Guiao, Justine Kate Cubacub Asst. Prof. Rosanne Marie G.

Echivarre
WFU – 10 - 11:30 A.M. (WF) Psychology 180

PRESENTATION OF CURRENT EVENT

“Family mourns mother and son shot by cop over noise” [December 23, 2020]
– ABS-CBN News

The unfortunate incident that happened in the province of Tarlac last Sunday [December
20, 2020] opened the week for most of us. The news about a police officer who shot and killed an
unarmed mother and her son in front of a lot of people, including minors, shocked a lot of people
throughout the country. Video footages of the incident quickly surfaced on different social media
platforms and immediately went viral. This incident gained tremendous amount of comments and
reactions from the netizens due to the violent behavior of the officer which caused two lives of
innocent individuals.
As recorded on the video, an off-duty police officer, Jonel Nuezca, was seen arguing with
the Gregorio family, specifically with the victims over a noise from a boga – a homemade canon.
The mother refused to let go of her son as the police officer tried to take him away. The arguments
intensified when the minor daughter of Nuezca joined the fuse, it was when he aggressively
threatened the victims before he raised his gun and shot Sonya on the head before shooting
Frank. The victims immediately lose their lives after receiving two gunshot wounds each from the
police officer. Later that day, Nuezca surrendered to the police and was faced with two counts of
murder. (Portugal, 2020)
On Tuesday [December 22, 2020], the relatives of the victims, Sonya and Frank Gregorio,
expressed their grief and cried for justice during the wake of their deceased family members. The
police department who was handling the case assured the family and the public for immediate
investigation and justice for the victims. Even the national government and number of high-ranking
officials condemned the action of the police officer and support the family for their call for justice.
(Portugal, 2020)
The incident is an example of the presence of both aggression and violence in a real-life
situation that eventually turned to an unfortunate event. Researchers defines aggression as a
behavior with an intention to harm another individual who doesn’t want to be harmed (Baron &
Richardson, 1994). From the circulating video footage, the police officer furiously confronts his
neighbors while carrying his service gun loaded with ammunitions. The victims and the people
around them evidently perceive this behavior as aggressive as most of them express fear from
the rising tension. The situation is filled with both verbal aggressions, such as the yelling,
screaming, cursing, and swearing, and physical aggression which resulted to violence.
Moreover, due to the sudden occurrence of the incident, this type of aggression could be
considered as emotional or impulsive in relation to its intent. This was the kind of aggression
which was primarily driven by emotion, such as anger, and occurred with just a small amount of
thinking or intent (Principles of Social Psychology, 2015). In this type, aggression usually resulted
to unexpected outcomes because emotions took over the behavior without being able to think it
through. In relation to this, following his surrender to the authorities and expression of remorse,
Nuezca claimed that he did it due to his heightened emotions at the moment of the incident.
Similarly, these circumstances due to emotion-driven behaviors can turn aggression to violence.

Presentation of Current Event

Guiao, Justine Kate Cubacub Asst. Prof. Rosanne Marie G. Echivarre
WFU – 10 - 11:30 A.M. (WF) Psychology 180

Violence was defined by Bushman (2017) as an aggression with an intention to cause

extreme physical harm to others. Hence, violence could be considered as a subset of aggression.
All violent behaviors could be aggressive, but not all aggressive behaviors were violent (Bushman,
2017). In the case of the shooting incident, the initial aggressive behaviors became violent the
moment Nuezca raised his gun to shoot and kill the victims.
Furthermore, another social psychology topic that was at play in this incident was emotion.
Emotion has an important function in our lives, it helps us understand ourselves better as well as
other people around us. However, despite the useful and positive things that emotions could give
us to aid our existence, negative emotions such as anger sometime results to negative outcomes.
Earlier, emotion was mentioned as a drive for aggression, which was the case most of the time.
The police officer’s emotions led him to his violent actions, this could be described by some of the
intrapersonal functions of emotions. Hwang and Matsumoto (2017) mentioned that “emotions help
us act quickly with minimal conscious awareness”, “emotions motivate future behaviors”, and
“emotions influence thoughts”. With the emotion being anger and motivated by his intent to harm,
it led him dictate his behavior and to act quickly – shooting the victims – without proper thinking.
In addition, this incident, among the other incidents of police violence circulating since the
drug war of the current administration, slowly forms a prejudice leaning on the negative character
of the police officers. While there are policemen who are clearly doing their job with honor and
dignity, and respect to human rights, some people are starting to lose trust among the police force
due to these incidents of brutality and violence.
As what we have seen, aggression and violence usually result to negative outcomes and can
bud to a deeper and more serious problem of the society. This incident has shown us that
aggression and violence could result to worst scenarios such as death. The police force must use
this incident to examine the system, training, and monitoring within their organization to assure
that their officers were in best state to hold weapons and use their authority without harming
innocent individuals.
From this, people must also be aware of the capacity of our own aggression and violence and
what are factors that could instantly trigger it in order to be always in control. The capability of our
emotions must also be known to us because it could not only help us thrive but also prevent us
from harm. The field of social psychology is continuously studying these topics in order to have
deeper understanding of this part of our humanity and reduce the possibility of inducing harm to
one another.

References:
Baron, R. A., & Richardson, D. R. (1994). Human aggression (2nd ed.). https://doi.org/10.1002/1098-
2337(1994)20:6<461::AID-AB2480200606>3.0.CO;2-O
Bushman, B.J. (2017). Aggression and violence. Together: The Science of Social Psychology.
https://unglue.it/work/250711/
Hwang, H. & Matsumoto, D. (2017). Functions of emotions. Together: The Science of Social Psychology.
https://unglue.it/work/250711/
Portugal, A. (2020, December 23). Family mourns mother and son shot by cop over noise. ABS-CBN News.
https://news.abs-cbn.com/news/12/23/20/family-mourns-mother-and-son-shot-by-cop-over-
noise?fbclid=IwAR02TmrylzbmKGE-DJk0hz6BtACWDlgxTotmUDdk5h9eeCOCDBELW4yxIbM.
Principle of Social Psychology. (2015). University of Minnesota. https://open.lib.umn.edu/socialpsychology/

Presentation of Current Event