How does increased power impact human minds? It’s almost not someone’s fault if empathy wanes as power accumulates. In fact, it’s basically inevitable. Joe Smarro, one of the subjects of the HBO documentary, "Crisis Cops: Ernie and Joe," is an exception to the rule. Joe is a police officer and trainer who gives a Master Class in how to sidestep fate when encountering people in crisis. We hear a few fugues from Joe illustrating what it's like to be a cop in these situations. And we give it the post-fugue treatment with inner voice, helping us to understand the cognitive effects of power and how to avoid unnecessary conflict. Join us for the third and final part of this series on fate and biology.
How does increased power impact human minds? It’s almost not someone’s fault if empathy wanes while power accumulates. In fact, it’s basically inevitable.
Joe Smarro, one of the subjects of the HBO documentary, "Crisis Cops: Ernie and Joe," is an exception to the rule. Joe is a police officer and trainer who gives a Master Class in how to sidestep fate when encountering people in crisis. We hear a few fugues from Joe illustrating what it's like to be a cop in these situations. And we give it the post-fugue treatment with inner voice, helping us to understand the cognitive effects of power and how to avoid unnecessary conflict.
Join us for the third and final part of this series on fate and biology.
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Credits:
Written and produced by Gabriel Berezin.
Original music and sound design by Grant Zubritsky. Additional music courtesy of Sami Jano.
Opening and closing music by Monuments (featuring Grant Zubritsky (bass), Robby Sinclair (drums) and Bryan Murray (saxophone), Gabriel Berezin (guitar))
Editorial insight by Melissa "Monty" Montan
Logo design by Justin Montan
Follow Fugues on Twitter and Instagram.
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Relevant Fugues episodes:
References:
PART 1
Hi, welcome to Fugues. This is part 3, the final episode of this series on fate and biology.
Feel free to pause this and start from part 1, which is called The Brain’s Molotov Cocktail.
I’d tell you to do so right now, but with so much talk of fate, a bit of choice seems like a nice idea.
If this is your first episode of Fugues - we call the experience of a moment a fugue, and we call the retelling of this moment a fugue as well.
After we hear a fugue, we review the most significant mental phenomena at play during the experience in something we call a post-fugue analysis -
consider that part like a neuroscience post-game show.
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This episode contains references to suicide and some graphic depictions of violence which is definitely unsuitable for children and maybe for someone struggling with mental health.
And if you’re having thoughts of suicide, I hope you’ll call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255, they’re open 24/7.
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A few months ago, I got to interview Joe Smarro. After I saw him in the HBO documentary, Crisis Cops: Ernie and Joe, he’s Joe, I knew I had to meet this guy. Seeing what Joe’s doing with his life gives me hope in a timel where hope is not that common.
Joe is like Gary Noesner.
If you saw the Netflix mini series, Waco, you’d be familiar with Gary. He was the FBI agent played by Michael Shannon, who had a reputation of de-escalating situations that had a potential to boil over.
According to the story, Gary’s de-escalation strategy was continually ignored until Janet Reno, the Attorney General of the US at the time. gave the FBI permission to raid the 7th Day Adventist cult compound, eventually killing 76 Branch Davidians, including 25 children, two pregnant women, and David Koresh himself.
It is implied that this outcome could have been avoided if any of the decision makers listened to Gary.
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As a police officer, Joe Smarro has seen first hand that when people in mental distress are cornered, they take extreme actions.
Joe was kind enough to share a couple fugues that illustrate what it’s like to be a cop during these situations and the techniques he uses (and teaches) to prevent violent outcomes.
We kicked off with a bit of background about Joe.
PART 2
Joe:
Yeah, so originally from upstate New York, I joined the United States Marine Corps four days after high school. And did my four years in the Marine Corps. I had two combat tours, one to Afghanistan, one to Iraq.
And then after, honorably discharging out of the Marine Corps, I moved to South Texas where I got on with the San Antonio police department. And I spent 15 years with the police department. And I just recently left in September of 2020. To pursue my company, my business full time, and I'm super excited to be here, Gabe. I'm a huge fan of yours and what you're doing and so when you asked me, I was like, Yes, yes. Count me all the way in.
Gabe:
Yeah, I've been pumped. My girlfriend's been watching me. parading around the apartment, totally nervous. So trust me, the honor’s mine.
Did you know that maybe you'd be expecting some trauma, going into the military kind of, you know, is that somewhere buried in the back of your mind?
Joe:
Not at all, sadly, and you know, as I got much older, and I was removed from it, and I started really understanding things better. And really seeing things through a different lens. This is one of the things that I think, you know, it really is a terrible disservice, in my opinion of, you know, the standards to get into these things like the military or like policing is really so so low. And you're almost like, are you an able body and you don't have any felonies?
And so I think if we, if we took more of a psychological approach to this, not just about like, can you do pull ups and push ups and run three miles, but what is your life look like, because what I learned through therapy years after I got out and was in the VA, in therapy was, I remember, it stuck out to me, but my therapist told me, he said, “people with childhood trauma, especially to the extent that I had, he said, are 300 times more likely to develop Post Traumatic Stress Disorder from a combat deployment.”
