Teenage thrill-seeking fuelling violence
Youth caught up in fun, risk says psychologist
A Canadian-born psychologist who studies violence says the Baltimore riot is primarily driven by “Type T” (thrill-seeking) teens at the end of a long winter, with probably few social or racial justice motives.
“The death of Freddie Gray is probably the opportunity and pretext for riotous fun, thrill, risk and profit (looting),” said Dr. Frank Farley, a professor of psychology at Temple University in Philadelphia and a past-president of the American Psychological Association.
Gray died from a severe spinal injury a week after police subdued him in an April 12 arrest, the latest in a string of highly publicized deaths involving police and black men in America.
Farley, who watched the violence in Baltimore on television, said the rock throwing, arson and looting by youth unfolded “like a party at the end of a long winter,” a flash-mob riot in which criminal looters and rioters seemed to outnumber legitimate protesters.
“There would be all sorts of motives involved,” Farley said, “arousal, excitement, thrill and fun, where you can set fires and raise hell. The police, as we know, were holding back, and when does that happen?”
The chaos had an element of a phenomenon known as emotional contagion, in which “everybody gets excited, and the arousal level just goes up,” said Farley, who, last August, walked the streets of Ferguson, Mo., observing and talking to protesters during the rioting that broke out over the fatal police shooting of an unarmed teenager, 18-year-old Michael Brown.
Farley wanted to better understand the motives behind riots. “What struck me was that a significant portion of people on the ground were genuinely concerned about Michael Brown, about race relations and the social justice issues,” he said.
He also saw acts of generosity, including dozens in the crowds wearing bright orange T-shirts with the word “CLERGY,” who intervened in several situations “that could have gotten pretty nasty” between demonstrators and police.
“That wouldn’t have worked at all in Baltimore, because Baltimore was a full-out riot,” Farley said. “The atmosphere was almost toxic over what happened to Freddie Gray.”
Authorities have not explained how Gray’s spine was injured, and when there is simmering ambiguity, Farley said, “people who want to do bad things can walk right through it.”
In Ferguson, it took a grand jury three months to decide not to indict police officer Darren Wilson for the shooting of Michael Brown.
But there were differences between the cities of unrest: Ferguson’s police chief and mayor were white, whereas Baltimore has a black mayor and a black police chief. “That should have helped, but it didn’t,” Farley said, “and that perhaps reinforces that much of last night’s rioting was not fuelled by genuine racial justice issues.”
Still, he and others believe there are clear parallels between the unrest that broke out last summer in smalltown Middle America, and Monday’s riot in big-city Baltimore.
“There is no doubt in my mind that behind Baltimore lies Ferguson,” said Dr. Ken Eisold, a New York City psychologist and psychoanalyst, and author of the book, What You Don’t Know You Know: Our Hidden Motives in Life, Business and Everything.
“There’s always a grievance — there’s always some sense of people being oppressed, unable to express themselves, discriminated against and held back,” he said.
But, “there’s also a kind of exuberance that goes along with violence like this,” he added. “It’s almost an excuse to smash things, to go a little wild, to steal and basically raise a little hell.”
“That’s why people get hurt and stores get scorched and cars get turned over.”
The lawlessness, he said, has almost a “celebratory quality.”
“People sort of feel as if they are caught up in the mob — in a sense they surrender to the direction the mob is taking, and there’s a certain kind of pleasure in that as well,” he said. “People feel as if they belong to some larger, more powerful entity.”
It’s scary, he said, and it’s temporary. “But I think it’s very seductive.”
Youth, especially, can more easily give themselves over to these impulses, because they’re less inhibited, he said. “The only thing that can be done is social justice — create the conditions where few people are feeling oppressed, and voiceless and powerless.”