As Police Killings Rise, Grossman Blames Video Games

Whats the best way to sum up my thoughts on this?

http://eddddie.googlepages.com/facepalm.jpg

In Miami, where officers believe they are out-gunned by bad guys, Police Chief John Timoney has authorized police to begin carrying military-grade assault rifles.

And that was nothing but a publicity stunt. Miami cops have had AR-15s (or M4s..) for years. They even had a large number of them at the incident where they were supposedly "outgunned" by one guy. Chief Timoney is paid shill for the Joyce Foundation and the Brady Campaign, and is merely trying to fearmonger up support for their new ban.

I understand what the Lieutenant is trying to say and I respect that, but for me, it's still unfair for the side of video games. The bad guys like to play violent video games. But what's the news in there? It's not like they use that for their training. If one is good in GTA III that doesn't mean he's also good in real life. It's probably just their way of unleashing their anger like one of my friends who play Marvel v.s. Capcom to release his frustration when someone angers him.

Leave it to Grossman to play where's waldo with various gang related crime scenes...I swear that he stares at the footage and when he spots a game system he jumps up and says "I knew it!...Teh Gamez did it!"

He is right up there with Jack Thompson...unfortunately he also has military "credibility" that would make a normal person say "I guess if he was in the army than he must know".

I agree that cops should look at police behavior for the answers here...Alot of cops act like idiots and wonder why they get little respect from the populace.

he will be on the news soon I bet.

Mike

Maybe the fact that a large lot of teenagers and young adults play video games anyways...

Another thing, if i was a street racer already, i might be more inclined to play a street racing video game. Is it possible in the slightest that these guys already were druggies and such before they started playing games simliar to their lifestyle?

For your info, here is what Grossman said on video games 11 years ago in his first book "On Killing" :

"This is not an attack on all video games. Video games are an interactive medium. They demand and develop trial-and-error and systematic problem-resolving skills, and they teach planning, mapping, and deferment of gratification. Watch children as they play video games and interact with other children in their neighborhood. To parents raised on a steady diet of movies and sitcoms, watching a child play Mario Brothers for hours on end may not be particularly gratifying, but that is just the point. As they play they solve problems and overcome instructions that are intentionally inadequate and vague. They exchange playing strategies, memorize routes, and make maps. They work long and hard to attain the gratification of finally winning a game. And there are no commercials : no enticements for sugar, no solicitation of violent toys and no messages of social failure if they do not wear the right shoes or clothes.

We might prefer to see children reading or getting exercise and interacting with the real world by playing outside, but video games are definitely preferable to most television. But video games can also be superb at teaching violence - violence packaged in the same format that has more quadrupled the firing rate of modern soldiers.

When I speak of violence enabling I am not talking about video games in which the player defeats creatures by bopping them on the head. Nor am I talking about games where you maneuver swordsmen and archers to defeat monsters. On the borderline in violence enabling are games where you use a joystick to maneuver a gunsight around the screen to kill gangsters who pop up and fire at you. The kind of games that are very definitely enabling violence are the ones in which you actually hold a weapon in your hand and fire it at human-shaped targets on the screen. These kinds of games can be played on home video, but you usually see them in video arcades."

To be honest, at that time Grossman certainly didn't seem to know anything about First-Person Shooters and Mortal Kombat action figures. His only problem was Lightgun games. But Paducah and Jonesboro made him change his mind brutally. Since then, he almost never precised that "this was not an attack against all video games", and he certainly never declared again that video games "were definitely preferable to most television".

By the way, contrary to what Time says, Grossman never wrote a book entitled "On Violence". He wrote three books : "On Killing, "Stop Teaching Our Kids To Kill" (with Gloria DeGaetano) and "On Combat" (with Loren Christensen). But it's not a big mistake.

I the last year, no high profile game where you kill cops came out. The one that did came out, was a game where you go around as a Supercop.

"Every time [officers] take down a gang house, there’s always one thing that will always be there,” Grossman says. “It’s a video game. The video games are their newspaper, their television, their all-consuming narrative.”

Let me get this straight. Police officers take down a gang house that contains gang members, that is, members of a criminal gang. These people are armed with guns, more than likely have committed crimes in the past (why else are the cops after them?) and are also more than likely involved in drugs. And the video game is what is to blame. Oooooo-kay...

Does he not realise how ridiculous this sounds? Did the riots over the Rodney King beating start because video games were people's "newspaper, their television, their all-consuming narrative"? NO! They began because they were watching real events on real television/newspapers.

"And their video games are all cop-killer, criminal simulators."

Perhaps I am being a little stereotypical, but is Madden a "cop-killer, criminal simulator"? I think if you spoke to gang members and asked them if they trained on Grand Theft Auto and got all their information from it, they would either laugh out loud in your face, or possibly shoot you for being so dumb.

you would think an ex-military member would have sense enough to know how firearms training works.

Grossman is an embarrasment and a liar.

