Police lenient with a supermodel clone: a double standard of justice
The Entitled Woman Turns Traffic Ticket Into Felony video has so far generated 15,864 comments with every one I read condemning her inexcusable behavior and driving.
Food for thought: I briefly dated a woman who looked like a supermodel but drank like a fish, becoming so intoxicated while driving that when she arrived at my place, I often had to steady her to keep her from toppling over. Not surprisingly, she was frequently stopped by police, but despite the open bottle of liquor tucked between her legs and obvious impairment, she was never ticketed, evidently because the male police — lucky for her — were mesmerized by her gorgeous face and long, perfect legs that Hollywood stars would envy. She was one of the hottest women I've ever seen, with pulchritude sufficient to scramble the brain of almost any man, but why should that give her what was tantamount to a Get Out of Jail Free card?
This is one of many real-life examples of the double standard of justice rife in America, with especially beautiful women often the beneficiaries of it. Casey Anthony is one example, and former First Lady Laura Bush another. While joyriding with a friend, she — then Laura Welch — wasn't paying enough attention to her driving and ended up slamming into her ex-boyfriend (or “close friend”) at an intersection, ejecting him from his vehicle and killing him. If she wasn't young and beautiful, she likely would have been convicted of vehicular manslaughter, but from what I read, she wasn't even arrested: no handcuffs for hot women.
The officer in the Entitled Woman video didn't do anything wrong, but he didn't do anything great, either. His primary deficiency was failing to stop the woman from escalating her behavior as it spiraled out of control. I routinely did that as an ER doctor. I could have excused myself from that responsibility by saying it wasn't in my job description, but one of my foremost responsibilities as captain of the emergency department during my shifts was to keep it maximally under control. That can be supremely challenging considering that ERs draw a disproportionate percentage of riffraff intoxicated on booze, drugs, and supremely entitled. In almost every case, I could truncate their rage.
One example: one of my patients was a world-champion boxer in a vile mood who introduced himself by telling me about it and saying that he might kill me, then explained how: headbutt or punch me while I examined his eyes with an ophthalmoscope, necessary because of his presenting complaint. To make a long story short, I quickly defused that situation and turned his anger into affinity, with him proclaiming how much he liked me.
Why can't police do the same? The cold, robotic, by-the-book stern commands often backfire. People are people, and no one likes being treated like dirt, or treated as if they don't deserve kindness. Police and law enforcement personnel too often escalate situations by entering them with an arrogant attitude and abrasive tone of voice, such as this U.S. Coast Guard officer boarding a boat for a routine safety check, which could have done even better by being pleasant. I've seen much worse (such as this or this or this), but she didn't do any favors for the USCG. Evidence from the arrest of the world's #1 golfer, Scottie Scheffler, suggests this was yet another incident of a power-hungry cop manufacturing crimes to give him an excuse to vent his rabid aggression.
People abhor unfairness and even animals revolt against it, as researchers have documented. A double standard of justice is an egregious injustice. The Black lady in the Entitled Woman video almost certainly was not aware of how my ex-girlfriend got off scot-free, and she very likely didn't know how Laura Bush got a pass that paved the way for her charmed life, but she has undoubtedly known of many cases in which police don't give a break to Black folks but do to favored others.
I was one of them as an ER doctor. I never asked for special treatment but always received it from police eager to instantly let me off the hook — I had a lead foot in those days — likely because they figured it wasn't wise to ticket someone who might save your life, or might not: some ER personnel joked about killing patients they didn't like — or I think they were joking, even though they didn't appear to be in a joking mood. I never had to show my license and registration; instead it was smiles and apologies for pulling me over.
Cops apologizing.
This double standard has tentacles permeating our culture that clearly values some people more than others. The red carpet is rolled out for certain people, such as Lori Loughlin's daughter, Bill Gates's daughter, assorted celebrities and big shots, and Main Street folks with money, beauty, or connections. Or being the doc in charge of the Trauma Room.
Blacks commit a disproportionate percentage of violent crime in the United States, which leads armchair quarterbacks into blaming them personally or their culture collectively. The behavioral propensity manifesting as violence surfaces diversely, including with failure to cooperate with police, which has led to countless well-publicized cases that too often end fatally: Daunte Wright was one example; if he were an ER doctor, he might have received smiles instead of a bullet.
This is a surprisingly common problem, with many parents wondering how to elicit cooperation from their children or others. This is sufficiently prevalent that primary care doctors should have relevant advice, but if you expect good answers, you will leave disappointed. That will remain a mystery to most, but my upcoming mega-book (4500 pages and growing daily) presents a surprisingly easy answer. Hours after reading it, you could have more cooperative children in a better mood with less defiance, depression, anxiety, and more cheerful cooperation as well as intelligence and creativity.
If your child misbehaves, you don't conclude that he or she is inherently bad, but when others fall short, we often have a short fuse in assessing them — hence the thousands of commenters eager to blast the entitled woman without pondering if there is anything we can do as a nation to better help our brothers and sisters who need it.
Americans stew in problems because we look up to people without solutions. When the blind lead the blind, it isn't a recipe for success.
Notes:
- Do Beautiful People Get Away with Murder? Among their many unfair advantages, attractive people are more likely to be judged innocent in court, and, if convicted, given lighter sentences.
- Do Ugly Criminals Receive Harsher Sentences? An Analysis of Lookism in the Criminal Justice System
- Physical Attractiveness Bias in the Legal System
- Physical Attractiveness Bias: 27 Studies on Why Attractive People Win in the Legal System
- Study uncovers why jurors reward the good-looking, penalize the unbeautiful
- Do Attractive People Face Fewer Legal Consequences?
- Cornell Study: Juries Convict Attractive People Less Often
- Stanford Law School: Who Speaks For The Ugly?
- Ugly defendants 'more likely to be found guilty than attractive ones'
- Why Hot People Get Lower Court Fines
- What Is the Halo Effect?
- Beauty bias: We tend to think pretty people are morally superior: Beautiful people really know how to catch a break.
- Attractiveness Bias: Why attractive people often get preferential treatment.
- Study: Ugly People More Likely to End Up in Jail
- June 4, 2024: Police have become further removed from people in the Netherlands, study asserts
Comment: And elsewhere, unfortunately.
“The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.”
— F. Scott Fitzgerald
Reference: Imagining dialogue can boost critical thinking: Excerpt: “Examining an issue as a debate or dialogue between two sides helps people apply deeper, more sophisticated reasoning …”
