From Force Science Research Center:
Force Science News #83
October 17, 2007
You've no doubt read or watched the national coverage about the off-duty
law officer in a one-stoplight timber town in Wisconsin's North Woods
who recently burst into an early-hours pizza party of high school
friends...slaughtered 6 of them, including his ex-girlfriend, with his
AR-15...opened fire on a responding fellow officer, a friend of
his...eluded authorities for hours with deceptive calls about his
whereabouts...and finally killed himself with 3 pistol rounds to his
neck and head after negotiations for his surrender failed and he was
wounded in the arm by a SWAT sniper.
The offender, Tyler Peterson, was a part-time officer with the police
department in the town of about 2,000 population, a full-time deputy for
the sheriff's department, and a member of the county's Special Emergency
Response Team.
Fully certified, he was 20 years old and had been in law enforcement for
less than a year. He hired on when he was 19. [Read news reports on
PoliceOne.com].
Urgent questions have emerged. Might the risk of violent explosion have
been detected in Peterson by stricter pre-employment screening and
certification standards? What latent demons may have driven him? Is
anyone his age too young to be a cop? How will his murderous actions
affect law enforcement generally and, in particular, those who served
with him and those who had to hunt him down?
Force Science News consulted 3 prominent authorities on police
psychology for their professional insights: Dr. Bill Lewinski, executive
director of the Force Science Research Center at Minnesota State
University-Mankato; Dr. Alexis Artwohl, an advisory board member for
FSRC and a former police psychologist in Portland, OR; and Dr. Kevin
Gilmartin, former vice president of the Society of Police and Criminal
Psychology and also a member of FSRC's board.
Our intent is not to Monday-morning quarterback Wisconsin authorities
but to call attention to potential problems in other jurisdictions as
well, where, in Lewinski's words, "disasters are waiting to happen."
Share your comments with us: Your comments on our panel's observations
and on your own experiences in these matters are welcome by e-mailing
the Force Science Editorial Staff.
As in some other jurisdictions, no psychological testing is required in
Wisconsin for prospective LEOs and none was voluntarily administered to
Tyler Peterson before he was hired by either agency. Could such testing
have made a difference?
An advocate of psychological testing for 35 years, Gilmartin insists
that the reliability of such screening is "excellent" and strongly
believes that testing should be mandated in all states as a standard,
precautionary condition of certification.
"Whenever you move away from a foundational concept like this," he says,
"you risk a tragedy." Yet he is "astounded and concerned" that even some
major federal agencies, with thousands of officers in field situations
that require critical decision-making every day, do not administer
psychological tests to their enforcement personnel.
Artwohl agrees that meaningful screening procedures "are obviously
important and effective." But she cautions that no attempt at predicting
human behavior can guarantee 100% accuracy. Psychological testing done
today cannot guarantee that a person will not have a serious problem
through a 25-year career."
She cites the case of a respected officer in a Western state who passed
competent screening and testing done by his agency. But later, beset
with marital problems, he murdered his wife and killed himself, leaving
their young child an orphan.
"If he'd been in a happy, harmonious relationship, that tragedy might
never have happened," Artwohl says. "Who knows what kind of
unpredictable personal or professional pressure may arise in the future
that could cause an individual to step over the boundaries of their
usual personality?"
Lewinski adds that the value of psychological testing depends heavily on
the quality of the tester. In some places, he explains, a psych eval
consists merely of "a generalized personality test scored by a computer
and loosely overseen by a licensed psychologist.
"The testing may even take place in a day-care facility for mentally and
developmentally impaired people, run by a professional who knows nothing
more about law enforcement that the impressions he or she gets from TV.
Sometimes there's little meaningful psychological interviewing done. A
programmed report is sent to the hiring agency, and the standard is
usually rock bottom: Does the prospective officer present an immediate
danger to himself or others.
"These are not admirable or optimal conditions." He recalls a situation
in Minnesota where a "skills" [academy] recruit passed a psychological
test "proving" he was not dangerous-and 6 months later, he got into a
fight with his roommate and killed him.
"Departments need to spend time interfacing with the psychologist about
the test used and what else the tester is doing to effectively select
out candidates who do not fit into the department and the community and
select in those who do," Lewinski says.
Guidelines for quality testing are well-documented, thanks in large part
to the Psychological Services Section of the International Assn. of
Chiefs of Police, Gilmartin points out. "The random solo practitioner,
acting without well-researched guidelines, is an obsolete model," he says.
"But unfortunately," Lewinski claims, "many departments don't know and
don't care. So long as some psychologist OKs the people they want to
hire, that's good enough for them."
What about background checks? Wisconsin's standards, for example,
require that they be "thorough" in establishing an officer's "good
character."
Done well, background investigations can be "a better screening
mechanism than psychological testing," in Lewinski's opinion.
Unfortunately, Artwohl says, compromises may be allowed as agencies,
facing a presently shrinking pool of qualified applicants, "get
desperate for warm bodies to put into patrol cars."
Small towns and rural areas "tend not to do good checks," Lewinski says,
"because they 'know' the subject being evaluated." [In the case of
Peterson, his family was well-known and had been involved in local
public service, his mother having served as the county's deputy treasurer.]
