The Rapist and the Cop

This story of a woman being raped by two Texas cops this week (here) got me to search for other instances of police as rapists and stalkers and that led me to connecting the rape as an act of power to the power of the uniform so I looked into it a bit.

Holmstrom and Burgess (1980), for example, emphasized power and anger as opposed to
the sexual motive. They reported that although rape always included power, anger and
sexuality, they proposed that sexuality was never the dominant theme, as in each case they
studied either power or anger dominated. They concluded that rape was the use of sexuality to express issues of power and anger. Similarly, Prentky and Knight (1991) suggested that acute
feelings of social and sexual inadequacy may motivate a rapist to overcome these feelings by
asserting control and dominance in the most potentially threatening area to a woman*link

So we see common motivations for rape as vindictiveness, inadequacy, emotional turmoil, anger and power. Not unlike a child acting out inappropriately in frustration for lack of a mature vehicle of expression.

On to the psychology of a police officer:

Joel Lefkowitz has identified two personality trait clusters which commonly appear in police officers.

Cluster 1 : isolation & secrecy, defensiveness and suspiciousness, and cynicism.

Suspiciousness and Cynicism increase with experience on the job.

Police feel misunderstood by the "civilians"

Lefkowitz refers to their situation as "socio-occupational isolation".

The psychological need for security : Many police officers come from middle class backgounds and jobs in law enforcement are seen as jobs which you can keep as long as your able to work.

The desire to provide services for others. Police officers are community servants who help others on a daily basis.

link

Feelings of inadequacy, a desire for control and power, cynicism and a propensity toward violence.

Pair that with higher than average rates of domestic violence, alcoholism, suicides and divorce among police and there appears to be a trend of unstable and unhealthy people filling the position.
Police suicides
Substance abuse among police
Divorce rates among police
DV in police families

The police personality from a paper on Officer.com:

distrustful of outsiders
cynical
conservative (not necessarily politically, but rather resistant to change)
suspicious
pessimistic
pragmatic
prejudicial
and holding other widely-shared attitudes about and beyond the mainstream view. (ref. 7 & 8)
...with a good policeman suspecting evil wherever he goes.

Seems to be a dangerous amount of overlap there.

Note that I'm largely using researched and reviewed police related sources for this. Not fringe anti-cop sources.

Good OP info confirms my thoughts. I would like to see the psychological profile of new recruits, just to find out if it is power they seek, or they want the job to be a humanitarian (lol...I know). I would also like to know how many where bullied as children.

Lastly I would be interested in IQ stats from the force.

When will we hold this job to a high enough standard that the punishment for breaking a law with a badge is so bad that cops would actually live within the law, and restore honer to the badge? How many more decades before we figure out power corrupts and place controls on our overpowered protectors?

I find abuse of power in so many places. The workplace, the church, hospitals, schools, and the streets. Glad to be "Home sweet Home" where I can avoid the creepy folks temporarily.

Originally posted by assspeaker

I would like to see the psychological profile of new recruits, just to find out if it is power they seek, or they want the job to be a humanitarian (lol...I know). I would also like to know how many where bullied as children.

Lastly I would be interested in IQ stats from the force.

The sought-after profile of a new recruit doesnt seem consistent from what Ive researched and in most cases it's suspiciously vague and general and easy enough to fake during the application process.

People with the following personality traits are often eliminated from consideration:

Quick to anger or who display overaggressive behavior toward others

Signs of racial or ethnic prejudice

A predisposition for or against one gender

Appear as though an ulterior motive exists behind their desire to gain a law enforcement position

All of that is easy enough to fake. The more crazy you are the easier to fake it.

Then there are always these caveats of "you shouldnt be aggressive but you also shouldnt be afraid to be aggressive." What sense does that make? It's like a catch-all.

False fail-safes are in place like regular evaluations but anyone who has experienced the real world knows evaluations and reviews are easily passed and easily corrupted.

