drmargaret

A friend of mine told me she was intending to go to Wal-Mart to get one of those $300 lap top computers on black friday, the day after Thanksgiving. I asked her if she was insane. She asked me what I was talking about. This is a woman who is recovering from surgery who can’t stand for a long period of time. I am a black friday shopping veteran.

So I told my friend about the shopping wars. Starting on Wednesday this year the Christmas Shopping War of 2005 began. This war was different from prior shopping wars because it started a full 2 days early which meant the battles would be more fierce and by black friday the battle weary shoppers would be in full battle regallia. I predicted violence. She thought I was joking. I wasn’t.

Last year I watched people at the local Best Buy push, shove and get in line at 2:oo am for $49 DVD players and with a rewards card they got a free CD. Now the stakes were raised at Circuit City and Wal-Mart with Lap-Top computers going for hundreds off the regular price. At Wal-Mart last year the line was a mile long for television sets. People had accidents getting into the parking lot. The police were called out for a near riot at Kohls when some employee looked to be opening up a door and a second line formed. People at the front of the lines swaped strategies with relatives in lines at other stores on cell phones doing reconocence. Yes there were lines there too. Yes they knew what to get first and what could be sacrificed if need be. It was clearly war planning. Very young children were not brought to these scirmishes. But older children who could scurry around adults or cut in lines they were brought and given orders on what to do in the store. What to grab first.

My friend had no idea. Black friday is named for the fact that stores go into the black and make about 20% or more of their profit for the year on the Friday after Thanksgiving. It is the most profitable day in retail. With the stores extending the shopping for two more days from Wednesday through Friday they hoped to extend the profit. What was more likely to happen was to extend the chaos and frantic pace of shopping in the first few hours of special deals for the few who braved the cold weather and crowds.

There were people trampled and a person was beaten for cutting into line this year. It happened somewhere back east. Chicago and Orlando I think. The cities aren’t that important, it could have been anywhere.

I had actually thought about skipping black friday altogether, I did the one big ticket item I wanted online at midnight Thursday into Friday, but I like crowds and I like shopping and my husband wanted some last minute items for family. I was first in line at a small store not advertizing much by way of sales, certainly no door busters. It was 6:00 am. I got no wrist band, no CD. I had to park a ways down from the store, because they are in the same lot as Wal-Mart which still hadn’t emptied out after being open an hour. Sports Chalet had a line waiting for the store to open. I was first. I got some curious glances from the clerks inside. They had their regular Christmas circular, with their regular coupon on the back. I was getting about 15 items. I could brouse on black friday and not rush. It was shopping luxury. I didn’t get trampled. No one tried to grab items from my cart. Nothing was $400 off regular price, but there was stock to go around. When I came back at 12:00 noon (because my husband thought one of the items was nice enough to get two), there were plenty left. I didn’t feel insane when I got home. It was a nice feeling.

I wonder what shopping would be like if stores carried enough stock so people could get enough of the items they wanted without waiting in line at dawn? But then there wouldn’t be as much news to tell. Meanwhile I survived the black friday shopping wars of 2005.

It’s hard sometimes to write about people in ways that aren’t identifiable to others, especially people who are violent. I’m going to try to be vague. I spent part of an hour last week talking with a famous violent man about his criminal career. His actions changed life in Los Angeles. His crime was considered quite heinous at the time. People were appalled by his actions, as they should have been. His actions were appalling. He shot several people. Since then he has been shot. He’s upset by that. There are supposed to be “rules” to these shootings. You only shoot rival gang members. You only shoot in designated gang shooting areas. You only shoot designated people to be shot. Unfortunately, the “rules” aren’t all that clear. Violence spreads to undesignated areas, to undesignated people, to non-gang members.

I was a violent child. So I’m interested in violence. Violence isn’t the same as anger. Anger is that emotion everyone has that say that when someone takes your toy you get mad. Violence is when they take your toy a small thermoneuclear explosion goes off inside you and you decide to club them to death and if someone doesn’t step in or if you don’t have some stop signal go off in your brain you make that happen. Violence is a decision that never feels like you decide.

