The NJ Police Chief Magazine Volume 23, Number 6 | Page 15

The New Jersey Police Chief Magazine | June 2017
Continued from previous page
found beautiful in everything she read.
Anne Frank, at 15 years of age, wrote in her diary 'how a single candle can both define and defy the
darkness, where there is hope there is life, and it fills us with a fresh courage and makes us strong
again'. Einstein said something similar, darkness is simply the absence of light.
For those wishing to know how humans are capable of murdering mass numbers of their own
communities, or suicide prevention, you could study Gordon Allport's scale. Allport was an American
psychologists tasked with this very question, who wrote a book on the subject ' The Nature of
Prejudice' (1954) after interviewing refugees of the second world war.
Widening his research to other areas of genoc d
i e, he found that it s tarts very s m
i ply, with people making
disparaging remarks about certain sections of the community or using disparaging terms to describe them (anti
locution - imagine, if you will, descriptive names for gypsies, or immigrants here); secondly, this progresses to
avoidance, where those communities avoid each other (sending someone to coventry) until this leads to the third
level, discrimination. This stage is important, as it is often coupled with official endorsement (remember the
Germans prohibiting the jews from pubic transport, or from civil service roles, or apartheid, or Rosa Parks, a key
activist in the civil rights movement of America). This endorsement may actually be simply 'officials failing to act to
stop it'. The fourth stage is physical attack (bombing shops, attacking their houses or in the streets, and failing to
do anything about it), and the final stage is extermination (mass genocide, or suicide, if the target of the scale
wishes to avoid genocide). This scale is evidenced and can be seen in Martin Luther's days as much as the second
world war, as much as it can be seen in the native American Indians or native Aboriginals, and the Baltic genocide.
It can also be seen in offices, police stations or schools throughout the world today where children or members of
staff commit suicide. Do some research and it probably all started on the lowest level of Allport's scale (anti locution
or bias).
Look at the case of Fiona Pilkington and her disabled daughter, who
were continually being harassed by kids.
They phoned the police for help on more than 30 occasions, and
soon became a constant thorn in the flesh of the local police as
they received call after call for help. The family had been kept
virtual prisoners in their home by youths who threw stones, flour
and other objects, and kept up a relentless stream of abuse. The
jury ruled that failings by police contributed to the deaths, as did
the failure of Leicestershire county council and Hinckley and
Bosworth borough council to share information.The independent
police complaints commission found the police guilty of failing to
protect the vulnerable family, a mother and daughter who were
being continually harassed, and for whom suicide and death was
the only way out for both.
So, as individual leaders, what do we stand for? How do we perceive our communities? Are they real communities,
or divided? Are we simply playing the 'diversity game' and pretending we have it all sewn up? What do we want our
policing organisations to portray to our communities we wish to protect? Do we intervene when people start to say
disparaging things about certain communities? or do we turn a blind eye? Do we all respect Human Rights? The
answers to these questions also answer the question posed in the series 'The Band of Brothers' around the Battle of
the Bulge- What are we fighting for? This question is as equally valid now as it was in the war years, not only for
police leaders but for leaders in all organisations...think about it.
David Annets is a retired Detective Chief Inspector and now director of Leadership Lessons Limited http://
www.leadershiplessons.co.uk
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