In other words, candidates should be cool, but not so cool that they fail to do their jobs. They should be reactionary, but not so reactionary that they make mistakes or overreact with inappropriate action. Prospective law enforcement agents need to be assessed carefully in terms of their personality types, because while there is no single kind of personality that is right for law enforcement, there are certain personalities that are absolutely wrong for it. Those in charge of hiring new agents must use their experience and personal judgment in order to select able, qualified candidates for law enforcement positions. link

The description has to be vague because so much of it can be faked, manipulated, tweaked and ignored since hiring officers will have their own biases and faults and attitudes which in turn brings in new officers with approved biases, faults and attitudes. The legacy and buddy factors dont help matters much either with everyone old army buddies coming on and the chiefs son and his sons buddies and all that throwing any measure to catch psychopaths out the window.

We hear one bad apple doesnt spoil the bunch but when that bad apple is hiring buddies we get a rotten bushel pretty quickly.

Pre-employment screening

Originally posted by assspeaker
Lastly I would be interested in IQ stats from the force.

I doubt you will find that out at all. I am not aware of them giving IQ tests to them. You might want to check out education levels though. I was just digging around a bit on it, and all the data seems pretty skewed IMO. I know a lot of cops, and out of all of them (maybe 30+ of them), I only knew 1 that ever had higher ed under their belt. One statistic showed 22% of them have higher ed, and yet another showed 45% (which I am absolutely not buying at all). I would say it is closer to 20% but that is a wild guess. Even the ones I know personally weren't the sharpest tools in the shed. This isn't a police bashing post at all, but just stating personal observation and experience. There is a guy I talked to right now pretty often who is a retired police officer and he see's the whole world as Fox news if that gives you any idea. He thinks the whole world is collapsing and about to go to WWIII specifically because it's Freddie Mac's fault...LOL. I asked him who owns the Federal Reserve and he said our government, but yet he watches the news religiously.

I have also seen cops do a lot of crazy illegal stuff that I would have never of believed in a million years if I didn't witness it with my own eyes. I think it's unavoidable when you deal with some of the things that they deal with day in and day out that they are not going to become desensitized, detached, and products of their own environment. I think when you are dealing with scum all day long, it's going to have a toll on you emotionally, mentally, and even physically. I have one friend who became a cop 20 years ago and she was the sweetest woman in the world. Now she is a total nut bag. I have constantly watched some of my friends go into the force, and within a couple of years become someone I never knew.

Good luck with the IQ part...doubt that anything like that is available.

Originally posted by assspeaker

Lastly I would be interested in IQ stats from the force.

Some IQ info:

90-99 - Average

Able to learn a trade in a hands-on manner and perform tasks involving decisions. Craftsman, sales, police officer, clerk. Studies involving some theory are possible from this range upward.Source

Associated Press reports that the national average for police officers is an IQ of 104, or slightly above average.Source

Terman found the average IQ was 84 and recommended no one with an IQ

reply to post by thisguyrighthere


Oh boy...it's not the profession that should be considered bad but the individuals themselves who take advantage of the system...I don't like painting all policemen/women with a broad brush just like I don't consider all italians to be mobsters etc...I'm just getting this in before all the police bashing starts...their are teachers that are sexual predators and their are coaches that are sexual predators so do we now turn our backs on all of them or condemn them as a whole...???

reply to post by thisguyrighthere


That is probably why you have 9k posts and I don't. Nice find.

Terman found the average IQ was 84 and recommended no one with an IQ

reply to post by thisguyrighthere


So are you saying that a police man or women needs to have a masters degree? I know some highly educated individuals that are really book smart but in the real world they have difficult time carrying on conversations. That at times appear to be somewhat removed from reality and clearly do not posses any street smarts...I think above all when being a police officer you need to be able to relate to people and have basic common sense with the intentions of helping rather than hurting...

reply to post by chrismarco


I'm not saying anything of the sort. I dont frankly put much stock in IQ or other standardized measures of intelligence. I'm simply putting the information out there.

Regarding the broad brush and other abusers being in positions such as education and clergy the difference, as I am pointing out with this thread, is that schools and churches do not actively recruit employees who exhibit these personality traits. Granted, they do not explicitly weed them out either but they definitely do not actively recruit them.

Originally posted by chrismarco
reply to post by thisguyrighthere

 

Oh boy...it's not the profession that should be considered bad but the individuals themselves who take advantage of the system..

