Michael Slager, Walter Scott, and the Amygdala

This comment at Free Republic is interesting.

A lot of this shooting bothers me, mainly because it doesn’t make sense. If the officer was a psychopath, he would have known that in shooting the suspect in the back, he would be creating problems for himself, if for no other reason than he would have a dead body with eight entrance wounds in the back, and eight exit wounds in the front. He should have seen that shooting calmly at a suspect who is running away would have negative consequences. Afterward he should have known that this shoot would have problems. And yet he seemed blissfully unaware that anything was wrong. Something about it all didn’t make sense.

I had a martial arts match way back when I was a kid, with a guy I knew. We bowed in, the fight began, and everything went lightning fast – I have an actual memory of his face and shoulders, totally clear, and everything behind him a blur. I remember this one fight because after about 45 seconds, we went out of bounds. The ref broke it up and signaled us to return to the starting positions to restart. We both looked around, and even though the crowd was on one side of the auditorium, and the instructors and judges on the other, neither of us knew where our starting position was. We both looked around, and then looked at each other confused. The ref pointed to each of us, and we went where he said, but it was a very confusing moment.

Each of our amygdalae had become so absorbed in the fight that when it stopped, our brains were non-functional for a moment, and we didn’t know where we were, where we had begun the fight, nor could we calculate where we were within the larger auditorium, or where we should have gone. To me, it almost felt as if I had woken up in a place I didn’t recognize, even though 45 seconds before I had been standing right there.

Now I am not saying the Officer should be set free and given back his shield and gun. Nor am I saying this was a good shoot. I think he planted the taser on the suspect afterward, which does radically poison how you view him and the shoot. But from an analytical perspective, those of us who carry, and might use weapons for self defense should bear in mind the effects of tunnel vision which arise when adrenaline begins to pump, and the amygdala bears down on the technical aspects of the actions you take. This may be a teachable moment for everyone.

It is entirely possible that this officer ended up in a chase, and then a fight, and once the suspect grabbed for his taser he saw a justification for deadly force due to fear of being tased and losing his firearm. At that moment, that triggered a series of actions which so absorbed him and his amygdala, he had no awareness of anything else. You can become so focused on taser retention, shielding and blocking physical blows from the suspect, shielding your weapon’s side and firearms retention, holster release, unholstering, muzzle sweep, draw, sight picture, trigger squeeze, and assessing the effects of the shots fired, that you lose sight of everything else that is going on – namely that the threat has ended, the suspect is now attempting to flee, and shooting is no longer justified. In truth, I think such an explanation would make more sense than a psychopath killing a suspect who is running away, while being video’d by a passerby. A psychopath would know better.

Adrenaline is known for producing focus, to the point it can trigger tunnel vision, as the visual field actually collapses in around the margins, only allowing you to see what is right in front of you. In addition, the exhaustion of a fight can deplete blood oxygen, negatively affecting cognitive processes, and limiting the amount of data the brain and amygdala can process.

Baseline amygdala stimulation, due to mood and prior experiences can also produce a psychological effect as well. Since I have begun examining it in myself, I have noticed times when I am much more prone to pull the trigger on an action, and other times when I am much more prone to wait for more data, and further assessment. I don’t carry a gun for a living, but I can see how if I did, such minor changes in psychology could lead me to pull a gun sometimes when I otherwise might not, and not pull a gun at times when I otherwise would. If the stars aligned properly between events and psychological state, I imagine the same person might pull an actual trigger sometimes when they otherwise might not, and not pull an actual trigger at times when they otherwise would. I can’t imagine how a brain could be reliably trained to run such go/no-go processing effectively and repeatably under threat of death, since you could not effectively simulate threat of death short of actually risking death.

It does raise a complex moral question. What makes a person’s actions evil? When the results are life and death, it can be easy to blame a person’s very spirit as evil, for something which they did in the heat of a moment which was so intense it actually changed how their brain responded. But anyone who has had intense, threat-related moments knows, the brain changes. We haven’t, as a society, coined the phrase freak-out for no reason. If this officer’s amygdala became so focused on the technical aspects of gunfighting that he failed to focus on the broader picture of shoot/no-shoot, is he evil, or was this a mistake mediated by a faulty brain that exceeded its capacity for combining stress and highly technical action?

There is no good answer to the real life circumstance, but as we all end up having to take on more personal security duties during the collapse, keep in mind that too much focus should become an amygdala flag for you, and trigger a quick assessment of your broader environment for any data of importance. If you can feel each individual ridge on your Glock trigger as you bring it up, you might want to dial down that focus a tad, and see if what is happening might have broader consequences down the line, or if something else happening around you needs addressing.

The amygdala is a machine, and as such, it needs proper handling.

