Extracted from StraitsTimes.
A 43-year-old male suspect, nicknamed “Botak”, who fatally stabbed another man, was shot dead by police officers in Outram MRT station. The suspect was shot in the chest at a close range by one of the police officer, which was witnessed by several commuters.
Police said the man, 43, had fled after fatally stabbing a 52-year-old Chinese man at a food court at Block 1, Jalan Kukoh at about 2.45pm. Two patrolling police officer spotted the suspect, half an hour later, near the NEL platform, about 1km from the crime scene.
A police spokesman explained that the suspect had pulled a knife from his haversack when he realized the police were closing in on him. Cornered, he charged towards the police officers, one of whom fired a shot at close range.
Superintendent Lau Peet Meng reasoned that the officer on the ground had no choice but to shoot the man:
‘The armed and dangerous suspect approached the officers in a threatening manner in close proximity… Considering he was suspected of having just killed another man, the officer had no choice but to open fire.’
Commuters had expressed concern that the shooting had taken place in a crowded area and may have serious implications if the bullet had grazed someone or gone through the body and hit someone else.
The basic idea behind the General Aggression Model is that people respond to situational events by generating either thoughts (knowledge or previous experience with similar events), feelings (hostility or aversive affect), physiological arousal (increased heart rate or blood pressure), or all three factors. The magnitude in which these factors were elicited depends on the specific situations and the individual’s dispositions. When aggressive thoughts, feelings, and arousal were generated, person will then interpret the situation determining whether aggression is appropriate or not. This process had been termed as the appraisal processes.
Cognitive Neoassociation Model had emphasized the importance of thoughts, a factor in GAM, in aggression. It states that an unpleasant event arouses negative affect, which then activates two schemas; one is the tendency to fight, the other is the tendency to flight. The presence of additional retrieval cues (such as knife) in the environment determines which of the two schemas will be activated. (For more information on GAM and Cognitive Neoassociation Model, pls refer to Social Psychology Alive pp. 439-453)
In our context, Cognitive Neoassociation Model could be used to examine whether our police officers were acting inappropriately. As our police officers were in search of a murder suspect (the unpleasant event), their schema of a murderer is likely to be salient. Schema of a murderer most likely include characteristics like hostile, aggressive, impulsive, and irrational. Thus, our police officers may have already considered violence as a mean to apprehend the suspect. When they saw the suspect draw a knife, the knife (additional retrieval cue) may have increased the already elicited aggressiveness, which eventually resulted in an inappropriate action from the police.
Inappropriate because the shooting took place in an crowded area, and had the potential to cause devastating consequence. It seems that the police didn’t consider this in their appraisal process of aggression (or had overrided it).
As it is not possible to control previous knowledge and feeling (two of the factors in GAM), it was assumed by the blogger that if the police had decreased their physiological arousal, either by approaching the suspect in a less demanding manner (in a negotiation approach rather than an interrogative), or surrounding the suspect (giving the police more sense of control, thus less apprehensive), the outcome might have turn out differently.
It is also important to consider the fact that most of the Singaporeans are indifferent to this issue. Can this be explained by the Just World theory, in which they felt that the suspect deserve to die, thus ignoring the fact that he was executed without being trialed? (interpreted from the fact that there were no followup report, and most articles seem to portray the incident in favor of one side and not neutral).
No doubt that the man deserves to be punished for the murder, but the blogger believes that everyone deserves a fair chance, or fair trial. In this case, there is even an obvious discrepancy in the weapons they carry. One had a 20cm knife, compared to two officers with batons and guns. This post does not discredit our country’s police force; they had deterred and prevented terrorism attack in our country and maintain our country’s low crime rate. But in this incident, they had used excessive force over a relatively weaker assailant.
From Youtube.com
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2 comments:
Hi. My opinion is that police brutality would mean an over excessive use of force. In this incident, no multiple shots were used or baton wacking. Would our society feel safe if police officers were only allowed a baton? In case of imment danger, how will they protect the citizens. Probably not excessive force as mentioned, just force and I do agree everyone should get a chance.
According to police conduct, police officers are allowed to fire when they face imminent danger. From what i can see from the video, there are two officers, surrounding the suspect, which indicates that they definitely are in control of the so called "dangerous" situation. What i dont understand is why they chose to draw their guns first, instead of their batons. i did not imply that police officers should walk around with only batons, what i meant by excessive force is that the two officers actually consider drawing their guns against a single man with a 20cm knife and actually shot him dead.
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