The Sheep/Sheepdog Allegory Completely Misses How Growling Sheepdogs Can Motivate and Escalate Resistance—Charles "Chip" Huth, a former police officer and now law enforcement consultant, on how clueless the police are about the dynamics of their authority
The sheepdog analogy is popular with police and the law enforcement industrial complex, but as Mr. Huth notes, the behavior of a sheepdog is indistinguishable from that of a predator from the perspective of the sheep:
A sheepdog’s job is to ensure the integrity of a herd. When the herd gets out of line, the sheepdog drives them by growling and nipping at their heels. The sheepdog adopts a posture characteristic of a predator—like a wolf, for example. This transformation puts the sheep in a perpetual state of fear of being singled out and attacked, thus providing an extrinsic motivation for them to fall in line. Sheep are afraid of sheepdogs just as they are afraid of wolves. They don't trust them and only comply because they are motivated by fear of consequence. Sheep aren’t equipped to fight their antagonists, so a growling sheepdog may not invite escalated dangers amongst the sheep. Not so with people, however. Among those being growled at are people who are capable of resisting. The sheep/sheepdog allegory completely misses how growling sheepdogs can motivate and escalate resistance.
He also notes that the police mentality leads to disengaged neighbors who do nothing but call 911, or not call 911, diminishing the internal strength of the community.
It's why I think that the entire institution of law enforcement needs to be recreated from scratch.
0 comments :
Post a Comment