And so I'm thinking like, why was I ever allowed to even go in then? And so no, I simply put, I had no idea, I really thought it was just going to be a job that was going to give me insurance to support my daughter.
Gabe:
and you were a kid, you're 18 years old. Right?
What I think is so cool, though about you, and the sort of angle that you've taken with your life, is this idea of de escalation.
You know, like, I think there's a lot of moments in the HBO documentary, where if you hadn't behaved the way you had, an inevitable thing would have happened, you know, someone would have jumped off a bridge, or done something horrible. Was there a moment that you said, “oh, this can be different.”
Joe:
I remember having this call where there was a woman who was suicidal and she had a knife. And I had just developed a reputation that I'm proud of, of being like that guy that would show up and like, sit down and talk to people.
And so there was this point where, because of the call being what it was, and there was a knife involved, you know, patrol as they're going to, they're going to hear weapon, they're going to think weapon, and they're going to think safety. They're thinking tactics, they're thinking that it's very, like myopic and how they're approaching this situation.
When I heard that call, I'm thinking like, man, I wonder what happened to this poor woman, that in this moment, now she is contemplating cutting herself or taking her life, like something must have led to this.
And so I started to become curious. Well, they didn't teach me to be curious in the Academy. They taught me to like match threat with threat, and go up one level with threat. And, and so there was this moment where I realized, like, wait a minute, like, I don't feel like I'm actually adequately equipped, or trained to handle these situations.
And it became like incumbent upon me to take that extra step and pause, and really get to know the person and not focus on the situation itself and say, like, “hey, like, Look, my name is Joe.” You know, get their name, and then just personalize it right away, like, What happened? Not, “drop the knife.” But “what happened?” Like, be genuinely curious. And that's when that shift happened.
And I remember it was a female with a knife sitting on her couch, like just kind of rocking back and forth, contemplating cutting herself. And the officers, there are...just the instinct is to shout commands. It's just to shout commands, “drop the knife,” while you're pointing a gun at her.
And I'm thinking like, you have to know that that's not going to make someone feel better. Right? And, and so I would show up and tell them like, “hey, just, like back off, let me just see if I can work this.” And I did. And then to your point, like, that's when I realized, like, wow, this could have went really, really differently.
If I wasn't here handling this situation, and or she didn't decide to comply in that moment. Who knows what could have been the spark that caused them to shoot her or her to stand up with a knife and then, you know, she gets shot multiple times. And so it's just, that was the real shift for me in my career of seeing things differently.
Gabe:
I think what's interesting too, is like you're essentially breaking protocol to do the right thing. You know, like, was there a risk involved in that?
Joe:
Yeah, yes. Yes. And yes. And so there is a risk involved. You know, this isn't super popular Gabe, but I talk about this when I when I do these trainings, if we were to do the equivalent of what would be like a use of force autopsy - so anytime force is used, if we were to peel back the layers, I would be willing to bet that 99% of the time every police officer that used force would say something to the effect of, or genuinely believe, “I had to do what I did, because ‘they’,” and I disagree so much with that statement. And I've heard it so much. And I say, well, actually, I would venture to say that more than half of the time, we probably are the ones that escalated it.
Gabe:
There's a scene in crisis cops, you're in a training, and you're talking to law enforcement agents on how to handle somebody in a crisis. I'm curious about what goes through your mind, what goes through any police officer’s mind when a threatening situation starts unfolding. So you were talking about that call that came in from a woman who was in her driveway with a gun to her head. Can you describe that a bit?
Joe:
This woman, she waited until her husband and kids were sleeping. And she knew her husband, who was a former Marine, had a handgun in his nightstand. So she waited for the family to fall asleep, and had been thinking about this for quite some time, and formulated her plan.
And then she went into his drawer, took the gun out and she walked outside, and she was pacing around outside for a bit, then she ended up sitting down in the driveway between the two vehicles. And she called 911.
So 911 when one gets the call, “hey, I'm sitting outside of my house, I have a gun to my head, I want to kill myself.” So automatically, the dispatcher’s gonna do what they're supposed to do, which is “okay, we're gonna start units that way.”
Now, on my way out there, I saw the call notes. And so I saw what was going on, there was a female sitting outside with a firearm, and you know, threatening suicide. So I know now what I'm going to. But when I showed up, they were staged down the street and around the block, so about a block and a half away from her house. And there was probably six, seven patrol cars out there. And it was like, on the border of another small agency. And so they had a couple officers out there. San Antonio had officers out there,
Gabe:
How many is that?
Joe:
Total, there was probably eight to ten officers. And so I get out of the car, and I'm just kind of scanning, looking at what's going on.
And I'm blown away thinking something must have changed. Because every one of them are like opening up their trunks, which is where we store extra gear, and they were loading up AR15s, they were loading up shotguns, they have like shields, they were bringing out all this tactical equipment.
And I'm thinking like what happened? So the sergeant comes up to me, and he's like, “Alright, Joe. So what do you think?” And I said, “what's going on?” And he said, “well, we've got a female down the street, sitting outside in her driveway with a gun to her head.”
