William Harmening
A state investigator in Illinois for 34 years, William Harmening wrote Crisis Intervention: The Criminal Justice Response to Chaos, Mayhem, and Disorder last year. He also teaches at Washington University: forensic psychology, criminology, and—this semester—crisis intervention. “We’ve had a living laboratory,” he says wryly.
If part of the goal is to stop panic from spiraling, where do you start?
There are four types of mass panic: fear-driven (following 9/11), desperation-driven (New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina), anger-driven (the L.A. riots following the Rodney King verdict), and excitement-driven (following a sporting event).
And we’ve got both fear and anger.
Yep. In this situation, one side is very angry, and the public has a growing fear of what might happen.
And plenty of time for that fear to build.
Exactly. Almost all mass panic is essentially spontaneous, and then spirals out of control when it is not contained and de-escalated quickly. Ferguson is unique, because the crisis is essentially being scheduled for us by the timing of the grand jury’s announcement.
What role has the media played?
A big one. They keep reporting on things that are going to happen and what potentially could happen, and the more people read or hear that, the more worked up they become—we’re just conditioned that way. The media tends to show the most dramatic images and report the most dramatic news. We saw images of militarized police officers and rioters very similar to scenes from the L.A. riot of 1992, the worst riot in U.S. history. But was Ferguson really that bad? To my knowledge, very few people were injured by the police; many, if not most, of the tear gas canisters were actually smoke canisters, and a relatively small number of businesses were damaged. People see the worst images, and that becomes their benchmark.
The media largely ignored the two police shootings that followed Michael Brown’s case. Why?
That video of Michael Brown lying in the street was powerful. Michael Brown became a metaphor. The Shaw shooting, the media decided not to pursue. It’s a more difficult story when you have someone shooting back. What surprised me was that the press did not run with the story of the man, obviously mentally ill, with the knife. That’s the one that raises the most questions in my mind relating to the use of force.
If you could bypass the media and educate the public about one thing, what would it be?
People don’t understand the rules of force, especially lethal force, and that those rules have been determined by the U.S. Supreme Court, and not the Ferguson Police Department. If there is justification to draw their weapon and fire, the police are trained to shoot to kill. They do not shoot to wound. I think most of them hope the person doesn’t die, but they are trained to shoot until there’s no longer a threat.
Why not shoot to wound?
Because the only way you’re going to wound them is probably in the legs, and with the kind of weapons the police carry, it’s very difficult to hit somebody in the legs. The only time they’ll try that is if they have a shotgun that spreads out buckshot or birdshot. Otherwise, once you get past about 15 yards, it’s almost impossible to aim and hit something. And if deadly force is justified, and you shoot and miss, or you shoot and they can still shoot back, somebody else could get killed.
So the question is whether there’s justification to fire the gun at all.
The use of force boils down to the officer’s state of mind, and it could boil down to a split second—once you know what occurred in the two seconds before that.
We don’t know, and may never know, fully. So how do we contain further violence?
There are two “active” participants in the expected crisis: the police and the rioters. The rioters come to riot and perpetrate violence, and the police come to stop those activities. The behavior in both cases is predetermined. Then there are the peaceful demonstrators—many of whom come to the event quite angry—and the general public. And their behavior is not predetermined. Peaceful demonstrators may experience what we call “deindividuation.” Individual participants essentially lose their sense of identity and begin to feel, think, and act in ways more consistent with the group than with their own character and beliefs. They may find themselves looting and breaking windows, even though they would never otherwise consider breaking the law.
What triggers the chaos?
Violence typically begins with what we call a Schelling incident, which acts like a signal for rioters. It may be the sound of breaking glass, a police officer chasing a demonstrator, or the first smoke canister being thrown—anything we’ve been conditioned to associate with the outbreak of violence. That’s when the deindividuation begins.
Why does it happen at all?
Evolutionary psychologists would say we’ve evolved that way. When our evaluation of the circumstances differs from what the group apparently thinks, something is triggered in our brain, and we set aside our own values and personal judgments and go with the group. We become anonymous—and less responsible for our own actions.
What about the general public? How do they overreact?
