This was RAPE!

[athon]

Cops are a little like teachers; most go into the game with good reasons, and for most of them the reason remains clear throughout their career. Others go into the game for a whole lot of other incentives, or lose focus on what their job is really about. And horribly, the consequences colour the profession badly.

Do you know how often I meet teachers who cannot stand a student questioning their authority? If a student asks me why I've given them a punishment, I tell them why. Very clearly. I allow them to question it. If they express a problem with it, I describe an alternative route they can take (through somebody higher than me). I don't mind them going over my head, in fact I welcome it. They are taking initiative and see that they do have the ability to negotiate their own authority. No, they don't escape the punishment, but they do learn more about the process they are going through.

Apparently, my practice is uncommon and often derided by other teachers for giving the kids too much power. The knock on effect is that kids don't see the system as something to work within, but rather the system is authority figures who you follow without question.

And therein lies a lot of problems.

Athon

 

[Roadtoad]

A bit more on this case.

 

[Roadtoad]

An update.

 

[gtc]

That article seems to be from October. Anything newer?

 

[Roadtoad]

I'm still looking for that. Obviously, MickeyD's ain't talkin' much about it.

 

[ponderingturtle]

That article seems to be from October. Anything newer?

The documentary Human Behavioral Experiments goes into this case a bit. It says that the guy charged was the fiance of the manager who was a woman and did the innitial strip search. Then he got her to swich with her fiance because she could trust him with a naked girl right?

Then after repeated things like having her doing jumping jacks naked but not while the manager was there it progressed to compelled oral sex.

As for people who make it clear that it is not the way to behave, well in such situations most people don't think well, and make decisions that they would normaly look at as totaly unacceptable.

 

[ponderingturtle]

That article seems to be from October. Anything newer?

The documentary Human Behavioral Experiments goes into this case a bit. It says that the guy charged was the fiance of the manager who was a woman and did the innitial strip search. Then he got her to swich with her fiance because she could trust him with a naked girl right?

Then after repeated things like having her doing jumping jacks naked but not while the manager was there it progressed to compelled oral sex.

As for people who make it clear that it is not the way to behave, well in such situations most people don't think well, and make decisions that they would normaly look at as totaly unacceptable.

 

[gumboot]

Isn't requiring people to obey police officers a recipe for disaster?

You are required to obey a LAWFUL order. I fail to see any scenario in which this would be a lawful order.

I don't know about America, but I know this wouldn't happen here. To begin with, the police can only order a civilian to assist them in person.

Secondly, in the event that the police deem a strip search necessary it is your inherent RIGHT to choose one of the following:

1) That a police officer of your gender does the search
2) That a doctor does the search

The police cannot refuse either of the above requests.

Only a certified doctor, a customs officer, or a police officer is legally allowed to perform a strip search.

Finally, the police CANNOT perform a strip search in the presence of civilians. It must be done in private.

-Andrew

 

[gumboot]

Time to drag out the Milgram experiment again.

This is a VERY misleading argument.

In those experiments the authority figure was standing there in person, and in "costume". When the orders were given over a telephone the number of subjects that administered a fatal dose of "current" plummeted (In fact if I recall correctly, in most experiments EVERYONE refused to do it).

Had the "cop" been standing there in person ordering this I would not be surprised if the majority of people went along with it - way beyond a point of decency.

But he wasn't. He was a voice on the phone. According to the findings of Milgram, no one should have played along.

-Andrew

 

[JamesDillon]

You are required to obey a LAWFUL order. I fail to see any scenario in which this would be a lawful order.

I don't know about America, but I know this wouldn't happen here.

I think this post misses a vital point: none of this was done in accordance with legal procedure in America, either. The caller played on the ignorance of the victims and their deference to authority to put them in a position that would never have arisen if legal protocols were observed. Unless you're arguing that human nature is different in New Zealand than it is here, I think your optimism is perhaps unwarranted.

This is a VERY misleading argument.... According to the findings of Milgram, no one should have played along.

-Andrew

I don't see how your conclusion follows from the rest of the post. The situation may have been slightly different here than in the Milgram experiment, but the basic finding of that experiment, that people are willing to put aside their moral inhibitions when instructed to do so by a person in a position of authority, seems well borne out by these occurrences. One might even suspect that the caller was familiar with the Milgram experiment.

 

[Scot C. Trypal]

This is a VERY misleading argument.

In those experiments the authority figure was standing there in person, and in "costume". When the orders were given over a telephone the number of subjects that administered a fatal dose of "current" plummeted (In fact if I recall correctly, in most experiments EVERYONE refused to do it).

Had the "cop" been standing there in person ordering this I would not be surprised if the majority of people went along with it - way beyond a point of decency.

But he wasn't. He was a voice on the phone. According to the findings of Milgram, no one should have played along.

-Andrew

I think the article did say about 1 in ten of the calls (they could find evidence of) resulted in the manager obeying, for what it’s worth. Still, I don’t think even 1 in 1000 would change the fact that this story is both terribly sad and terribly ominous.

 

[Kerberos]

You are required to obey a LAWFUL order. I fail to see any scenario in which this would be a lawful order.

I don't know about America, but I know this wouldn't happen here. To begin with, the police can only order a civilian to assist them in person.