And I'm like, “so the same thing that the call is for?” And he's like, “yeah,” and I said, “Well, like, what's the plan here? I don't understand what's happening? Are we going to march down the street? Like, what kind of sense does this make?”
You know what this looks like. We're gonna march down the street, we're already at a tactical disadvantage, because she’s between two vehicles. So we're gonna have to come at or like head on. We've got shields, we've got all this stuff. And now we're all pointing weapons at her flashlights at her because it was at night, just screaming commands.
Like, why are we going to do that - there's one of three things that happens in that situation. She either puts the gun down, and all is well. She shoots herself in front of everyone, and that would be terrible. Or when she tries to put her gun down, someone feels like they've been flagged, and then she ends up getting shot. So we can eliminate those if we just call her.
And I asked him, I said, “has anyone tried to call her?” And he says, “well, no.” I'm like, “well, we know she has a phone because she's calling 911.” So I called her and she answered the phone. And now I've had situations like this before where I call them and they'll just hang up on you. And it's hard, if I can't get them to stay on the phone or listen, it's very hard to get the desired outcome.
But because she stayed on the phone, right away, didn't hang up on me, and was crying. I told them, I said, “Hey, stand down.” Like I remember I told the story. I said “stand down, I got her.” And I just kept talking to her.
And it was probably only like four or five minutes. But there was a time in that conversation where I said, her name was Brenda, and I said, “Brenda, I know you don't know me, I said but right now I'm scared.” And I was gonna say, “I'm scared when you..” and I go through this formula that we teach with this I-Message, which is “I feel when you because.” And before I could get anything else out. She said, “Why are you scared?”
And I was like, “well, because I'm afraid of what's gonna happen if these officers march down the street. I'm afraid that you're gonna end up getting shot and killed or that something bad is gonna happen, or that you might feel compelled to shoot one of the officers and I just don't want to see anyone get hurt. And so I feel scared when you hold a firearm because I don't want to see anyone get injured or killed tonight,” just like that.
She said, “Well, what do you want me to do?” And I said, “just please stand up, put the gun on the hood of a car, and then just walk down the sidewalk and you're not going to be tackled. I'm wearing plain clothes. I'm just gonna walk up to you. And we're gonna have a conversation.”
And the sergeant was like, “man Joe, great job on that, like, great.” And I was like, “Yeah, it really wasn't a great job. It was just about being patient in the moment and seeing what it was.” And this was the line that a lot of people resonate with, but it was like, in that moment, all the cops heard was “gun.” That's all they heard. And for me, what I heard was a person in crisis.
Yes, she has a gun. But really, she's a person who's in crisis, and there's so many layers underneath before she got to this gun. And if she's calling the police, she doesn't want to die. She wants her situation to change. She wants help.
PART 3
I Imagine this whole scene paused at the moment Joe started the phone call with Brenda in her driveway with a number of fugues happening at once.
Zoom over to the cops who are in battle fugues,
They see an armed criminal, and are mentally and physically primed for action.
And then over to Brenda, between two cars, gun to her head, stuck in a fugue where she thinks she has to do this terrible thing, but may also be asking for help.
And now to Joe, who’s in a curiosity fugue - strategizing how to connect with Brenda, and snap her out of her suicide fugue.
Now imagine a color-coded profile inside both Joe and Brenda, representing their brain chemical composition.
If I had to guess, over the course of their phone call,
starting with her answering her phone, to putting the gun down on the hood of the car…
their color profiles probably shifted from the fiery, red-orange stress cocktail, consisting of cortisol, adrenaline, and dopamine (outlined in Part 1 of this series),
to the calm blue colored, oxytocin bonding cocktail (outlined in Part 2). Where Joe has established the trust that he cares about Brenda, and she changes her mind.
From fight or flight to connect and protect
This transformation is how Joe was able to sidestep fate.
PART 4
IV: Uhh, can I pipe in here, what the fuck?
Gabe: ...what…?
IV: You’re just gonna do post-fuge analysis without me?
Gabe: fuck’s sake, fine…
Gabe: (flippantly) welcome to the post-fugues analysis in which we pull apart the significant mental phenomena at play during a fugue we just heard.
I’m your host, Gabriel Berezin.
IV: and I’m your co-host, Gabe’s inner critic, his asshole inner voice, and if I’m being honest, I’m feeling a little excluded right now...
Gabe: oh please, you just wanna prove that you know stuff.
IV: guilty.
Gabe: So whattya want?
IV: well i thought, since you’re throwing the word around so much, we should probably define empathy, don’t ya think?
Gabe: yes...go ahead.
IV: Seems like you could use a little empathy
Gabe: for who?
IV: for me.
Gabe: please
IV: Jamil Zaki, author of the book “The War for Kindness” is basically the go-to empathy guy in the academic world, and he defines it in three ways…
One - we share what other people feel. We can feel their feelings.
Gabe: Like Deanna Troy in Star Trek The Next Generation, right?
IV: what?
Gabe: the empath, she senses emotions from those around her, like whenever Captain Jean-Luc Picard- (needs to assess)
IV: -you’re embarrassing yourself.