What's more, backgrounds that once would have disqualified candidates
are now more often acceptable, with consequences yet to be determined.
According to a recent Associated Press report, for instance, the number
of departments nationwide requiring candidates to have "a clean criminal
record" has dropped to only 1 in 5, because of personnel shortages. Most
"still disallow anyone with a felony conviction," but occasional drug
use in the past may be overlooked.
Lewinski says one large Midwestern city he's familiar with has hired
"officers who were alcoholics or who used 'roids and coke"-blatant red
flags that showed up in background checks, but did not prevent the
officers from being hired.
"Agencies think they can't afford good procedures and high standards,"
Gilmartin observes. "The truth is, they can't afford not to have them."
With cash-strapped, personnel-scarce rural towns, he suggests, the
ultimate answer may be to abandon the idea of local policing and turn
the job over "to the next level of government that will maintain
professional standards. If a community can't or won't fund policing
adequately, then it shouldn't be in the policing business."
In Wisconsin, newly hired LEOs have 1 year in which to complete a
520-hour recruit academy for their certification, 5 years in which to
accumulate mandatory college credits-not unlike some other states.
During this time, they can carry a gun and make arrests as authorized by
their agencies. Does this seem reasonable?
Tyler Peterson was fully certified before his violent outburst, so his
training met the state's minimal requirements. But, Lewinski points out,
"with grace periods like these, which are not uncommon in the U.S., a
person could be working the street with full law enforcement powers
without having passed any of the true requirements for becoming an officer.
"If, in addition, a department has no FTO program, there's no chance to
evaluate how an officer reacts under stress or what innate judgment he
displays before he's on his own." He describes the experience that a new
hire reported on a small department in Iowa: "The first night on the
job, the chief showed him how to use the radar and gave him a pistol.
'Do you know how to use this?' the chief asked. The kid said he did. The
chief drove around with him that night. The next night, he went on
patrol alone.
"No other profession in the United States other than law enforcement
allows people to enter and operate with full authority while waiting a
year for training. Imagine if a CPA, a dentist, an optometrist, a doctor
could do that!
"An agency may say that a new officer is performing under supervision
during the grace period. But in one state I know of, the POST board has
admitted that a supervisor could be as far away as Paris, France,
available by phone only after a 4-hour delay, and still meet that
state's definition of 'supervision.' "
"We clearly can't permit this sort of thing any longer," Gilmartin says.
"It's a hold-over from an era long past. We have to raise the bar."
How about the issue of age? In some states, as in Wisconsin, you have to
be only 18 to be a cop. Shortly before his rampage, Tyler Peterson, at
age 20, was even made a SWAT officer. Should he have been in law
enforcement at all?
"Research tells us that the human brain is usually not fully developed
until sometime in the early 20s," Lewinski explains. In other words,
most people of 18, 19, or even 20 will not have matured emotionally and
be capable of great decision-making.
"If you mature early, you may transcend this. But an agency needs to ask
if it wants the risk of placing the heavy responsibility and need for
keen judgment required of today's street officers on young people who
may still potentially be immature."
In Gilmartin's opinion, "Age standing alone would not concern me. There
are plenty of 20-year-old sergeants leading soldiers in combat as we
talk. But the military is a much more structured and tightly supervised
environment than policing, and the decision-making responsibilities are
different."
He agrees that "the typical 20-year-old doesn't have the necessary level
of maturity for police work today. Most are in a period of prolonged
adolescence and have not made the personal transition into adulthood.
For a such a person to be driving around with a duty-issued AR-15 in his
personal vehicle in an unstructured environment is highly risky.
"Selecting a law enforcement officer is a little like handicapping a
horse: You have to look at the track record. But a 20 year old doesn't
have a track record. He's played high school football, maybe, or worked
at the Dairy Queen. But is he ready for a tremendous amount of
decision-making in an essentially unstructured setting?
"For the most part, the skills of law enforcement are not difficult to
teach and master. Eighteen year olds can master them. But they can't
nearly as easily master decision-making under stress. That capacity is
terribly complex in emotionally charged situations."
[During his college and academy training, Tyler Peterson spent a week
going through simulation exercises involving deadly force
decision-making. Initially, he failed that component of the program. He
retook the testing and passed.]
A few contemporaries in his hometown have suggested to reporters that
Tyler Peterson acted a bit badge-heavy. Before the shootings, he and a
fellow officer were named in a complaint of inappropriate force that
remains unresolved. But for the most part he appears to have been
well-liked and well-regarded professionally. If a "psychological
autopsy" is conducted, that should reveal more about his inner self.
Meanwhile, any thoughts on what might have touched him off, based on
your professional training and experience?
Lewinski speculates that the crux of the bloodbath lies in Peterson's
relationship with his 18-year-old ex-girlfriend, whom he'd dated for
about 4 years and who was one of his victims. She had broken up with
him, and he apparently had come to the party at her apartment hoping to
reconcile. "This is likely a classic 'pit bull' scenario," Lewinski says.
