“Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts
absolutely.” Lord Acton’s timeless statement is applicable to legal and illegal
power alike, for each is subject to abuse. The victims are those whose wills
are bent through either harm or the threat of injury. Put another way, the
human brain may lack sufficient cognitive, emotional, and perceptual machinery
to check the instinctual plus socialized power-aggrandizing urge. This
vulnerability is particularly apparent in viewing video showing a police
employee violently over-react in a situation that quite obviously should not
have involved violence. Although anger doubtlessly plays a crucial role in the
trigger that unleashes the police violence, the more subtle suspension of
cognition and warping of perception is also in the mix.
In December 2014, a 23 year-old policeman in Victoria,
Texas, pulled over Pete Vasquez, aged 76, because Vasquez’s car did not show an
inspection sticker. As Vasquez was trying to explain that his car was exempt—a point
that the police chief later confirmed—the policeman grabbed the old man, pushed
him to the ground, and used a tazer gun twice.
“What the hell are you doing? This gentleman is 76 years old,” a sales manager
watching the incident cried.[1]
Clearly very angry at Vasquez, the policeman yelled at the onlooker, who seems
to have suddenly feared for his own safety.
That the reasonable reaction from a third-party triggered
more anger instead of any second-guessing, at least visibly, suggests that the
policeman was not in control of his faculties. Crucially, he was not in
sufficient control of himself to handle the power that he had been given by
law. Psychologically, he evinced a weakness in handling the power in the
context of not understanding why the car was exempt from having to show an
inspection sticker. An arrogance in not wanting to admit even to himself that
he did not understand what he himself had flagged, and a cognitive lapse in
assuming that he could not be wrong likely contributed to his need to be in
charge and thus his anger at Valsquez for trying to correct him. The anger
itself was too much for the policeman, for it eclipsed reason and even
perception whose impairment rendered any internal mechanism of self-regulation
insufficiently operative. In short, he
used power beyond the capacity of his brain, emotionally, cognitively, and
perceptually.
It may be that the authority given to police employees generally
is not in keeping with the capacity of the human brain to process and handle
power exercisable over other people. Compounding the problem, the police chief
talked only about taking “a real hard look at some of the actions that occur
within the department,” rather than arresting the aggressor even though the
latter action would befit a person who had lost control of his faculties and
acted out violently without reason. That the policeman was shifted to an
administrative duty is itself an indication that official accountability would
come up short within the police department. The implication is that the general
public (and city officials) should not rely on departments’ internal-affairs
departments to impartially investigate such cases and render sufficient
punishment to “their own.” Put another way, the conflict of interest in the
very nature of an internal-affairs department is inherently unethical because
it can be expected to result in compromised investigations and decisions. To
hold a police employee accountable, we must look beyond police departments.
Although the district attorney said the policeman could face
charges including official oppression, injury to elderly, aggravated assault
and assault, the grand jury stage may be rigged to favor police employees. That
is to say, the system itself may enable the propensity of the human brain to
over-react with violence when in a position of power over another person
without a sufficient internal check. Given the risk of aggrandized uses of
power by police employees, candidates for local offices not only in Texas, but
in each of the forty-nine other member-states in the U.S., might consider
proposing institutionally and personally independent agencies to hold lapsing
police employees accountable. Additionally, legislation changing the
instructions to grand juries making it less difficult to indict an employee of
a police department could be pursued. Especially if scientists find that the
human brain is in fact ill-equipped to handle the power typically given to
police employees, then either some of that power should be taken away, which
may not be practical, or countervailing changes to grand-jury instructions
enacted.