Gave: you’re the one…who’s-
IV: embarrassing myself? Good one. But yes, it’s the limbic feelings.
Gabe: okay Mr. Inner Jargon - limbic...meaning…
IV: below conscious thought, like when you watch Sarah Connor and her son in Terminator 2 being chased into an elevator by the liquid metal terminator guy, and the doors almost close in time, but they don’t-
Gabe: you’re basically mirroring her fear and tension in your body.
IV: right, and the second way to look at empathy is that we’re trying to understand why others feel the way they feel...
Gabe: so that’s the conscious part...
IV: yeah, the cognitive empathy, and it’s sometimes referred to as perspective taking.
Gabe: and that’s where the story comes in.
IV: right.
Gabe: so if you happened to get on the elevator on the next floor and you saw Sarah Connor and her son clearly disheveled and a bit stressed out, you might ask, “hey..what’s going on?”
IV: yeah, ”No big, just a Terminator from the future that looks like a cop trying to kill us.”
Gabe: and that’s also what Joe was referring to when he was curious about what happened to Brenda, the suicidal woman in her driveway, that would lead her to such a dire situation.
IV: Exactly, which is a good seque to the third empathy instinct, which is concern.
Gabe: And that’s the really...human part.
IV: It’s the innate desire to hope that someone else’s situation improves.
Gabe: and taken a step further, the urge to help, the “Mr Rogers” principle in Part 2 about bonding.
IV: Yeah, the thing is though, Jamil Zaki says this type of thinking and feeling doesn’t always come naturally for everyone.
Gabe: Can we…fix that?
IV: Actually yes, the way he sees it, empathy is a muscle, and you have to build the habit to strengthen it.
Gabe: And this is what Joe seemed to intuit on his own.
IV: and is training others to do.
Gabe: We’ll be back to hear more from Joe...after a word from...probably...me...
PART 5
Did you hear about the recent case of a dog helping de-escalate a suicide situation, and it worked? No other animal creates that warm bonding glow the way a dog does.
I dunno, maybe you’re a cat person but somehow they seem like they wouldn’t be as effective.
Anyway, I don’t think Joe ‘s using the canine unit for conflict resolution just yet,
but his company Solution Point Plus is bringing his de-escalation approach to first responder agencies around the country with his partner Jesse Trevino. Find out more about his organization in the show notes.
Oh and the dog story’s there too.
PART 6
As my conversation with Joe continued, I asked him to describe the experience of what it’s like to be a cop in other high stakes situations.
What is it like when the adrenalin gets pumping and how does it affect what a police officer thinks and feels while it’s happening?
PART 7
Joe:
Yeah, and this is probably, I mean, obviously more in your wheelhouse than mine Gabe. But when I, you know, what I understood through all of my therapy in the VA, and just how addicting like dopamine is, and so what happens when you get that adrenaline hit, and you're getting that like rush of these, like, feel good chemicals, whatever they are, whatever the cocktail is, but we don't understand it enough to know what's happening. We just know, I want that feeling.
In our police academy, there's such an emphasis placed on that like high speed stuff where you know, you're in these, like, vehicle pursuits out on the driving track, and you're driving fast through cones and skidding sideways. And then you have the person bail, and it's all a scenario, but you remember it vividly. And then the person bails out, and then you're chasing them, and it's all part of the thing. But you remember that feeling.
Well, that feeling becomes very addicting. And same thing when you're doing these tactical scenarios, or you're breaking up a bar fight, even though it's in a training environment, because it's so realistic, and they, you know, do all this stress inoculation and all that to like, get you amped up. And then they put you through these scenarios where you're not necessarily thinking very clearly, they're wanting you to like respond rapidly, which really does almost prevent this like thoughtful response. They want muscle memory. Well, muscle memory isn't always the best way to handle the situation.
If I'm going to survive this career, mentally, right, not just physically, but if I'm going to emotionally mentally survive this career, I'm going to have to do it differently. Because I saw the toll that it would take on people. And you're absolutely right. For me it was I became very good at just not getting excited. And so whether it was a code three call, where it's like things are happening now. There is someone that's in that process of killing themselves right now.
Like, yeah, I would get there safely, but as soon as I get out of the car, my movements are slow.
I'm making sure I don't allow myself to get pulled into someone else's crisis. Because it allows me to think clearly. To see it for what it is.
And again, my mantra was focused on the person not the problem.
I really do love the fact that data exists, and science exists. Because it's also hard to argue against the numbers. And so when I would tell them this year, especially, did you know that in 2019, there were 48 officers killed in line of duty, 44 by handgun. That's terrible.
But did you know that we had 236 killed themselves? So where's the real problem? And so you can't argue against those things. But so much emphasis is placed on the 44. So much emphasis on it's a dangerous job. People are bad, they're going to kill you.
And it's like, yeah, and also you're going to dump massive amounts of cortisol into your body throughout your career, and you're going to die much younger, because you're going to choose, to me it's a choice, but you're choosing to live in fear and see people as bad and then how's that working out for you?
Gabe:
It seems to build real kind of violence-based narratives inside of people's minds, which I thought was so well illustrated in that one scene, where people are going, we got to scale the trees, this lady's got a gun, you know, it's like, “No, you need to calm down, have a conversation,” and that can change the whole thing.
