Faculty Articles
A forensic psychological perspective on criminal looters, suicide by police seekers, and bad cops: An imperfect cross cultural storm
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2015
NSUWorks Citation
Johnson, Ronn; Jacobs, Eric; Ross, David B.; and Matteson, Rande, "A forensic psychological perspective on criminal looters, suicide by police seekers, and bad cops: An imperfect cross cultural storm" (2015). Faculty Articles. 245.
https://nsuworks.nova.edu/fse_facarticles/245
COinS
Comments
Incendiary events can escalate placing police officers on the offensive and peaceful protesters into criminal looters or rioters. In recent events, the media has glorified violence and poor decisions of both police officers and protesters. The media has brought more attention to criminal looters, suicide by police seekers, and bad cops. Law enforcement agencies educate officers using different strategies to handle potentially violent situations. Strategies such as “siege mentality,” where the officers engage in excessive force to ensure protection and deescalate tense situations has been favored by many departments following the riots in the 1960s and the Rodney King riots (Chaney & Robertson, 2013; Kane & White, 2009). Long standing racial prejudice still influences police departments today. Bad cops are often a byproduct of socioeconomical status, poor, rash decisions, and inflammatory media coverage exacerbating the event. Forms of police misconduct can include police crime, police corruptions, and abuse of authority (Kane & White, 2009). Bad cops often take the law into their own hands, feeling they need to do whatever is needed to complete the task. In other events, the officers truly feel their life or the lives of others are in danger and use excessive force as a last resort.