This entry was posted in Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink.
0 0 votes
Article Rating
Subscribe
Notify of
guest

17 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
trackback
8 years ago

[…] Michael Slager, Walter Scott, and the Amygdala […]

Phelps
8 years ago

1) He didn’t know he was being filmed. Add together his inevitable tunnel vision with the fact that the videographer has said that he was being surreptitious, and it’s beyond a reasonable doubt that he did NOT know that there was video.

2) I think that he does NOT see a problem with shooting someone in the back. His training is that he has a checklist of things that he needs to be able to say, and “He had my taser” means you can shoot him no matter what. Without video (which he didn’t know about) he knew that the Thin Blue Line would protect him from any legal consequences. That was why he was punctilious about planting the taser and then radioing that in (to create an evidence trail.)

3) This was amygdala driven, but from the other standpoint. Slager had lost control of the traffic stop, he lost the foot chase, he lost the first scuffle, he lost the second scuffle, and now he was about to lose the suspect entirely. I think he was keenly aware of the ridicule and dressing-down he would receive over having lost an arrest on, not a hardened criminal, but in fact a simple child support scofflaw.

He decided, “I’m not going through that, even if it ends up killing this guy”. And it did.

Phelps
Reply to  Anonymous Conservative
8 years ago

I don’t think it was that specific, but instead was a “we can cover this up if I say he had my taser” and he didn’t consider details beyond that. Think about how ridiculous the lies narcissists tell themselves in the middle of a hijack are. This one is much more plausible a lie to tell himself than those.

Remy Sheppard
8 years ago

I know a lot of SF guys and they do train life or death scenarios and then deploy to live them for months at a time. But for the average person here, that kind of training just isn’t available.

It really comes down to trusting yourself, which you show can be – at best – an unreliable proposition.

As far as myself, I have never needed to use my firearm, and only once have I instinctively grabbed it. I was dead asleep with my wife and our cat knocked a vase off of the kitchen table. I was out of bed and chambering in a heartbeat. But even then I maintained some solid trigger discipline.

I’m not sure how I’d handle a confrontation where a gun was necessary, but I know I’ve been able to verbally deescalate the few confrontations I’ve been in while concealing.

TheCarl
TheCarl
8 years ago

I read an analysis by a use of force expert who used a dog analogy; he called the shooting a “fear bite.” I suspect that’s pretty close to the bad amygdala reaction you describe.

Davis M.J. Aurini
8 years ago

This is something I’ve noticed in playing FPSs; the choice to fire comes before -sight picture- -trigger pull- and often I’ll find myself firing even though my conscious brain in charge of the strategic-analysis suddenly realized I *shouldn’t* be putting a round down range (either the enemy is already dead, or they jumped out of the way, or it was a blue-on-blue target); this is why carrying a sidearm is such a morally terrifying thing to do for those who are able to appreciate it (I suspect Liberals instinctively sense this, which is why they’re afraid of guns – they’re afraid of their own responsibility). Extreme discipline is needed. As Yeager said, only ever shoot to preserve life.

This isn’t just related to video games, either; it’s something I’ve seen in military training exercises, but I’d rather not go into details with that on a public forum.

totenhenchen
totenhenchen
8 years ago

“If a warrior’s head were to be suddenly cut off, he should still be able to perform one more action with certainty.”

– Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai

Aeoli Pera
Aeoli Pera
8 years ago

>I can’t imagine how a brain could be reliably trained to run such go/no-go processing effectively and repeatably under threat of death, since you could not effectively simulate threat of death short of actually risking death.

Back in the day, I learned that being suddenly drenched by very cold water is a good approximation for extreme fear. Apparently, lots of other people have figured this out independently (The Legionnaire over on your blogroll, for instance- it came up in a chat). This observation incidentally served to inspire my theory for rapid cold weather adaptation and brain expansion in neanderthals.

I think if you were drenched with ice water by surprise (say, by a friend who’s agreed to sneak up on you at random times), that would be a good approximation for a sudden danger to life and limb.

Phelps
Reply to  Aeoli Pera
8 years ago

It doesn’t need to be by surprise. Your body will adapt to that stressor whether you know it is coming or not — it’s still just as cold. That’s why BUDS training spends so much time in water. It is the stress acclimation that is key. The secret to Special Forces training isn’t to teach you how to shoot better or make you stronger or have you run farther — it is to acclimate you to stress. That is the real training, and it causes particular physiological changes, especially the production of neuropeptide Y, which is the “mental kevlar” hormone. In fact, if you had four soldiers, a simple blood test would tell you which of the four was the SEAL or Delta operator — he’s the guy with the off-the-chart levels of neuropeptide Y.

To really get an idea of what that training does, there’s a video clip that I love from one of these “the human body in combat” things from the National Geographic site. They wanted to show the effects of hypothermia, so they got a SEAL to come in. They had him run a timed shoot house course, like what IPSC does. Then, they decided to induce hypothermia.