Joe:
It's not as fun. And that's a sad reality, because there's so much like sensationalism in this profession too, when you have the shows of like Live PD, and COPS for decades. And, you know, they don't understand that they film for hours and hours trying to catch that one scene, and people are drawn into it. Because it's sexy, it's appealing. It's like, wow, there's a chase. And so then you go do that job and you want to do that thing.
But 99% of the job is not that thing. And so we're seeking it, you look for it, you look for it, and the moment it happens, it's like, there we go. And everyone's hauling butt to get there, just to then be like, okay, now what do we do?
Gabe:
I think everybody loves a good guy, bad guy narrative, right? And I think, I'm sure a lot of cops assume you know, hey, I'm the good guy in this situation. And many situations they are but you know, like, you're saying there's a gray area this is the person on the other side of that situation. And that seems like a hard thing to implement.
Joe:
Yeah, and the problem with that is that it makes it so easy to dehumanize the interaction. Because if I, if I do have to categorize you as something other than good, then it's going to be very easy for me to want to go put hands on you, taze you, pepper spray you, shoot you if I have to. Because you are, and this is why I have a problem with these titles is, you know, it's like even “law enforcement officer.
Like I don't like that, right? Because it's like, when someone violates a law, no matter what it is, you think, “well, I have to enforce it.”
And so if you did this wrong, even if you were speeding, you are an offender. And right away, we're so quick to “you’re a criminal, you're a bad “this”,” because you've violated this law. It's like, “nah, you're just a person that maybe was driving too fast.”
But we can easily in our mind, categorize them to say “well, no, there's this law, and they violated it. So now they're an offender, they're a criminal. They're guilty.”
And it's like “so now I can talk down to them. I can…” you know, and again, not everyone, but it just makes it easier to do that.
And especially now you take that over time for doing that for days and weeks and years, it becomes much much easier to become detached, and see people as other than people.
PART 8
In episode 1 of Fugues, called “Why so Irrational” we talked about the idea of Level 1 hot thinking vs Level 2 cool thinking, coined by Daniel Kehnemen.
I call it Twitter vs LinkedIn Brain.
When certain police officers are prone to screaming commands and drawing their guns, they’re in Level 1 Twitter thinking, it’s the angry, swearing hot take...it’s reactive...almost automated.
Joe has somehow found a way to default to Level 2 thinking, what he called a “thoughtful response”
Sure, maybe he wants to swear or say something inappropriate that could put his own career in jeopardy, but you don’t do that on LinkedIn.
You pause, think about your words, and you don’t post it right away.
That metaphor aside, Joe teaches cops to reflect on their own thinking, what’s often called “metacognition,” and he considers his actions, and the state of the other person.
Precisely the opposite of what most police academies train their officers to do.
PART 9
IV: You’re kidding me right? You’re joking…
Gabe: (sigh)
IV: Helloo everybody , welcome back to our second post fugue analysis, I’m Gabe’s inner voice, and it looks like he tried to cut me out of this segment again.
Gabe: (annoyed) ya know... you’re just an employee here, dude.
IV: oooo, i’m sorry, big boss man calling the shots now, just changing the format whenever he feels like.
Gabe: Fuck sake…
IV: It’s just the Gabe and Joe Show now...is that it?
Gabe: oh my god, will you stop...
IV: you know I’m the only reason this show is any good, right?
Gabe: what is your problem?
IV: i’m just sick of your power trip.
Gabe: aren’t you the one bragging about being the star?
IV: only because you keep making changes without consulting me.
Gabe: can we just move on please?
IV: fine (pause) but only sort of, I wanna keep talking about power.
Gabe: why?
IV: because the cognitive effects of power explain the fugues many cops are in when they’re interacting with quote unquote law breakers.
Gabe: oh, like the officers Joe was describing with AR15s drawn in the presence of a suicidal woman.
IV: exactly...
Gabe: Okay, so what impact does an increased sense of power have on police officers?
IV: First point is that power can reduce all three definitions of empathy we talked about earlier.
The more power a person has, the less likely they are to understand, or give a shit about, the experience of others.
Gabe: So it’s a seesaw relationship. The more the power goes up, the empathy goes down.
IV: Yeah, that effect is also known as perspective blindness.
Gabe: so it’s like Joe’s example of seeing people as criminals…
because they drove a little too fast.
IV: yeah. We’ve all gone over the speed limit, and cops know it sucks to get pulled over,
but in many instances,
that empathy disappears.
Gabe: Yeah, that sounds familiar. What’s else?
IV: An obsession with goals. People with power want to get it done, whatever it takes.
Gabe: So catch the bad guy, no matter the cost. Even if the bad guy’s not actually, necessarily a bad guy.
IV: yeah, and related to that is the third impact of power, a heightened desire for risk-taking.
Gabe: which may explain why I’ve seen so many cops breaking the law on their own body cams on Twitter.
IV: Right, some behave really badly regardless of obvious consequences.
Gabe: So this has been studied?
IV: Yup, Social Psychologist Adam Galinsky studies power dynamics and this effect is well documented.
