Session 11: The State, Guns and Violence

Session 11: The State, Guns & Violence
Chair: Rebecca Frischkorn

When Saviour Becomes Serpent: The Psychology of Police Violence
William Vlach
Irving Street Associates; Psych. Professional Group, San Francisco Police Department, USA

One of the more disturbing issues in the study of violence are the occasions when those entrusted with protection of society perpetuate the very violence they are sworn to prevent.  Under certain situations the police officer may break the ideal of to protect and to serve.  These events are particularly troubling in the context of democratic societies where the citizen is the guiding force of policy and implementation.  In these societies demonstrations against government policy, globalization, and war are held as a right.  When the police misbehave, the very basis of a free society comes into question.  Likewise, in the not so public realm of routine investigations, if the officer harms individuals of a less powerful group (ethnic minority, children, women, the poor, lower class), the  ongoing alienation of that group from society may eventually create mass violence, e.g., the Rodney King riots, Los Angeles, 1991.  This paper examines the historical sources of police violence, the socio-cultural reinforcers,  and the psychological dynamics involved. The emphasis of the paper is on psychological antecedents.  These include:  the violent-prone personality; developmental stages of police work; police culture; responses to the experience of helplessness; the mechanisms of  scapegoating, trauma and vicarious traumatization; the heroic script; stresses derived from family, organization, and the community, and identification with the super ego.  These are examined through the presentation of case studies.  Prevention strategies are recommended for the enhancement of the resilient cop.   The author is a clinical psychologist who has worked with urban law enforcement personnel for over twenty years and served as coordinator of a psychological group treating police officers.

Since the controversial Supreme Court decisions on the constitutionality of the death penalty in the 1970s, two-thirds of all executions in the US have taken place in just five southern states: Texas, Florida, Virginia, Louisiana and Georgia. Only two of these states have executed women in the post-Furman period. In February 1998, 38-year-old Karla Faye Tucker became the first woman to be executed by the State of Texas since 1863. In March 1998, 54-year-old Judias Buenoano became the first woman to be executed by the State of Florida since 1845. Every execution is of significance but those of Tucker and Buenoano were particularly momentous events in that the condemned were female, white, and the first women to be legally executed in their respective states for over a century. They were also the first women to be executed in the US since 1984. These executions were important political and legal markers, not least because they provided significant and symbolic breaks with a paternalistic view of female murderers, that was historically and culturally constructed within the southern region. As one BBC journalist observed in 1998, ‘to the majority of Texans who support the death penalty, the case of Karla Faye Tucker was no different to the 144 death row inmates executed in the Lone Star state in the past two decades. In their view, she got what she deserved’. Texas and Florida arguably constitute the most dynamic of the Sunbelt states. Both have undergone far-reaching political, economic, demographic and cultural transformations in the past fifty years that have impacted on the states’ penal practices and death penalty politics. As a result the cases of Tucker and Buenoano provide excellent historical and contemporary case studies for considering questions on the legitimization of state violence against female murderers, gender equality and capital punishment, and representations of capital female defendants. This paper therefore looks at these particular aspects of violence in the public domain.

No abstract presently available