First, New Hampshire, and now on July 16, 2022 the City of Chicago, IL has agreed to pay line of duty death (LODD) benefits to officers who die by suicide. Each of these cases are complex and I am sure some form of assessment of the individual officer’s case will be carefully chronicled. I can imagine this is going to be slow going as I am not sure whether there are some strings attached to the individual suicide.
The denial of this LODD recognition diminishes the honor of one man’s service and by doing so, fails every man or woman who puts on a uniform by saying “your experience is yours alone”. And even worse, it amplifies the stigma attached to law enforcement deaths at a time when all else has failed them and their families.
Michael Sefton, 2019
“Chicago is kind of like ground zero with the number of suicides that are happening on a monthly basis now at this point,” said Daniel Hollar, who chairs the department of behavior and social science studies at Bethune-Cookman University in Florida. Dr Holler hosted Dr Doug Joiner to Chicago for a symposium on 2019. Dr Joiner taught us much of why officers kill themselves. He says they become embittered, they feel a deep sense of thwarted belongingness and grow increasingly detached with and higher risk. “These are people who are answering calls of duty to protect lives. We (need to) do our job to make their jobs safer.” After an officer suicide, personnel try to reconstruct what was going on in the person’s mind by systematically asking a set of questions, in a consistent format, to the people with the greatest insights into the person’s life and mind—family, co-workers, and friends.” This is known as a psychological autopsy. I have been writing about this for 9 years in these pages. This must include a 3 month list of calls the decedent answered including those for which he or she were given debriefing, defusing, or time off for respite from the job. I would want to understand how the call volume may have triggered underlying acute stress of were there calls that triggered new trauma?
NH Governor Sununu signed House Bill 91 on July 8, and it goes into effect Sept. 6. Sponsored by N.H. Rep. Daryl Abbas, R-Salem, it drew bipartisan support. He is the Link:
The New Hampshire law will go into effect on September 1, 2022 and allow officers to feel that their families are secure with benefits of They should die in the line of duty which now include dying by suicide.
Dr Hollar is organizing the forum in Chicago the first of these I participated in with my colleague Dr Leo Polizoti from the Direct Decision Institute, Inc. in Worcester, MA. Among the issues up for discussion is what role Chicago’s relentless violence problem plays in officer suicide. Hollar said they will also talk about other factors, including whether familiarity with death makes suicidal officers more likely to follow through with their plans as reported in the March 2022 Chicago Tribune.
“What we see in this career, the calls that we get, can take a toll on somebody’s mental health and wellness,” he said Monday. “When we go to a death of a child by the hands of a parent, or a pretty nasty accident scene, these things will add up.”
Cheshire, NH Sheriff Eli Rivera
Sometimes a law-enforcement officer will begin to question whether they may have arrived at the scene earlier by driving faster, or whether there was something else they could have done to prevent a loss of life, said Rivera. This can add up to behavior that may place an officer at risk if he decides he needs to get on scene faster the next time around. Some begin to believe that the world may be better if without them. Many are angry and become hopeless and embittered for a variety of reasons, like feelings of resentment and misunderstanding.
Officers often walk alone when exposure to trauma whittles away their resilience
Two Capitol police officers have taken their own lives since the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. This information came after the two officers spent 5 hours fighting the insurrectionists sometimes in hand to hand combat often being humiliated and threatened. Jeffrey Smith, a Metropolitan D.C. Police officer, and Capitol Police Officer Howard Liebengood both “took their own lives in the aftermath of that battle” of January 6, according to an article in Politico on January 27, 2021. A third officer, Brian Sicknick, age 42 collapsed while on duty the day of the attack. He died in the aftermath of the insurrection a day or two later.