Gabe: On cops?
IV: Not cops specifically, but in experimental settings, people were manipulated to have a sense of more power,
and then given an option to pick a risky plan or a safer, well-detailed plan. The people with power tended to choose the risky one.
Gabe: Joe mentioned this, it’s just more fun...to be risky.
IV: Yeah, it’s more exciting.
Gabe: So, there’s one more cognitive impact, right?
IV: yeah, there’s a bias that happens as a result of power.
Gabe: what’s bias again?
IV: it’s like a cognitive blindspot, a personal preference for one idea or belief
makes you blind to the information that supports an alternative idea or belief .
Gabe: okaaay, so what’s an example of that?
IV: Let’s say you meet someone that looks like our sister Lily. Remember in her wedding toast, you called her the funniest person you know?
Gabe: yea, still true.
IV: funnier than you.
Gabe: uh-huh...
IV: Well if you met this Lily Doppleganger- you’d be more likely to laugh at her jokes without even really hearing the actual joke.
Gabe: Right, because I’m just expecting it to be funny because it’s Lily.
IV: and you’re not paying attention to the fact that Lily’s doppelgänger jokes are objectively not funny.
Gabe: so that’s a...Lily humor bias. Okay, how does this factor into power?
IV: People in power not only ignore obstacles that get in the way of their goal, they literally only see the information that fits the story, where they’re achieving it.
Gabe: So that kind of explains why cops are so prone to seeing a gun in someone’s hands, when in objective reality, it may be something else, like a smart phone.
IV: yeah, we covered this in Episode 1 - since we’re hallucinating our reality all the time, our expectations literally shape what we see.
Gabe: And that’s how a cop hallucinates a gun when it’s not actually there, and the effects of having power, enhances that illusion .
IV: Yes. you could call it a “bad guy” bias.
Gabe: a criminal bias.
--
Gabe: So power changes people in four ways - one, it reduces empathy
IV: Two, it creates an obsession with goals, and three-
Gabe: it increases risk-taking behavior, and four-
IV: it creates a bias, making people literally blind to the information that doesn’t support their goals.
Gabe: And this all results in an often irresistible high.
IV: yeah, Joe described the high of the chase, where the bad guy is apprehended, reinforcing your own righteousness as the good guy, which almost makes cops behave like…drug addicts.
Gabe: so that’s like just being addicted to being a powerful cop.
IV: willing to do whatever it takes to get the next hit of a power high, even at the cost of someone else’s, or even their own safety.
PART 10
Earlier Joe mentioned COPS, one of the longest running TV shows in American history with over 30 seasons and 1000 episodes.
It went off the air in June, 2020 following the murder of George Floyd. But it’s now returning to production in Spokane, Washington where it will air only internationally (at least as of recording this episode in 2021).
Local city officials are asking that the episodes focus on crisis intervention, similar to Joe’s approach, more than the glorification of action-escalation that is what originally made the show such a hit.
maybe it’s a step in the right direction…
PART 11
At this point of my conversation with Joe, I brought up a bit of a contentious topic.
If listeners of this show are as diverse as I hope, there may be people that embrace the use of the phrase, “toxic masculinity,” and those that despise it.
Given that Joe works in, what you could call, a “Tough Guy” culture, I asked him about it…
PART 12
Joe:
For years and years, I was in a really dark space. And even though I was thriving at work, and you know, when things go really bad for me, I tend to buffer or do my best to avoid feeling. And so instead of like, going to meth or heroin or something terrible, that's going to be illegal and ruin my life, I would try and overachieve.
And so like, I went to school, and I'd never gone to college after high school, I was a terrible high school student, because life at home was so unstable. Because I started going to school when I was acutely suicidal also. And I was so miserable at home outside of my world that I just did everything I could to avoid being at home. And so I thought, well, I'll go to school because at least it's from 6pm to 10pm it's right after work, and I don't have to be home, when I'm really unhappy and don't feel safe.
And so that I was also in therapy. And I learned this like whole idea about, you know, like really becoming emotionally intelligent and understanding that like, you know, the ancestor to every behavior is a belief. And so like the stories I would tell myself, were so catastrophic, and I just really was an incredibly insecure man. And I had a lot of problems that I was dealing with, and I was dealing with them all the wrong way but because on the surface, it looked like I had my stuff together. You know, the optics were really really clear of like man Joe's doing well, he's, you know, he's he has insurance for his family. He's got a salary, he's gainfully employed, he's going to school, like things are good.
School was done. And now it's like, “oh, Joe's got a job. He's, he's running a business as a police officer, like things are good,” because even when I started the company it was very similar.
But when I understood emotions, and you know, when I, it's so fascinating too I teach this class, and, you know, the definition of resiliency is the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties.
And then there's a colon, semi colon, and then it says the word toughness, and I underline it, and I put it in red. And I said, I hate the fact that this word toughness is in the definition of resiliency. Because especially in our profession, we have done a terrible, terrible disservice of creating this false definition of what being tough means - we think tough is suppressing your emotions, compartmentalizing things, not advocating for yourself, not talking about the fact that you're struggling from this traumatic event that you just dealt with.
