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NEW JERSEY COPS ■ JANUARY 2015
How to LEAD the way amidst the negativity
In an Aug. 12 article in the Wall Street Journal,
Maria Haberfeld, a professor at John Jay College
of Criminal Justice in New York, insisted that there
is no real growth in police brutality. Haberfeld said
it is a misperception that police are increasingly
resorting to violence:
“There is no escalation in the use of deadly
force. What we are seeing is a proliferation of cellphones and cameras,” Haberfeld said.
In a 2010 interview, Haberfeld elaborated on
this theme, saying that there is too much ignorance among the public and the media about how law enforcement is trained in the use of deadly force. Concerning how use
of force is judged, Haberfeld insisted, “To an untrained eye,
somebody that doesn’t understand police work, it may look
skewed toward law enforcement, but it’s really not.” She went
on to say, “We have to remember that we have over half-a-million armed police officers in this country. If police officers were
really so trigger-happy… we would have many more bodies on
a daily basis than we have. It’s really very rare to see a police
encounter in which someone ends up dead.”
Public perception remains negative in 2015, despite the heroic daily activities provided by our country’s law enforcement
officers to save lives and secure communities.
Here are some facts about our police community according
to Madeline Neuman, National President of Concerns of Police
Survivors (C.O.P
.S.):
• More than 780,000 police officers are working in our
country
• 100-200 die in the line of duty each year
• 300 commit suicide
• 14,000 are injured in their efforts to protect and serve
others
When I combine these facts, it seems that some truths about
our community are not clear to the civilian world. That’s why,
on Jan. 9, C.O.P led a national effort called “Law Enforcement
.S.
Appreciation Day” (LEAD) that highlighted support for our
nation’s law enforcement service. What a brilliant effort from
Madeline Neuman, our New Jersey-based survivor who is leading C.O.P at a crucial time in our culture and history; she has
.S.
the perfect combination of resilience and advocacy to do so.
As a “cop’s wife,” I must admit that I have found myself on the
defensive about being part of a police family in recent months.
The effects of the negative media are widespread; news networks have to compete with entertainment programs for viewers during their prime-time slots, and seem to do this by
emphasizing emotionally-relevant material such as violence,
crime, war, famine, etc. at the expense of more positive material.
In 1997, with the knowledge that the proportion of emotional
material with negatively valence in news bulletins was increasing, author Bob Franklin conducted a study looking at the psychological effects of viewing negative news items. He
constructed three different news bulletins: One was made
entirely of negative news items; one was made of entirely pos-
itive news items (e.g. people winning the lottery, recovering
from illness, etc.); and one was made up of items that were
emotionally neutral. He then showed these bulletins to three
different groups of people.
As predicted, those who watched the negative news bulletin
all reported being significantly more anxious and sadder than
those people who watched either the positive or neutral news
bulletins.
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