They put him in a tank of water with 50 pounds, and said, “in 15 minutes, his core temp should drop a degree, and we can run the course again.” In 15 minutes, his temp had gone UP and he was laughing at them — literally. “This is easier than BUDS training — there’s no sand in my butt crack.” So they dump 50 more pounds of ice in with him. 10 minutes later, he’s shivering (finally) and his core temp… is back to normal. When they get to 30 total minutes, the doctor monitoring it makes them take him out of the water even though his temp still hasn’t dropped.

The punchline? He goes and runs the course again and gets a better time. It takes a half an hour in ice water just to put him in a combat stance. And there is nothing magic about that. I’m sure he has a genetic predisposition to produce neuropeptide Y, but he’s also spent a lot of time training to produce it. That ability to handle stress is what makes special forces seem superhuman. But the training is just like building muscle — you might be predisposed to be muscled, but until you go train it with weightlifting you won’t get really strong.

If you want to train yourself for stress, start spending as much time as you can in ice water. It works for the SEALs.

Bob Wallace
Bob Wallace
8 years ago

I had tunnel vision once from a car wreck in which I almost got killed. Getting this stress over and over? PTSD.

Phelps
Reply to  Bob Wallace
8 years ago

PTSD is a little more complicated than that. PTSD is a disorder of the amygdala, and it has a specific combination of events that bring it on. You don’t get it from having traumatic events multiple times. You get it from 1) being in a chronically stressful environment (chronic being not a series of traumas, but constant, low level trauma, the kind that keeps you from being able to sleep, where you are looking for danger for hours on end at a stretch) and then 2) having a specific traumatic event.

We know lots about the (1) part that sets you up for PTSD, but we don’t know a whole lot about why a particular trauma ends up being (2). It certainly could be that once you are in the state that (1) produces, it’s just a matter of time. The thing is, the trauma that ends up being (2) is often a relatively minor trauma considering the other things the patient has been undergoing.

Soldiers get PTSD from being under constant attack for weeks on end and then having a traumatic event. That’s why it has been more common in Vietnam and wars since than earlier wars — earlier wars had less danger of being randomly zapped when you weren’t in an actual battle. You had real downtime, which gave your amygdala time to heal and reset. In the more recent wars, you have constant shelling, constant patrolling, etc — the same thing that did get the guys in earlier wars that ended up with shellshock.

So what happens? When you have PTSD, your amygdala has stopped resetting and healing. It just breaks and is “on” all the time. Your body is always in fight or flight, and your amygdala stops making differentiations between minor and major threats.

You can tell this from the similarities between combat and non-combat PTSD victims. People get raped with frightening regularity without getting PTSD. Add in someone under intense stress, say, from working in a startup doing 80 hour weeks with a lack of sleep, and that person can end up with PTSD. Another good example is prosecutors. They have a high stress job, and are under constant stress, but even there, they can go years without PTSD. They are in a constant state of (1) but until that particular trauma — something minor like a particular picture from a child abuse crime scene — and BAM, that’s the (2) that plunges them into PTSD.

But that’s why you don’t see much PTSD in cops. They get real downtime between shifts, where they aren’t in any particular danger, they can get good restful sleep, and they have a strong support network. You’ll see much more PTSD in cops if they have to start running multiple shifts on an ongoing basis, or especially if they start getting targeted in their homes. That takes away the downtime they need to heal.

Phelps
Reply to  Anonymous Conservative
8 years ago

I’m reminded of an old T-shirt I saw that said something along the lines of “Stress – stre’s (noun) – not being able to kill a repugnant asshole who desperately deserves it.” That Marine will end up screwed up in the head. How would you fix it? Let him torture the rabbit to death, and then go about killing Japs as brutally as he wanted. In a month I’d bet he’d be amazingly better.

The problem is we tried that in the Pacific, and didn’t work. Our guys gave to the Nips as well as they got, and we still ended up with battle fatigue (which was just the contemporary nomenclature for PTSD. And if you think that we didn’t give back, look up how many guys came back with Nip skulls as war trophies.) The guys in the Pacific were much more screwed up with PTSD than the guys in Europe, because while Europe had well defined lines and the ability to rotate units out, the guys in the Pacific were stuck in hellholes like Guadalcanal for months at a time with no way to rotate out and no way to sleep because of the constant shelling. Those guys were ravaged by PTSD, while in Europe you only saw it in isolated pockets like the guys who got stuck at Bastogne.

There’s something healing about getting just those few minutes away from the constant danger that heals the amygdala and lets it reset. You are absolutely right about PTSD being that the amgydala thinks everything is 4x as bad, in that it thinks everything is as bad as bad gets, from “that guy is shooting at you” to “the dog farted and woke himself up and jumped to his feet real quick in surprise.”

The goods news is, as we learn more about it, we are learning that we can prevent some of the PTSD cases by supplementing things like nueropeptide Y, and give people who don’t have that mental kevlar naturally a fighting chance. It has had very promising results with rape victims, as an example. I have to wonder whether or not that sort of treatment wouldn’t turns rabbits into Ks.