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Get Full Access For $1 (30 days)* Or explore all membership plans → * Trial price for the first 30 days, then $20/month. Cancel or switch plans in 2 minutes at any time.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 and ultimately killed by five Memphis police officers. What allowed this tragedy (and others like it) to take place? What sorts of personal, cultural, and institutional transformation are necessary to prevent something like this 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.
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.
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:
- 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
- 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
- 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,
- Surrounding tensions and frictions from the culture wars.
- External social/environmental conditions (overall social violence, proliferation of guns, race and racism, etc.),
- Outmoded social/systemic patterns, inertias, and karmas 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
This is a tremendously important and in many ways inspiring conversation, as together we try to find a path to a more just, more integral approach to law enforcement. If you are at all interested in supporting this endeavor, we encourage you to check out the Integrative Policing Reform Initiative over at the Institute of Applied Metatheory.
Written and produced by Corey deVos
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About Chris Orrey
Chris Orrey is a retired police lieutenant with over 30 years of service with the Hayward, California Police Department. She is a graduate of California’s Command College, an 18-month program designed to prepare law enforcement leaders for the challenges of the future, and the LAPD Leadership Training Program, which is based on the West Point Leadership Program. In true Integral fashion, she will soon have a Master’s Degree in Comparative Religion and Philosophy and will be continuing her education at the California Institute for Human Science, pursuing a doctorate degree in Integral Noetic Sciences with an emphasis on Wisdom Design. Her in-progress Master’s thesis is on the application of Wilberian Integral Theory to U.S. policing: Integral Policing: Transforming U.S. Policing via the AQAL Map.
About Mark Fischler
Mark Fischler is a Professor of Criminal justice and current program coordinator for the criminal justice and criminology programs at Plymouth State University. Prior to joining the Plymouth State faculty, he practiced law, representing poor criminal defendants for the New Hampshire Public Defender’s Office. Mark has worked extensively with alternative theoretical models in law, constitutional law, and higher education, and has published on integral applications to teaching, being a lawyer, and legal theory. His focus in the classroom is ethics and criminal procedure, and is well respected for a teaching philosophy that emphasizes recognizing the humanity and dignity of each student. Professor Fischler was awarded the outstanding teaching award at his university in 2014. He currently offers a weekly Spiritual Inquiry class through Satya Yoga Studio.
About Corey deVos
Corey W. deVos is Editor-in-Chief of Integral Life, as well as Managing Editor of KenWilber.com. He has worked for Integral Institute/Integal Life since Spring of 2003, and has been a student of integral theory and practice since 1996. Corey is also a professional woodworker, and many of his artworks can be found in his VisionLogix art gallery.