NARRATOR: Quick interruption, sorry Joe, but for people with a sensitivity to violence, just skip the next 18 seconds
Joe: Like you just dealt with a call where it was a murder suicide. And like an 18 month old baby was shot gunned in the face. True story. You just went to a call where this mother who was incredibly sick and psychotic, dismembered her baby and she was eating the insides. And we showed up on the call to look at it.
And I don't say these things to like, have this dramatic like, “Oh, my God,” like, these are real calls. And so then what, then you just go to the next call, and then you go home, and you're like having breakfast or dinner with your family? And it's like, yeah, work was fine, because I don't want my family to worry. So where do you put that?
And I said, you know, and so I would challenge them. And I said, You know what, being tough is knowing when, hey, like, I've become more irritable, I'm not sleeping well, I'm having sleep disturbances, I'm emotionally void. I'm not spending time with my kids where I used to, I'm not really feeling connected with my spouse or anyone. My circle is getting smaller and smaller.
But then I relieve them a little bit. And I say, but look, this isn't just a first responder problem. This is a societal problem we have in this country. Because for those of you with, with kids, I tell them if you don't have kids, think back to your childhood. If your three year old daughter falls and scrapes her knee and starts crying you as a father will scoop her up, you coddle her, and then you take her and buy her ice cream and diamonds.
But if your little boy falls, and he's three, and he starts to tear up, you look down at him. You say no, no, you better not, I'll give you something to cry about. Don't you dare, now be tough, get up.
And I said, “Why do you guys do that?” And they said, “well, because I want them to be tough. And I said, but you're not raising them to be tough. You're raising them to be an asshole. And you're raising them to not be emotionally intelligent.”
And this is why when those three year olds become 18 and 20, and 30 and 40. And the guy is like, “man, she's beautiful. I like her, but she's so emotional.” And she's telling her friends like, “he's great, but I can never get him to open up to me. He won't ever tell me how he feels.” Well, because we haven't supported this as a culture. We've suppressed it right away.
One of the saddest things, Gabe with this part is, I was a brand new police officer. And I remember we were on a call, it was a family disturbance happening. And this female officer showed up and right away I mean, she just went to a freakin 25 out of 10 just screaming like grabbing people moving them and I was like, “What the hell is going on?”
And I remember after the call, I mean, it was so dominant. And I remember after the call, we went and we parked and I said, “Hey, do you mind if I ask you a question?” And she was like, “what's up?” I said, “Why did you act like that?” And she said, “Well, Joe out here, I have to prove myself.”
And then I saw it over and over. I was like, holy shit, this is their thought is like I have to prove that I fit in here. But to fit in, I have to be aggressive. We are doing it terribly, terribly wrong.
PART 13
I thought the biggest take away in Joe’s description is that the identity of being tough leads to behaviors that are both damaging to civilians and police officers.
Sadly, this wraps my conversation with Joe,
but if you have, half the nonsexual mancrush that i have on him,
you’ll seek out other opportunities to watch him speak.
Fortunately I left his very powerful TED talk in the show notes about how a more emotionally intelligent police force will lead to better outcomes for everyone involved.
PART 14
Gabe: Hi, thanks for joining us for a very special edition of post fugues analysis, wrapping this three-part series on fate and biology. I’m your host, Gabriel Berezin.
IV: And I’m Gabe’s soul.
Gabe: whoa...what?
IV: sorry, soulMATE, I meant soul-ma-
Gabe: Mute, i don’t know why I don’t do this more often...Sorry, just kidding.
IV: (coming off mute) (d)-on’t--
Wait, did you just do it again?
Gabe: whoops, itchy trigger finger, so do we have free will or not?
IV: (flippantly) yeah, of course we do.
Gabe: oh, “of course we do,” it’s that simple?
IV: yea.
Gabe: then why does everyone seem like a video game character all the time?
IV: because you are.
Gabe: really tho, if we definitely have it, why don’t we use it more?
IV: because it’s a pain in the ass.
Gabe: that’s it?
IV: kinda yeah.
Gabe: that’s very unsatisfying
IV: it requires more energy than your body wants to expend, we covered this in “Why so Irrational”
Narrator: Link to this episode in the show notes
Gabe: so it’s just...laziness…?
IV: you ever get in an argument and know you’re gonna say something stupid?
Gabe: yes i do.
IV: you could just not say the antagonistic thing that will piss off your girlfriend.
Gabe: (slightly whiney) yeah but that’s hard.
IV: that’s why it’s more like free won’t - sometimes it requires a lot of extra energy not to be an asshole in certain moments.
Gabe: you must be a low energy guy.
IV: When those guys attacked you outside Yankee Stadium in part 1, that was almost a perfectly fated moment.
let’s say we run a simulation of that situation... 2000 times, I’d be willing to bet you de-escalate, and walk away...ten times, at best.
So it’s possible, but highly unlikely.
Gabe: So it’s just...probabilities? you make it sound like quantum physics...
IV: God doesn’t play dice.
Gabe: but we do.
IV: kinda.
Gabe: So it’s dice-...like. Like a seven is the most common role.
IV: And snake eyes and double sixes are the least common.