Secondly, in the event that the police deem a strip search necessary it is your inherent RIGHT to choose one of the following:

1) That a police officer of your gender does the search
2) That a doctor does the search

The police cannot refuse either of the above requests.

Only a certified doctor, a customs officer, or a police officer is legally allowed to perform a strip search.

Finally, the police CANNOT perform a strip search in the presence of civilians. It must be done in private.

-Andrew

I seriously doubt that American law is substantially different, but as toddjh said, Milgram.

 

[Luke T.]

This is one of the most amazing stories I have ever heard of. And one of the most disturbing.

Challenging police is a tricky thing. I have seen firsthand cops beat a man senseless for challenging them.

And one night in Mississippi, my girlfriend and I were having a drunken argument in my vehicle as we traveled down Highway 90. At some point, five police cars came out of nowhere at high speed and ran me right off the road.

I don't mean pulled me over. I mean surrounded me and ran me way the hell off the road. Tires squealing, dust flying, body parts smacking into parts of the interior, things spinning.

Then I don't know how many cops were dragging us both out and slamming us into the hood.

She and I continued our argument. Yelling at each other across the hood.

Hey, we were drunk and both crazy.

Hands were frisking us, very roughly, and tossing my vehicle.

It eventually occured to me to ask what the hell was going on.

Instead of answering, they asked us about our whereabouts for the last hour. The tone was very "don't even think about giving us anything but a straight answer to the question."

I sensed something was very, very wrong and these guys were this close to doing a Rodney King to us.

So I fessed up we had been at such and such bar, and were just a couple blocks from home, and boy am I sorry we were drunk driving officer.

Then they asked if we had been at such and such convenience store a few minutes ago.

Uh, no.

Turns out a vehicle similar to mine had just pulled an armed robbery there.

They let us go shortly thereafter and took off like bats out of hell looking for the next vehicle that matched the description.

Don't mess with the cops in Mississippi, is all I'm saying.

 

[Q-Source]

Had the "cop" been standing there in person ordering this I would not be surprised if the majority of people went along with it - way beyond a point of decency.

If you read the link, you'll see that Milgram did other variations of the experiment, one of them using a telephone. It only reduced the percentage of compliance but it did not disappear.

In general, he found that when the immediacy of the victim was increased, compliance decreased, and when immediacy of the authority increased, compliance increased (Experiments 1–4). For instance, in one variation where participants received instructions from the experimenter only by telephone (Experiment 2), compliance decreased to 21 percent.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment

1/10 is quite in the percentage range predicted by the experiment.

 

[ponderingturtle]

This is a VERY misleading argument.

In those experiments the authority figure was standing there in person, and in "costume". When the orders were given over a telephone the number of subjects that administered a fatal dose of "current" plummeted (In fact if I recall correctly, in most experiments EVERYONE refused to do it).

Had the "cop" been standing there in person ordering this I would not be surprised if the majority of people went along with it - way beyond a point of decency.

But he wasn't. He was a voice on the phone. According to the findings of Milgram, no one should have played along.

-Andrew

Well most people refused to go that far with the guy calling up all the resturants and having them strip search their employies. BUt others have stripseached their people because of it.

So it is related, but a percentage might well go that far over the phone, and he might have been in that percentage.

 

[Almo]

Time to drag out the Milgram experiment again. The sad fact is, humans are extremely compliant with authority figures, and probably the majority of people would do the same thing as the manager.

That's not meant to excuse her actions, but to remind us that we all have a responsibility to aspire to higher standards.

Jeremy

Well said.

 

[JamesDillon]

There's an interesting debate between Deepak Chopra and Michael Shermer in the current issue of Skeptic magazine, in which Chopra argues, among other things, that skepticism contributes nothing positive to humankind and consists only of naysaying the creative ideas of others. This hoax offers an excellent example of the positive good that can come from skeptical thinking-- if the managers involved had been a little less willing to defer to apparent authority, none of these incidents would have happened.

 

[glsunder]

This also shows how strongly people are taught to obey authority figures. People expressed surprise that the dropout was the one who realized something wasn't right, when he was the individual most likely to question what was going on. (assuming he wasn't an idiot).

People may be gullible, but they've.. *we've* ...been conditioned to act this way. Our entire society is set up around following rules and teaching people to do so.

 

[JamesDillon]

People may be gullible, but they've.. *we've* ...been conditioned to act this way. Our entire society is set up around following rules and teaching people to do so.

And that isn't generally a bad thing; it enables us to work cooperatively for the common good in most cases. But it does create quirks of psychology that can be exploited by people like the caller in this case to do real damage.

 

[Morrigan]

This was clearly a bright, intelligent young woman,

I disagree. This girl was clearly a complete weak-willed moron, sorry. I am not saying she deserved what happened to her - it was sickening, and the perpetrators are the first to be blamed, not the victim, which she is. Being an idiot does not justify making one a rape victim, but I agree with Art Vandelay on this. No intelligent person would let this go that far. Sure, she might have been tiny and a bit too shy to argue with her superiors, but for crying out loud... you'd think a bright, intelligent young woman would simply tell Summers, "Look, don't you think a real cop would NOT ask you to strip search me on the phone, and this makes no sense whatsoever? THINK ABOUT THIS FOR A MINUTE."
But no, she probably just wimpered because she's a naive idiot. Poor girl, I do feel for her, really... but I disagree that she was bright.