Catch and Kill
Kevin J. Mullen
All Americans, police officers most definitely included, (1992) were revolted at the recently released home video showing a group of Los Angeles police officers mercilessly beating an unarmed black man. Some see the video as "business as usual" for the Los Angeles police department except this time a video camera was turned their way; others see the incident as part of a larger pattern of blatant racial hatred; many find it simply incredible that trained police officers could resort to such "inhuman” behavior in this day and age.
In fact, though, if we dare think about, what the scene evokes is nothing so much as an image from our own more primitive past. Strip away the uniforms and vehicles, and what remains is a perfect rendering of a group of Paleolithic hunters bringing down its prey. Therein, perhaps, lies a bit of an understanding of how such atrocities can occur. For most of our human experience, in the long thousands of years before "history" and the development of agriculture set us on the road to “civilization," our species lived by hunting. Banded together in small groups, man ranged the savannah, looking for game to run down and kill so that his people could live. If we look back far enough, some say, the prey was sometimes our own kind. Behaviors now considered dysfunctional -- like those shown on the video -- were once part of the survival package of the race.
A historical parallel can be found in the "hue and cry" of Saxon England where, when a crime in progress was discovered, any member of the community was expected to raise the alarm. The entire group then took off after the culprit until the chase ended with the less well known "catch and kill." Actual guilt or innocence seems not to have played a big part in the proceedings. It is in this context, perhaps, that the behavior of the men in the video can be partially understood. Police work is one of the few occupations in which society's general rules against the use of violence are suspended, albeit under strictly controlled conditions. How many institutions expect –indeed require -- their members, under certain circumstances, to beat other people up? How many jobs allow one group of people to chase another?
What can happen in a vehicle pursuit is that the usual rules of civil behavior are suspended in the excitement of the chase. The quarry takes off and the pursuer gives chase; and the adrenalin surges in both, as any officer who has raced through a city’s streets can tell you, resulting in spectacular high speed driving -- often over a "crime" which started as a minor traffic infraction. Thousands of years of learned behavior are swept away in a trice and once again the pack is racing across the savannah in hot pursuit of its prey. When the chase ends, unless reason intervenes, the results can be as we all saw on national television.
We kid ourselves that we are people of reason and that all those primitive behaviors lie buried in our distant past. But what are the violent turf gangs now plaguing urban America if not atavistic hunting packs transported to the our inner city neighborhoods? And what of the otherwise seemingly respectable folks who participate in lynch mobs, then wonder sheepishly the next morning about what had come over them the night before?
Much of what we call law, custom, and manners were developed to control just such elemental impulses dating from that long period before we gave up the chase. The filmed actions of the officers are not so much a mark of our fall from grace; rather the universal revulsion at their behavior is a measure of how far we have come.
But these weren't prehistoric hunters or Saxon peasants. Neither were they uneducated street punks or members of some spur-of-the-moment lynch mob. They were highly trained police officers in one of America's most progressive cities. It seems that no class is immune. Army soldiers are highly trained also and work under even closer supervision than police officers but military commanders are well aware that battlefield atrocities are most likely to occur with the release that comes at the point of victory. "There's a second surge of adrenaline once the fight is over" says Lieutenant Colonel John Altenberg, an expert on battlefield behavior." "You're still alive, and you're mad –and that’s when potential for war crime occurs." Measures were taken during the recent Gulf War to prevent that from happening. The same phenomenon is known to the police. Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl Gates, in his comments after the incident, was particular critical of the sergeant on the scene "because one of his explicit duties after a violent arrest is to prevent excited officers from inflicting unnecessary injury." Street wise police managers know that these things can happen and impose procedures requiring supervisors to be on hand to stop officers who are about to "lose it."
Most pursuits don't end in beatings. Training, self-restraint, strong assertative supervision, and common decency are usually enough to keep baser impulses in check. But when the conditions are right, particularly after a long chase at extremely high speeds through city streets, things can go wrong. It’s a safe bet that the officers shown on the video, if honest with themselves, couldn't really explain why they did what they did.
To explain something is not to excuse it, though. Modern men are not primitive hunters; and police officers especially, invested as they are by society with the authority to use force in its behalf, must be held accountable for what they do. In the case at hand, justice should take its rightful course. But those police policy makers, who haven't perhaps given it much thought, and who might think it can't happen in their department, should realize what's going on and look to measures which cut down the chances that things get crazy on their watch.