Research would suggest the profession does indeed create the monsters.

From the article on Officer.com:

The successful candidates:

were more assertive (dominance scale)
had greater potential for social mobility (capacity for status scale)
had greater social poise and self-confidence (social presence scale)
had a greater sense of self-worth (self-acceptance scale)
had more need for autonomous achievement (achievement via independence scale)
had more functional intelligence (intellectual efficiency scale)
were more psychological-minded (psychological-mindedness scale)
were more masculine (femininity scale)
possessed greater social acuity (empathy scale) (ref. 3)

Eventually become this:

distrustful of outsiders
cynical
conservative (not necessarily politically, but rather resistant to change)
suspicious
pessimistic
pragmatic
prejudicial
and holding other widely-shared attitudes about and beyond the mainstream view. (ref. 7 & 8)

www.officer.com...

So police see and admit to good cops being hired eventually turning into racist paranoid cynics over the course of their career.

Oddly enough the article goes on to claim this is desirable and even worth encouraging:

Other researchers in the police personality field generally agree with Skolnick's analysis, citing additional traits of the working personality as conventionality and distrust of the unusual, with a good policeman suspecting evil wherever he goes. (ref. 9)

Interestingly, a more in depth reading of many of these researchers, particularly Skolnick, seems to reveal a bias against the development and existence of this working personality and concern over its potential contribution to individual and systemic law enforcement abuses of power. There is some understanding of how the working personality develops and why, and even acknowledges that it enhances the effectiveness of officers as they do their job and is a product of occupational socialization that creates and nurtures it.

Paranoia and racism make better cops. So the article claims.

A bad cop may be bad from the beginning but over time even a good cop will be turned.

reply to post by chrismarco


Agreed, I have met some very cool, sincere, nice cops. I have also known some pretty scary dangerous ones also though. I still wouldn't trust any of them as far as I could throw my car. I met such a straight Joe cop once that actually pulled his own wife over and gave her a speeding ticket because she wouldn't slow down after repeated warnings from him. Thought that was the funniest thing I ever heard. Guess he doesn't care for the cootchie very much then cause you know it was going to be a very long time before he got some!

reply to post by thisguyrighthere

Job 18:5 The flame of the wicked shall be put out
I do NOT believe in mercy for people who do things like this. Where was the mercy for the woman they raped. I would gladly volunteer for the job of delivering justice. Justice in this instance is the men are tied to a telephone pole in the center of town, they are whipped like Jesus was, till the flesh rips from their bones, then they are cut free and all of their male organs are permanently cut from their body. They shall live the rest of their lives with a tatoo of an "R" on their forehead. The tatoo will go to the bone, it will not be removeable and they shall live life with the mark of the rapist on their forhead for all of their natural lives as unics.

reply to post by thisguyrighthere


Jesus I never looked into average IQ's. I took a test for mensa once and I scored 143. I thought that was average. Wow I knew most people were dumb as rocks but I didnt know they scored so low. God help us all. These people vote. No wonder we are in such trouble. If cops actually are accepted with such low IQ's how can they be trusted not to do the things that these cops did.

In 1986, the 20-year-old college student was driving home after visiting her boyfriend in Escondido when she was stopped by an on-duty California Highway Patrol officer, who beat and fatally strangled her before tossing her body off a bridge.

When I read your thread this story came to mind.

Signon San Diego

Now he wants out of prison....Probably not having too much fun in prison.

reply to post by candcantiques


Sort of puts the bell curve into perspective doesnt it?

You live your whole life assuming your peers know what you know and can learn what you can learn.

It wasnt until I began educating groups of people that I realized just how significant the gap in people can be. Truly I believe there are different species of humanoids sharing this planet. It's really the only way to explain such glaring differences. Not in culture, belief or behavior but in capacity.

There are more people with limited capacity than not. By their shear numbers they dictate the parameters of life for the rest.

The best part is that average IQ has been dropping. www.fourmilab.ch...
And the US is leading the way. www.dailytech.com...

Originally posted by candcantiques
reply to post by thisguyrighthere
I took a test for mensa once and I scored 143. I thought that was average.

You have an IQ of 143 and thought this was "average?" Hmmm....if you say so