Response

People respond to feelings of fear and anger in strange ways.  In The Cats of Mirikitani, a documentary we watched in class, the television news states that "history shows us we often respond in times of fear by overreacting".  When a person doesn't know how much danger he is in, an automatic response is to react more strongly than necessary.


I came across an article by Ted Belling, a police officer, called Police Who Overreact.  He discusses that, since police are human, they feel emotions of anger, sadness, fear, and happiness, but are never allowed to become abusive in any way.  Belling explains that sometimes this is difficult because of humans' "Fight or Flight" instinct, and because attack is the primary response when a person is angry.


One example Belling gives is of an officer who, upon arriving, finds a man standing over a woman who is lying on the ground.  She is bleeding, so the officer immediately enters and handcuffs the man. The officer later learns from the woman that her sister hit her and left, and that the man was not involved. The officer clearly jumped to conclusions and arrested an innocent person.


Because he was angry or afraid for his own safety, the officer overreacted without checking to be sure that his actions were justified.  This is similar to the events that took place in The Cats of Mirikitani.  The main character, Jimmy Mirikitani, was placed in a Japanese internment camp because the United States government was afraid from lack of knowledge of the number of Japanese spies.  It was an overreaction that caused thousands of Japanese to lose years of their lives in internment camps.