He refers to a study of domestic violence perpetrators conducted by
researchers at the University of Washington. They concluded that 2
personality/behavior types tend to be the most violent in domestic
relationships: "cobras" and "pit bulls."
When angered or frustrated, cobras exhibit highly visible body language
of agitation. "They clench their fists, look angry, stomp around, shout,
perhaps spit in their opponent's face. Yet their inner physiological
indicators remains perfectly calm, with pulse rates as low as 42 bpm.
These are cold-blooded psychopaths who put on an alarming show in an
effort to manipulate people, but remain perfectly in control of
themselves and their reactions.
"Pit bulls, on the other hand, are highly emotionally dependent on a
relationship, over-invested in it. When it begins to fall apart, they
tenaciously hang on to it far beyond any indication that it has any
chance of succeeding. They desperately need the relationship in order to
be who they think they are.
"In the face of a relationship disintegrating, they tend to increase
their effort to control the other person-and increase their level of
violence-for fear that if they lose their partner they themselves will
disintegrate.
"The community might see the subject as a nice guy-and he is, if things
are going along well. He only acts out violently when what he needs and
needs to control is jeopardized.
"A really good background check or really good psychological testing
might surface indications of this tendency toward emotional immaturity
and dependency."
[According to news reports about the case, some people at the pizza
party taunted Peterson as a "worthless pig" while he was attempting to
reconcile with his girlfriend. It has not been revealed whether she
joined in the name-calling.]
Gilmartin speculates that Peterson's role as a small-town LEO may have
made his relationship with his girlfriend critically important to him.
"She may have been his only social outlet," he says.
He explains: "The stress on small town police officers is often greater
than it is on those who work in big cities. In a city, it's easier
psychologically to balance the job with an unrelated, off-duty life. You
can move into customary civilian roles with much greater anonymity;
people may not even realize you are a police officer when you're not
working.
"But in a small town, it's much harder to get away from your cop role. A
critical factor that tends to precipitate inappropriate behavior is
isolation. In a small town, you can feel isolated from other officers,
because there aren't very many, and you can feel isolated from other
aspects of life because policing becomes your total persona. Everyone
knows you as 'the cop.' It's your predominant identity. It's very easy
for a 20 year old to become one-dimensional."
Almost always in slayings like the Peterson case, Gilmartin says,
"there's a sense of loss involved." Peterson's loss of his girlfriend
may have assumed epic proportions in his mind. "When people are
one-dimensional, they tend to be very possessive, and at risk of angry,
fixated rage. Once an outburst starts, it easily gets out of control."
What's the probable impact of Peterson's actions on the law enforcement
community and on individual officers?
Even officers far removed from the incident "may be conscious of coming
under greater public scrutiny after a horrendous breach of conduct like
this," Lewinski says. "It's perceived as an embarrassing black mark on
the profession, and officers may feel a need to conduct themselves in
public to a higher standard even than they ordinarily do."
"An incident like this gets exaggerated in the police world because cops
are supposed to be the extra good guys, the ones who prevent such
things," Artwohl adds. "People normally are a little afraid of the
police. When officers show evidence of being mentally unstable, it can
be frightening. People want reassurance that officers carrying guns
around are very professional, ethical, controlled, and protective
individuals."
Those closest to Peterson-officers from his 2 agencies or working in the
area-will understandably feel the greatest impact.
"Any time you have someone who has been accepted as a normal member of
your group and who then suddenly goes off the deep end and does
something shocking and scary, it really shakes up everyone in the
group," Artwohl observes. "You become concerned about your ability to
read people and feel safe with them. You wonder, Who else don't I know?
Who else around here is a ticking time bomb? It jars your view of the
world-for cops especially, because they tend to think that people who do
crazy things are out there, not in here."
Officers who knew Peterson personally "might feel grief," Artwohl says,
"but it will be very complicated, because they'll also likely feel angry
at him and betrayed by him. They may blame themselves for not seeing
this coming and doing something to stop it. It's important for them to
remember that the only person responsible for what that young man did is
that young man."
As for the trackers who experienced the final confrontation with the
killer, Artwohl expects that most of them "will cope well with what they
had to do." Peterson "stepped over the line into being a violent
criminal. He called the shots, literally.
"At that point, their training would have kicked in and they would have
distanced themselves enough emotionally to react to him as they would to
any other violent offender. It's highly doubtful that his status as a
law officer would have impacted on their professional performance."
She recommends, however, that any officer involved "get the usual
post-incident care that they would receive after any other
officer-involved shooting."
"Everyone involved is going to need assistance," Gilmartin stresses. "No
one who was close to what happened is untouched by this tragedy.
"We like to think that something can be learned from every tragedy," he
adds. "Hopefully, law enforcement will learn from this one."
[NOTE: As this is written, 3 Wisconsin legislators, one of them a former
sheriff, are planning to introduce a bill into the state legislature to
require psychological screening of all potential LEOs. The sheriff says
she believes "the rest of the state's hiring standards for police
officers, including the minimum age of 18," should be re-evaluated.]
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--
Stephen P. Wenger
Firearm safety - It's a matter
for education, not legislation.
http://www.spw-duf.info