So because games are found every time you take down a gang house and that means that games are causing the violence. shouldn't that mean that when they find food too, that food is causing the violence?

wow, the comments are amazing. its like saying in the early 1990s they stormed gang houses and found VHS movies. right.i just find it funny they talk about cops being killed and then speak of cops raiding gang houses. lets think this one through. more raids means more chances for people to get hurt. direct coorelation?

@hayabusa75 :

In fact, Grossman specialized himself in the act of killing, and the psychological cost of killing, in war as well as in society. He also studied the story of violence, weaponry and combat, but his main speciality remains "killology", the "psychology of killing". After more than a decade of research he wrote the book "On Killing" in 1995/1996, alledgely recommended for reading in West Point.

He had the theory that media violence conditioned children to kill the same way the army did for soldiers, but without army's discipline. However, even though he already targeted video games at that time, he was quite moderate. I think he was only aware of Lightgun games, and he didn't like them at all. But he made it clear he wasn't against all video games (you read exactly what he said about it in "On Killing" at this address : http://www.gamepoliticsforums.com/showpost.php?p=6692&postcount=9

But school shootings changed that. First, he is inhabitant of Jonesboro, he was there during the Jonesboro massacre, and he was training psychologists so that they could help victims, survivor and their families. So he saw a lot of horrible things. Second, he was an "expert witness" in Paducah, when he discovered that Michael Carneal, the Paducah killer, had been playing "Doom" among other things. So he became aware of first-person shooters. And finally, there was Columbine, and after, his second book, the over-cited "Stop Teaching Our Kids To Kill", where his positions became radical.

Since then, he's quoted as an "expert in media violence", or an "expert in the effects of media violence". And he wrote a third essay, "On Combat", that deals more with fighting in general. But two chapters are related to media and video game violence, and they're even more radical than before. You can read them at this address :
http://www.killology.com/on_combat_ch2.htm
http://www.killology.com/on_combat_ch7.htm

As a former soldier, and avid gamer I find the idea that someone can use a game as a cop-killer training device too ridiculous for words. I think the whole thing is playing games that go along with personality. I like reading fantasy novels, as such I like fantasy games with swords and sorcery, Final Fantasy and whatnot. However sometimes it's just so refreshing to load up House of the Dead and take out some zombies, but even with a good light gun it's nothing like using a real gun, and were it not for my history as a soldier I would not be able to be in a fire fight just because I played a "violent" game. Maybe I'm just not playing the right ones because I've always thought the GTA series was lame, though having watched some friends play it I don't believe this is the case.

Recent history has shown an increase in police brutality and raids, which have left the general populace with a higher level of distrust for them. More raids against people who like you less and are armed will always equal an increase in fatalities. The overuse of SWAT teams has been a major cause in this, as they're trained to be brutal, and with them being called into situations they never should have been involved with, innocent and non-resisting people have been hurt. If a gang member sees that innocent people who didn't resist are being busted up by police what do you think he's going to do when they come busting through his front door?

if thats the best that guy can come up with the only thing he is an "expert" at is being a fucking moron.

@nightwing2000

You are very right my good sir.

@Yuki,
Is there a reason you used 3 out of 9 and 6 out of 9 instead of saying "one third" or "two thirds"? It sounded like you were just trying to make the numbers sound larger.

Plus, if two thirds of the crimes you're referring to involved people with violent histories and one third involved illegal immigrants then i would say that the violent people released from prison are the "freaking" problem. Since, you know, they committed the same crime twice as often as illegals.

"Every time [officers] take down a gang house, there’s always one thing that will always be there,” Grossman says. “It’s a video game. The video games are their newspaper, their television, their all-consuming narrative. And their video games are all cop-killer, criminal simulators.”

And I take it before the invention of video games that gangs did not exist? Oh no wait, they did.

@Austin Lewis
im not sure i understand your analogy at the end there. wasnt durant held for months by the somalis? granted, he wasnt in a prison camp, and they tried to keep him alive so the us wouldnt be too mad, but isnt the experience comparable?

Apparently having a highschool diploma and being over 5'3" entitles one to become an expert in the effects of pixelated images upon the attitudes and behaviors of people.

I was completely wrong about cops! I thought their best work was done at the lunch counter. Turns out all that coffee has made them behavioral experts.

Consider me a follower!

Thing that annoys me is that they've been blaming it on games even when it wasn't rising, now it IS rising, and only started this year it's almost as though they're jumping up and down and going 'look, all that rubbish I spouted, there's actually something that makes it look accurate from a distance!'.

@Capt Crunchie.

No sir, Michael Durant, at the time of his POW experience ranking CWO3 of our USARMY, 160thSOAR, was held captive for 11 days.

11 days, wherein he suffered no abuse, and just a broken leg (which was later mended to the point where he ran the Boston Marathon.)

His story is one of the least terrible POW experiences in modern military history.

Austin was the M249 incident before or after the assault weapon ban. I can definitly see the problem in that scenario 9mm

here in Florida its normally racism that kills the african american cops.

@Scolar Visari

I'm expecting Austin to say it was before, but I wouldn't be suprised if it was after. Automatic weapons will always be present.

@Austin Lewis

I dunno about you, but an M249 looks one hell of a lot like an M60.