I talk to people who are violent. Lots of people I talk to are on parole for being violent. Some of them have taken these classes in anger management. Some of them have reoffended after having taken those classes. The classes are for a year usually. They are usually held in a group. I used to run those type of classes. Mine weren’t being done by the courts. Mine were just for people who were serious about getting better and were worried about hurting people. The big push for anger management hadn’t started yet. There wasn’t any research on what to do to treat violence. But these people scared people and themselves. They needed treatment. So I and a couple of psychological assistants started working on developing treatment for them.

I have some ideas about who decides to become violent. Violent behavior gets trained out of children between ages 2 and 4 when children get socialized. Kids throw temper tantrums. They learn how to manage big emotions like rage. They watch adults to see what is acceptable behavior. Various families use different strategies to manage anger and rage. Some people have the kid sit until they are quiet. Some parents hit their children and tell them to be quiet. Some parents lose control. Some parents talk to their children. Some put the child in an area and have the child calm down. Some are inconsistent. Some get frightened of the child.

I don’t know what the best method of parenting a 2-4 year old kid living in poverty is. I do know that being consistent is better than being inconsistent. I do know that clear rules for acceptable behavior are better than no rules. I do know that children can’t be in charge of the house. I do know that violence needs to have a no tolerance policy everywhere–at home, at school, at daycare, at church, at the baby-sitter. I do know it’s better to train appropriate ways to behave than to try to fix problem behavior. I know it’s easier to fix when it starts than waiting until the kid has a million episodes and is 18. But that’s all easier said than done.

There are some basic things that I do when I work with someone who is violent. I start off by trying to put in stop signals. I work backwards from violent events. I de-weaponize people. People are not allowed to carry weapons or things used as weapons during treatment. Most people who are violent are of the belief that they are under attack. They scan the environment to confirm that belief. They almost always carry weapons. Weapons are car keys, a nail file, a letter opener, a pen knife, a bottle opener, etc. They wear armor. Yeah, I know I wear a vest. In some cases I get the person to disarm in session and I’ll take the vest off as well. Then we work on the wrist bands, the outfits in black, the gang attire, the movements, the gestures, all of it. I get to wear a vest, I’m not being violent and I deal with people who are who haven’t agreed to stop. I also get to watch violent TV shows and movies if I want to. They don’t while they are in treatment. No violent TV, no violent cartoons, no violent games, no contact sports, no violent video games, these are all rehearsal strategies. There may be more. It may include music–rap, heavy metal, punk, some R&B.

Finally after all the disarmament and putting in behaviors that change violence, there is treatment to learn new skills. Social skills, negotiation, conflict resolution, communication skills. It’s a lot of treatment. Lots of people drop out of treatment. A few stay. Research on outcomes shows the ones that stay improve and don’t offend in a year. Given that the research was done on people who indicated intent to harm, that’s a significant outcome. The people report less ideas about hurting others. The drawback is that it’s self-report data on thinking. The good news was that it was one of the first studies on treatment of violence. I did the research back in the early 1990’s. It still holds. I haven’t seen the behavioral component replicated, just the talk therapy component. That’s fine. There’s also now medication to augment treatment. Medication is a last resort but it works very well and can be used at low dose and can even be used intermittantly on an as needed basis depending on the person. For some people who need to be kept out of a prison or an institution setting medication is a Godsend.

There was a recent violent act in the last couple of weeks in which a man used his toddler daughter as a shield while he engaged in a gunfight with the police. He has a long and violent criminal career as an illegal alien. His actions were heinous. There were not met by the type of outrage by the community that they should have. Some people protested the shooting of the toddler by police. The toddler’s mother suggested psychologists or negotiators should have been used to avoid the shootout. There has been some actions by the police where there has been excessive use of force. There have been excessive violent actions in the community against people and the police. Drug use, criminal behavior and gang membership contribute to a general air of unsafety in South Central Los Angeles. Sometimes the churches get involved and try to help get things calmed down. Other times like with the riots of 1968 or 1992 the area explodes into violence. Most of the time the warfare is small and is between rival gangs. It’s considered so commonplace as to not receive much news coverage. It’s an occasional footnote. It’s a sad part of reality.

It’s easy to treat violence when children are young. It’s treated as part of parenting. If your child is starting to hit, bite, kick, pinch, punch, or talk seriously about hurting others, go get treatment. It’s easier to get treatment sooner than later.