Everyone has heard the old saying, A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. In fact, many of us hear - and use - that little phrase pretty regularly. But what does it mean?
"Don't be silly," you say, "It's obvious what it means!" Is it?
There was a time when a little knowledge really was a dangerous thing. People who understood that were careful not to dabble in stuff they didn’t know a lot about. They might enjoy reading a mystery novel, but they would never dream of going out and trying to investigate a crime or make an arrest. Dr. Kildare and Ben Casey were icons in my youth, but I never rushed out to try surgery, or to set a broken bone.
In fact, when I was a kid, Superman was a pretty big deal but I never tried to outrun a speeding bullet, or to overpower a locomotive, or to leap over tall buildings - well, there was that time when we jumped off the roof of the garage.
Anyway, you get the picture.
Today, we are all buried in a lot more information; all kinds of information. By that, I mean good information - legitimate, true stuff - as well as bad information. Much of the time, you can tell the good info from the bad info. Life's always been like that: if you really thought about it, you could figure things out, based on your life experiences and the knowledge you already had. If you didn't know something, you usually knew where to find out about it. You could look it up, or you could ask someone you knew and trusted.
Not any more.
Oh, you can still look things up, and there is no shortage of people to ask when you need to know something. The problem nowadays is, there's a lot more information, and there are a lot more places to get it - not all of them reliable.
Most people still have pretty good BS detectors, and cops are no exception. In fact, most cops have outstanding BS detectors. The problem isn't detecting the BS. The problem is sorting through all the different levels or degrees of BS, in order to pull out the grains of truth that one needs to accomplish whatever the goal is.
In ancient times, what knowledge existed was carried around in the heads of people as they went about their lives. Collective knowledge and wisdom was shared in the form of stories, myths and legends. While this was an entertaining way to store knowledge, it wasn't very reliable and much was lost.
Eventually, language and then writing evolved, and society began collecting knowledge into central repositories. Knowledge was shared through distribution of manuscripts and books, but it was a painstaking process. Then, along came the printing press, the telegraph, the wireless, and eventually the computer. Life got better; knowledge was easier to share; work got easier. Right!
Think about that. Once upon a time, if you didn't know something that you needed to know, you asked someone like your father or mother. If they didn't know, you might learn through experimentation. You could be pretty sure that the information you were receiving was valid, albeit rather limited.
When information started coming in from other people, you had to decide if it was valid so you usually only accepted information from people you trusted. Then came newspapers, and some were known as purveyors of truth, while others were known as sensationalist rags, practicing what was sometimes referred to as yellow journalism. You took what they printed with a grain of salt.
Broadcasting over the radio, and then television, started out as news programming. Eventually, entertainment was added. Still, it was usually pretty easy to tell the difference - most of the time.
There was that Orson Welles thing in Grover's Mill, New Jersey.
The twin inventions of cable television and the Internet have effectively merged and expanded the amount of information that both officers and civilians are exposed to, so that it has become almost impossible to sort it all out. Even if you try to avoid it, as some friends of mine have, getting online is close to a necessity today.
More and more people and businesses (and government agencies) conduct much, if not most, of their communications over the Internet or via email. Once you're plugged into the 'net, it's a short leap into regular surfing and exploring. Before you know it, you're getting most of your news and information from blogs and RSS feeds, email newsletters and Google searches, Wikipedia and YouTube.
On television, hundreds of channels are available. Many of the most popular shows are not found on the big three. ABC, NBC and CBS, have lost huge shares of their audiences. The recent strike led to networks moving shows from cable and secondary outlets, and even from the Internet, onto their main schedules.
There is still a lot of good, credible information coming at you. But there is also a lot of false, misstated, misunderstood, and twisted information incoming. How does one absorb it all? Or even figure out what's worth absorbing?
For most of us, information overload has become part of our daily existence. Our kids are so much more capable of receiving and processing information than we were at their age. Having grown up in the crazed information age, they filter it without even knowing they are doing it. Sometimes they filter us out, too, but kids have always done that.
For law enforcement professionals, this information glut, this river of information, both good and bad, presents some unique problems. Citizens have always had a distorted view of what police work is all about. In the past, they frequently thought it was all glamour: fast cars and shoot-outs.
Now, many of them have the view that cops are either lazy, stupid, brutal, or all three. They think we're lazy because we don't dust for fingerprints when their mailbox is vandalized during a rain storm; stupid because we are unwilling to make exceptions to established procedures just for them when it's obvious that they're not a criminal; and brutal because they see the same eight seconds of a use of force incident, played over and over on every news broadcast and blog, for weeks on end.
Why can't we lift fingerprints from that piece of sandpaper? They did it on CSI!
Why don't we know what the law is in the state where they are going on vacation?
Why did we need to use five cops to take down and control that 140 pound man on the news last night?
Coppers sometimes fall victim to bad information also. Officers have read about or seen use-of-force techniques, and then tried them without being properly trained. They've seen the PIT Maneuver in videos, and then have tried to use it without the proper training. They've read about court cases on-line, and then had serious arguments with other officers, even though they don't understand the intricacies of the case.
Here are a few things I've seen and heard officers insist are true: Ramming a vehicle is deadly force; TASERs kill; you can arrest someone just because they refuse to give you their ID; don't bother wearing your vest because the blunt trauma from getting shot is just as deadly as a bullet; neck restraints are deadly force; a pursuit is a seizure; you always have to read Miranda; you can never shoot someone in the back; body armor will stop knives and ice-picks; it's always better to write down as little as possible - they'll just try to use it against you, and on and on.
We've said here before that every officer is a risk manager. Part of that risk management is managing the validity of the information that you accept as true. You're going to base your decisions on what you know. Keep your BS filter/detector set to High. Consider carefully information you receive, whatever the source. Remember, you don't have to be perfect in your analysis; you just have to be reasonable. You don't have to be right every time, but you do have to reach a reasonable, logical conclusion upon which to base your decision to act.
Filtering the incoming will keep you safer and healthier in the long run. Along the way, it will help you to stay out of trouble, and will enhance your career.
Just don't be jumping off any garage roofs.
Stay safe, and wear your vest!