The Greatest Display of Power

It was an acute case of incarceritis that had landed him in the emergency room. Unfortunately, three hours later he was still alive and well, though by that time I had already imagined several ways of killing him myself.

If you’re not familiar with the term incarceritis, don’t beat yourself up, it’s not a real word. It is derived from the word incarceration, as in imprisoned or jailed, with the suffix -itis added to it, meaning a disease or inflammation. Therefore, incarceritis is what people get when they are arrested, don’t want to go to jail, and think that feigning an illness and going to the hospital will prevent or delay playing “Don’t Drop the Soap” at the county jail. That term, however, has made it into internet truth and does appear in the Urban Dictionary and Wiktionary meaning, “A medical condition induced by the threat of arrest or incarceration.” Exciting stuff.

Beat With A Bed Rail

He was handcuffed to the hospital bed, all shirtless, drunk, and infuriatingly vile. I stood in the exam room with him because I had, in effect, drawn the short straw and had to babysit this particular human — though human is a generous description of him — until he was cleared of his imaginary disease and could be returned to jail where he belonged.

This guy was relentless. He never stopped spewing vitriol, threats, and insults for hours on end. I cannot, and will not, repeat the things he said to may face about my wife and daughters. He was the most vile person I have ever been in the presence of, before or since. He was like a woodpecker, pecking away at my professional, calm exterior with every insult, while underneath I was preparing to lose my religion as I consciously weighed the pros and cons of beating him to death with the bed rail.

In The Wilderness

You know that feeling you get when you sense something is about to happen and your body is flooded with adrenaline that causes your heart to pound, your palms to sweat, and then your ears get hot? When your whole body is in an elevated state of tension as it prepares to fight or flee, or in my case, murder? I was like that for over three hours straight. He was the one going to jail but I was the prisoner. I couldn’t leave.

Getting through that night took every ounce of self-control I had and all the restraint I could muster. I have dealt with all kinds of people in my career, dangerous people, and been in fights, foot pursuits, and deadly force scenarios but nothing like this that went on for so long. It felt like I was the one in the wilderness being tempted by the Devil himself.

Tethered To A Volkswagen

When my shift was finally over and I was rid of him, I felt not only drained, but I kind of felt like either a weakling or a coward. I mean, in a sense, I let this guy say the worst things I have ever heard about my family and I stood there and did nothing. Even though nothing was the right thing to do, it felt wrong. It was exhausting and hard to stand there and take it. It felt like I had run an ultra marathon tethered to a Volkswagen. Why?

The truth is that losing your temper or lashing out is easy. It takes no effort. Anybody can do it. But it takes an incredible amount of strength to have restraint, to hold back.

As police officers we have been given a lot of power and authority — we can take away people’s freedom, seize assets, use force, go places and do things the average citizen can’t do. It is a massive responsibility. And though I think that our true power comes from our discretion when exercised within the bounds of the law —  how we use it and apply it — to paraphrase the Greek historian Thucydides, I believe that the greatest display of power is restraint. Again, lashing out is easy, holding back is hard.

Held Back

The reason I tell this story is not to make you think that I’m this powerful person, but to illustrate a situation that you can probably relate to in order to help you understand the concept of restraint. It is an often overlooked and underestimated aspect of authority, power, and responsibility. No one talks about it. And it seems to me that the greater the position you hold or the more power that you wield makes exercising restraint all the more difficult to do.

The Bible calls this kind of restraint forbearance, which means to hold back or to delay. It’s the kind of restraint that characterizes God’s patience and longsuffering toward us in that He holds back His judgment from mankind, and instead has extended grace and mercy to us.

God certainly showed His power when He created the heavens and the earth in only six days, but it was an even greater display of power when He sent His Son, Jesus, to die on the cross in our place. That power was displayed in the restraint Jesus showed from the moment He was arrested all the way through His mockery of a trial, unjust conviction, torture, and murder. At any time Jesus could have lashed out, He could have stopped it. After all, He had the power to do it. But He chose the greatest display of power instead — He chose restraint.

What Makes Us Different

But the story didn’t end there. Three days later Jesus rose from the dead, conquering sin and death in the process, once and for all. None of that would have been possible without restraint.

As men and women  of law enforcement who are called to administer justice here on earth, it is so important that we understand this concept. Restraint is what makes us different from them. It is easy to lash out as criminals often do, but it is so much harder to hold back, to not do what we feel like doing, but instead to do the right thing. That is no easy task, but it is one we are called to.

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• How’s your ability to show restraint?
• Do you find yourself lashing out?
• Why is that?
• How can you practice better self-control?

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