Stress Fugue

At the risk of turning this into the social-justice roleplaying blog (it has previously been the religious speculation RPG blog) I am going to discuss some current events.

I promise I will tie the topic to roleplaying , and not just tack it on at the end like I do sometimes.

The Incident
Unless you use the internet solely for porn (and viewing this blog, apparently?) You have probably become aware of the media-circus concerning police brutality and abuse in America. The whole issue has been spun into a racial issue. And the racial dimension has obscured the whole debate in my opinion.

A recent case in this ongoing debacle has occurred rather close to home, in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Tulsa is a major city in Oklahoma- this means that most Americans have never heard of it, but it has all the sordid urban issues you could hope to find in a city.

On April 2nd, Tulsa sheriffs attempted to arrest Eric Harris for illegally possessing and selling a firearm.
It is legal for private citizens to sell firearms without the buyer submitting to a background check. This is called the "gunshow loophole." Except Eric Harris was a felon, previously convicted of battery of an officer. The specifics of his criminal history are hard to find.

Eric Harris has been referred to as an African American. But frankly, he looks pretty Caucasian to me. Race is a nebulous concept and this is perhaps an example of people interpreting nebulous concepts as suits their agenda.

Eric Harris fled officers and was accidentally shot by Robert Bates, a 73 year old reserve deputy.

uh, need some cheese for that cracker?

 

Robert Bates had made significant donations of weaponry and forensic cameras to the police department, and had definitely lubricated the system by this means. It could be debated that this created a conflict of interest. Bates has been accused of being a pay-to-play cop. His age also invites debate as to whether or not a septuagenarian should be doing anything in law enforcement other than answering phones and making copies.

Body-camera footage of the incident has been released.
Eric Harris was already on the ground, being grappled.
Robert Bates can be heard shouting "taser! taser!" and what follows is a gunshot. Bates can be hear apologizing.
The wound was fatal. Eric Harris is heard clearly saying that he cannot breath. to which a younger officer responds;

"Fuck your breath."

 

The coarse language is telling. It demonstrates a burning contempt, when we should be hearing a more concerned tone. A guy who shouldn't have been shot got shot. In a nominally free society with due process, such callous disregard is damning for a law-enforcement officer. 

 

Then Harris died.

 

Death is not a just reward for disobedience. There is no moral equivalency between the two. If you disagree, well:  May you reap what you sow, you fascist pig.

 

Robert Bates later turned himself in for manslaughter, demonstrating a moral courage which does much to exonerate him in my opinion. 

 

The Problem

What most fascinates me about this scenario are not the issues of social justice, however.

 

What fascinates me is the process by which a CLEET-certified officer can draw, aim and fire a weapon without realizing that it is the wrong damn weapon.

 

Consider all the actions involved in this process:

One would have to move their hand to the wrong weapon, feel the grip as it is grasped, draw the weapon, feel its weight in the hand, aim it - which would presumably involve looking at the weapon, and pull the trigger.

 

Incidentally, the loaded Glock 22c -the standard issue duty weapon in Tulsa weighs over 33 ounces when loaded. A taser weighs about 18 oz and typically has a different style of grip.



 

A different grip, unless we are dealing like something like this. The people who purvey such weapons are exacerbating the situation. This bad idea still weighs the standard 18 oz. however.

 

The practical solution is for LEOs to stop wearing their taser right next to their gun.

 

Anyways, that is a lot of steps necessary ti accidentally fire a weapon. It should be impossible. I have even written elsewhere that it is impossible.

Except it isn't impossible.

It is documented. Officers mistake their firearm for their taser with some frequency. Sometimes they even do so unintentionally.

 

LEOs and combat veterans are quick to point out that this does happen. They mean it as justification, to exculpate themselves from plain, old murder. Fine. That it does.

Except there is a frightening implication here.

By admitting the possibility of weapon switching, they are indirectly admitting that they do not have control their weaponry, but rather that the weaponry can sometimes control them.

 

And that takes us to the heart of the matter:

 

Here we see human nature at work. (Marxists claim there is no such thing as human nature; only conditioning. The Marxists frequently prove to be slaves of their ideology, almost as much as the capitalists.)

 

The relevant feature of human nature we see here is that we are imperfect calculators, especially under stress.

 

In times of crisis, humans tend to forget their training. We mistake our perceptions, or just stand there. Maybe muscle memory from training will kick in. But how good was the training?

 

It doesn't take much experience in combat to realize this, just a little fencing or play-fighting will teach this lesson in a rather gentle manner.

Or just think back to your last minor medical emergency involving yourself or a loved one.

 

Alexis-senpai discusses this in terms of D&D here, where he quotes Siegfried Sassoon to give his readers an idea of just how mad actual combat is.

This is especially true modern combat where things are exploding loudly, almost all threats come from a range, and the things that kill you come in faster than the eye can see.

 

Now imagine yourself in the position or our poor septuagenarian deputy, Robert Bates. Go find the video. It's bad enough just to watch the thing. I imagine that Bates probably hadn't had his heart pumping so fast for maybe a decade. And imagine his desire to be useful. I expect he was fumbling around, not knowing which way to turn, but he got the notion to do something, and Bam.

His training kicked in. I listed the many small actions involved in drawing and firing a weapon. But in most any training regimen, they are all combined into one action.

 

I said above that officers (or rather, people in general) are controlled to an extent by their weaponry. If you are a hammer, everything looks like a nail and such. But what if it is not the weaponry which controls the person, but also the training to some extent?  I say this is what befell Deputy Bates.

 

Back to game:

In the Unreason post, Mr. Smolensk wrote:

 

     "What DM proposes that players, set to enter combat, will forget that they even have a weapon?  Or that they may, stunned and confused, wander throughout the melee, axe dropped heedlessly upon the ground, until they are cut down or they find themselves hours later, lost, having forgotten where they are?"

 

He makes a good point. Doing something like say; having players to morale checks for their characters might seem to be an awful loss of agency for the player. It might seem to remove the element of choice and the element of Heroic fantasy?

 

But what if that is exactly the way to go about it?

 

Is it asking so much to expect Players to remove themselves just a little bit from their character?

This would only require that the player not view the character as an avatar for personal fulfillment (Really, get a life.) But rather, view themselves as something like the detached daemon of a human factor in an hypothetical scenario.

 

Baldar the low-level Adventurer might choose to into combat, but would he have the conviction or fortitude to follow through with his decision? I see demanding a check for this as no less reasonable than any other Will-save or wisdom check.

 

If we consider roleplaying as "running a scenario" rather than "playing a game," then who cares if Baldar turns tail or momentarily loses his senses? After all, "game" still implies that somebody will win, and this makes room for an element of partiality, of bias.

 

Baldar's failure of morale could lead to much richer possibilities than if he had fought like the player's drone. Imagine the potential for pathos. If we are using roleplaying as a device for storytelling and education, it would only make sense to considerer the character's morale rather than the player's agenda.  

 

I'm thinking about how you calculate a character's morale now. Time to get quantifying the abstract again...

 

In conclusion, stop wearing your taser right next to your gun.