Transform the Police: A More Integral Approach to Law Enforcement [PREVIEW]
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Watch the full 2-hour discussion here: https://integrallife.com/transform-the-police-a-more-integral-approach-to-law-enforcement/

Mark and Corey are joined by Chris Orrey, a retired police lieutenant with over 30 years of service with the Hayward, California Police Department, to discuss the abuse and resulting death of Tyre Nichols, who was severely beaten by five Memphis police officers after a routine traffic stop. What allowed this tragedy (and others like it) to take place, and what sorts of institutional transformation are necessary to prevent them from occurring again?

We were very excited to have Chris join us for this discussion — not only because of her experience as a former police lieutenant, but also because she is leading the Integrative Policing Transformation Initiative over at the Institute of Applied Metatheory, designed to map the fuller complexity of policing in the United States and examine how a transformation toward a fuller guardian model of policing might be achieved. If you are at all interested in supporting this tremendously important and timely endeavor, we encourage you to get in touch here: https://instituteofappliedmetatheory.org/donations/integrative-policing-transformation-initiative/

One of the primary factors we discuss is how our modern Orange standards of law and justice depend on Amber enforcement agencies being healthy, trustable, and reliable — otherwise the entire system breaks down as the public looses confidence in the police’s ability to serve the community.

And without this Orange-stage accountability and oversight, Amber groups often go bad fairly quickly — we don’t only see this in policing, but also in organizations such as the military, the Boy Scouts, the Catholic Church, and others. Closed-off Amber groups often tend to normalize, justify, and cover for all sorts of abuse within the group — even when that abuse is coming from a small number within the group. There is a natural Amber drive to protect the group at all costs (such as the “blue line of silence” within policing culture) which prevents real accountability from taking place, and which in turn drives more resentment and mistrust between the population and the police in general.

We go on to talk about a number of other critical factors and leverage points in each of the four quadrants, including:

UL (Intentional problems/solutions)

• Creating more support and healing for officers (e.g. helping officers with accumulated job-related traumas),
• Training greater emotional intelligence to help with empathy and  de-escalation of violence
• State training to help officers better regulate and manage intense emotional and psychological states of consciousness (e.g. the natural fight or flight response) in both officers and criminal suspects)
 UR (Behavioral problems/solutions)
• Managing physiological states associated with interior mental/emotional states (e.g. adrenaline, overall physical health of the officer)
• Identifying multiple skillsets to deal with different kinds of confrontations and social challenges,
• Recruitment strategies to attract more healthy and ethical officer candidates

LL (Cultural problems/solutions)

• Expanding officers' sense of "we" to include the communities they are protecting,
• Restoring trust by creating more connective tissue between police and the communities they serve,
• Dismantling internal "blue wall of silence" culture within police culture,

LR (Systemic problems/solutions)

• External social/environmental conditions (overall social violence, proliferation of guns, race and racism, etc.),
• Outmoded social inertias from previous policing eras that remain with us today,
• Rethinking “qualified immunity” that often prevents abusive officers from being held accountable,
• Various forms of corruption and bias in justice systems,
• Bringing more Orange-stage accountability to Amber-stage police organizations