police are also equipped with a variety of weapons and techniques for dealing with even the most unexpected of situations in which they might face any sort of physical resistance. But in order for them to be absolutely confident that they're ready for anything, they need at least occasional live practice.
Consider that nearly all young men, many (if not most) not-so-young ones, and quite a few women can be provoked to a defensive physical response -- almost as an unconscious reflex -- when subjected to sudden pain, unexpected physical roughing, or even to sufficiently rank insult or degrading treatment.
I don't know whether or not academy training devotes attention to the uses to which this human reflexive response to manhandling can be put, but surely the worst sort of police are exquisitely aware of them.
So before you find yourself being grabbed, shoved, or yanked around by a cop, or otherwise suffering physical contact of a sort that seems unnecessarily disrespectful and provocative, calmly consider whether you might want to train yourself ahead of time not to make the normal, human response he may be trying to provoke. Why would you want to feed his game even if it weren't heavily stacked against you (as of course it is)? This also applies to non-physical provocation. If you allow someone to succeed in really irritating you by rude or sneering or pointless or repetitive or irrelevant, prying questionning, you're setting yourself up to lose it when that unnecessary, brusque physical contact (even if it's a small one) finally occurs. And even if it doesn't come to that, hey, if you pick up that he's trying to push your buttons, why do him the favor of dutifully responding?
Yes, they can, if they feel like it: Waste your time, handcuff you unnecessarily (and unnecessarily tightly), ignore obvious physical limitations that make it unsuitable to lock your hands behind you, arrest you without cause, impound your car punitively, leave you in a closed cop car in summer for substantial periods after leaving the car and turning off the air conditioner, dawdle on the way to booking while you're strapped in a back seat which has been thoughtfully loaded with cop gear so that there's no possible non-cramping position you can possibly assume*, or even hurt you.
But they can't make you respond in kind to merely provocative bullying. To paraphrase that other famous Smokey, "Only you can prevent flareups!"
*Not a fancied list -- each of these items is taken from specific incidents reported to CLMP.
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