In exactly the opposite way: Rather than deindividuation, they experience hyper-individuation. Instead of losing their sense of self, they become extremely egocentric, buying guns, keeping their kids out of school, and stockpiling groceries, all with the intent of abandoning any group values and worrying only about themselves and their families. The more danger they perceive and the greater their perceived loss of control, the greater the hyper-individuation.
And that starts ahead of time.
You see a lot of it going on right now. First there has to be fear, and the fear is primarily the result of the media accounts, which increase the tension on all sides.
And then the fear reinforces racist generalizations.
Yes. I’ll give you an example: Seattle, the riot at the World Trade Organization conference. People didn’t go out and buy guns. That was another one that was essentially scheduled, but people don’t have a fear of liberal young people rioting over economic issues. You see it here because there is a racial component, a collective fear that a lot of white people have of African-Americans, and that’s always been the case.
Does racist fear exacerbate the chance of violence?
Not unless there’s a vigilante group, and thus far we have seen no evidence of that, thankfully.
What mistakes did the police make the first time around?
They were simply unprepared. They had a command and control problem. They had too many departments involved that were not coordinated properly. They did not have a tactical plan in place. This time, they are going to ID the hotspots and cut them off. Crowds grow more powerful when they consolidate in a place that’s meaningful to their cause. Law enforcement will maneuver to prevent that—we call it cutting the crowd. Deindividuation’s much less likely to happen in a smaller crowd.
Won’t that look like a deliberate violation of civil liberties, if peaceful protesters are told to “move along”?
It might. One of the first problems police had in August was separating the peaceful protesters from the rioters. This time, they are going to focus very quickly on the groups that are there to incite violence.
How will they know?
You can gather intelligence on certain groups. Some will tell you.
What if they disperse and mingle through the peaceful crowds?
In that case, people may be upset if they are told to move along. But it becomes chaotic if the two groups are intermingled and the police try to treat them differently.
Is there any way to make sure peaceful protesters don’t get swept into the rioters’ chaos?
The way for the police to prevent deindividuation is a show of force.
But didn’t that backfire in August?
I have never seen such chaos, such mixed messages. Everybody tried to turn a police action into a political situation. Now, the police are saying, “We are going to deescalate this, and we are going to do it quickly.” They are not going to “demilitarize,” whatever that means. Demilitarization is a word that’s been created by the media.
Well, those armored personnel carriers looked pretty military rolling down West Florissant.
True, and that only emboldened the rioters and made the general public more fearful. The danger is the perception that the Department of Defense is giving police departments all of this high-level equipment, so they can treat the people of Ferguson like ISIS. The intent is to protect themselves and the innocent public. That kind of equipment is used much more often in cases like hostage situations, active shooters, and high-level drug raids.
I also thought it was a little crazy using sound equipment—sending sound signals that are uncomfortable for people—and it didn’t even appear to work. In terms of public relations, stuff like that doesn’t help, and I don’t think you’ll see that out there this time. But if people mean helmets and tactical gear, that’s not going to go away.
Which sounds like the only surefire prediction anyone can make.
The events in Ferguson are complex, fluid, and unpredictable. There is no doubt what the organized rioters intend to do. There is no doubt what the police intend to do. It is everyone else who may be influenced to join in or flee the city in fear. One thing we know about crisis, unless contained, it will spread and create new crises. We need to hope that if violence erupts in Ferguson, it doesn’t spread to other cities.
Update:
The Traditionalist American Knights of the Ku Klux Klan have announced their intention to use lethal force to defend themselves against (as-yet nonexistent) “acts of violence” in connection with any protests. Does that make them one of the vigilante groups Harmening was worried about?
“Yes, I was afraid they would rear their heads. They are absolutely a vigilante group in this scenario. A vigilante is any person or group who purports to carry out a law enforcement mission without authorization to do so. All they will do is exacerbate the situation if they come anywhere close to demonstrators or rioters as an organized group themselves. They will make the job of the police much more difficult. They will inflame both demonstrators and rioters, and the end result will be more peaceful demonstrators choosing to become rioters. That is exactly what law enforcement is trying to prevent.”