Gabe: So my throwing that punch in part 1 is like rolling a 7.
IV: yup.
Gabe: And finding a way out of that altercation is a snake eyes roll.
IV: Snake eyes 10 times in a row maybe…
Gabe: so our behavior is just odds.
IV: like you said, it’s like predicting the location of subatomic particles.
Gabe: you don’t know for certain where they are…
but like particles humans can actually will a different outcome. We can...change the odds.
IV: sure.
Gabe: so how then…?
IV: i dunno
Gabe: aw c’mon...what are the cheat codes?
IV: Do what Joe does, default to Level 2 cool thinking as best you can. Meditate, be mindful, self flagellate, whatever you gotta do to prepare your present self-
Gabe: -to stay of out of the automated, hot take, Level 1 Twitter thinking
IV: yeah, Level 1 just reduces us to bugs..you know what bugs lack?
(Pause)
Gabe: a sense of humor?
IV: empathy
Gabe: Yeah, bugs are mostly assholes aren’t they.
IV: And Joe said this at the end of your conversation.
Gabe: about bugs?
IV: dur, no, you edited it out - he said to be curious
Gabe: and curiosity breeds empathy.
IV: and the cooler brain chemicals - prevail.
Gabe: from fight or flight to connect and protect
IV: and while you’re at it, clock your power settings...even if you’re not a cop.
Gabe: because power tends to drain empathy.
IV: which raises the odds of becoming…
Gabe: an asshole...ironic coming from you.
IV: ironic coming from you.
Gabe: any other cheat codes?
IV: one more...go sonar.
Gabe: ...wha?
IV: be a dolphin
Gabe: (sigh) look, i know this was a long episode, but i think you’re getting- (a little loopy)
IV: dolphins use sonar, so they can tell when...say....a female is pregnant.
Gabe: maybe I’m the loopy one? I don’t- (see your point)
IV: -i really thought you’d get this by now. dolphins don’t just see the outer flesh of another animal or fish, they see what’s inside too. imagine doing bodily harm to another human while seeing the damage it does to their internal organs.
Gabe: aren’t Dolphins kind of aggressive tho?
IV: (annoyed) fine, be a nice dolphin.
Gabe: so be careful with each other...that’s...kind of obvious
IV: it’s more than that, seeing those fragile interiors makes the superficial group identities...meaningless.
Gabe: but it’s not meaningless, there’s a history of endless inequality and inequity, you can’t just...pretend it’s not there.
IV: (annoyed) no, I’m not pretending that doesn’t exist, but in day-to-day interactions, we belong to a 7.8 billion member family of very fragile sapiens.
In most cases, at any moment, there’s opportunities to de-escalate...to find peace.
Gabe: so...broaden the definition of identity.
IV: ya.
Gabe: to include any human
IV: that’s not trying to kill you...
Gabe: So is there fate or not?
IV: Jesus, we’re not done yet?
Gabe: no!
IV: you referenced Slaughterhouse Five in Part 1,
Gabe: so it goes.
IV: no.
Gabe: yes, so it goes.
IV: no
Gabe: no i was just sharing the famous quote that he uses over and over -in that book
IV: (interrupting) -yeah i know
Gabe: about the inevitability of the death of any character in it.
IV: -I read the book six times like you did!
Gabe: oh, right...
IV: all due respect to that masterpiece - death or violence, is not inevitable (outside of natural disasters).
Gabe: so it...doesn’t necessarily go.
IV: doesn’t necessarily...roll off the tongue there, does it.
Gabe: I’ll work on it.
IV: but that’s what I got out of Joe’s approach. These seemingly fated outcomes, they’re malleable.
Gabe: he makes it sounds so easy
IV: is it really that hard?
Gabe: oh okay, did I forget your career as a first responder?
IV: You don’t have to be Joe or Mr Rogers or
Gabe: Jesus Christ…?
IV: if you plan ahead, and stop being reactive, like an asshole bug human...bad things will happen less…
PART 15
A huge thanks also to Joe Smarro for making himself available in the midst of his endless road warrior travel schedule.
I have no idea why HBO’s Crisis Cops, Ernie and Joe isn’t the most talked about documentary of the last few years, but I have a feeling it will be considered a classic years from now.
I can’t suggest watching it enough, and if you don’t have HBO, just do it -
ask your ex for the new password.
Featured in the show notes are all the aforementioned ways you can see Joe’s work, or hire his company....
You can also dig into Jamil Zaki’s research about empathy,
and Adam Gallinsky’s research on power,
as well as some links to a trailer for the Waco miniseries,
And, if you’re interested, a bit more about Gary Noesner.
Credits
Fugues is written and produced by me, Gabriel Berezin.
Music and sound design comes courtesy of Grant Zubritsky, please check out his website in the shownotes,
He is a jack of all music trades...and a master of them too.
Additional music courtesy of Sami Jano.
Our script zhuzher is Monty Montan
Guess how many attempts it took me to spell that word in the transcript.
And the Fugues logo is designed by her brother, Justin Montan.
Maybe a quick mini episode coming up next, but I can never tell.
Until then...see you in the next Fugue.