The Elaborate Social Identity Model

Psychology is filled with studies about how individual human beings react when they are part of a crowd. Emotions rise and fall, decisions are often made in the context of everything around them, laced with aggregated individual characteristics. The complexity of the variables involved may have led our political leaders to miss a very big point. As powerful as an armored personnel carrier, military weapons and tactics, body armor and rapid response teams (SWAT to riot to…) might be to grapple with that elusive “terrorist” or “cartel” threat, having a militarized police force has a negative self-fulfilling psychological impact on both gathered crowds… and the soldiers… er… often under-trained, over-armed police force itself.

Think about it. Who exactly is training those… officers… to use that equipment, particularly in small towns? Little things that you learn in the armed forces… like never point your gun at anyone unless you intend to use it. Look at the photographs in Ferguson and count how many times that little military rule appears to be either ignored or perhaps not even known by the local military-dressed and equipped cops. Listen to the epithets from supposedly well-trained officers who should be trained to remain neutral and professional in their duties, men who apparently feel that they have now been imbued with the God-like power of the massive forces that stand beside them and the special weapons and equipment that they have at their disposal. How willing are such over-armed, under-trained forces to engage in physical attack?

Now let’s look at the crowd themselves. The title above is a field of study/model that examines crowds precisely in such high stress situations. “Science writer Vaughan Bell gave a great hypothetical example of this behavioral model during the U.K. riots in 2011. Picture yourself on a bus with lots of strangers. Technically, you all share a common goal of reaching your destination safely. But you each have a social identity that doesn't necessarily overlap: the old people, the commuters, the annoyingly loud teenagers. If the bus suddenly comes under attack, however, those various identities are united by a single goal: defend against the outside force. ‘You didn't lose your identity,’ writes Bell, ‘you gained a new one in reaction to a threat.’

“Here's where the militarization of local police becomes so problematic. Officers in full-on riot gear give all the individuals in a protest crowd a common enemy. It's not that everyone in the protest crowd suddenly assumes the identity of a violent jerk--it's that the many peaceful protestors feel a sort of kinship with the violent jerks against the aggressive police. Despite their differences, they're united by a single goal: defend against the outside force.

“Psychologist Clifford Stott surveyed the latest evidence on crowd behavior in a 2009 report for British officials. Stott explained that an aggressive approach by authorities leads ‘directly to a change in the nature of the crowd's social identity,’ a shift from me and you into us and them. The result is a self-fulfilling cycle: As the crowd gains a sense of unity, the authorities become more aggressive against the unified mob they initially feared, which in turn enhances the crowd's sense of unity. Any rioting that results will be perceived as an inevitable outcome of bad crowd behavior, writes Stott, when in fact that behavior was ‘largely and inadvertently initiated by police tactical responses.’

“This insight has led to a new set of best practices by crowd police (much of it outlined by Radley Balko, author of Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces). The key is establishing a ‘graded’ intervention approach that only escalates if absolutely necessary. The first grade deploys low-visibility officers--those in standard uniforms rather than those with helmets, shields, and batons--who integrate with the crowd and establish legitimacy. Another grade of targeted interventions of isolated troublemakers can follow. Yet another with police in paramilitary gear can remain nearby but out of sight, as a last resort.” FastCompany.com, August 27^th.

The failed policies of providing local police with provocative weapons and tactics were generated from our reaction to the events of 9/11/2001 and our mega-colossal failed “war on drugs.” Not only do we generate “us vs. them” reactions during peaceful protests countered by paramilitary police, but entire communities have aggregated that reaction to their local police force in general: cops that seldom protect the community but often enter it to intimidate and enforce laws against the locals. They see the police as violent and aggressive enemies, never to be trusted.

Add the newly-justified “closet racism” (some of it not so well-closeted) – disguised as legislators voting against immigration reform but quite willing to disenfranchise voters with gerrymandering and voter qualification laws that somehow seem to apply heavily to minorities – and you see a multiplier of the “us vs. them” effect. If you truly believe that our country is heading in the right direction with these changes, then you probably won’t be disappointed with escalating conflict and a global view of the United States as a gun crazy nation where paramilitary “banana republic” police tactics are the norm.

I’m Peter Dekom, and we generally reap what we sow.