The manner of his death has been determined to be natural causes. Officer Sicknick died from multiple strokes according to the medical autopsy. Some reported seeing Officer Sicknick being struck in the head with a fire extinguisher during the riot. The official cause of death was stroke – or cerebral vascular attack and it is well-known that high stress situations can lead to stroke such as an insurrection or even shoveling one’s drive following a snow. Sicknick was only 42 years old and in good health prior to the Capitol attack. Officer Sicknick was afforded the honor of laying in honor in the Capitol Rotunda after death. Antoon Leenaars, past president of the American Association of Suicidology, described the patterns of thinking among depressed or suicidal persons, and explained how the use of “psychological autopsies” can uncover the key elements that are present in many suicides. This is an important first step in the battle to change officer suicide to become more attributed to line of duty death. This determination is owed to many of these brave men and women who died as a result of the recurring emotional trauma to which they were exposed.
“Jeffrey Smith was still fighting to defend the building when a metal pole thrown by rioters struck his helmet and face shield. After working into the night, he visited the police medical clinic, was put on sick leave and, according to his wife, was sent home with pain medication. Smith returned to the police clinic for a follow-up appointment Jan. 14 and was ordered back to work, a decision his wife now questions. After a sleepless night, he set off the next afternoon for an overnight shift, taking the ham-and-turkey sandwiches, trail mix and cookies Erin had packed. On his way to the District, Smith shot himself in the head.
Smith’s wife Erin reported after her husband took his own life
“On April 2, 2019, PERF and the New York City Police Department took an important step to elevate the national conversation on police suicide and to identify concrete actions that agencies can take to address this public health and public safety crisis. Our two organizations hosted a one-day conference at NYPD headquarters that brought together more than 300 law enforcement professionals, police labor leaders, researchers, mental health care and other service providers, policymakers, and others—including three brave officers who themselves have dealt with depression, PTSD, and suicidal thoughts in the past and who were willing to tell us their stories” according to published executory summary 2019. “The NYPD is making use of psychological autopsies, a research-based approach that attempts to better understand why someone took his or her life. Following an officer suicide, personnel try to reconstruct what was going on in the person’s mind by systematically asking a set of questions, in a consistent format, to the people with the greatest insights into the person’s life and mind—family, co-workers, and friends.” The psychological autopsies contribute to the existing database of information about law enforcement suicide in general, and they help guide individual prevention programs and establish in the line of duty rewards for those whose death’s may be directly associated with their recent tours of duty as in the example of the Capitol officers who died immediately following the trauma of the insurrection where each of them was prepared to die.
The multiple deaths by suicide have renewed attention on another troubling and often hidden issue: Police officers die by their own hands at rates greater than people in other occupations, according to a report compiled by the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF) in 2019, after at least nine New York City police officers died by suicide that year. I was involved in the April 2019 presentation at 1 Police Plaza on the impact of LEO suicide as it related to the high incidence of police officer death by suicide. Police Commissioner James O’Neill gave an impassioned presentation imploring officers to get help and promising to “listen and eliminate stigma” of having trauma-related illness.
Regrettably, first responder suicide is generally not considered a line of duty death and as such, fails to yield the honor given to officers who die in car crashes, shoot outs, or other direct line of duty incidents. “Now, the surviving families of the courageous defenders of democracy, Jeffrey Smith and Howard Liebengood — who were buried in private ceremonies, want the deaths of their loved ones recognized as “line of duty” deaths”. These deaths lack the honor and pageantry that accompanied Sicknick’s memorial service in the Capitol Rotunda — Why is the distinction made between the many ways LEO’s die?
The denial of this recognition diminishes the honor of one man’s service and by doing so, fails every man or woman who puts on a uniform by saying “your experience is yours alone”. And even worse, it amplifies the stigma attached to law enforcement deaths at a time when all else has failed them.
Michael Sefton, Ph.D. 2022
The careful analysis of antimortem exposure and actionable behavior that follows and event like January 6 or September 11 draw the clear, indisputable facts that link officer suicide to line of duty traumatic exposure. The denial of this recognition diminishes the honor of one man’s service and by doing so, fails every man or woman who puts on a uniform by saying “your experience is yours alone”. And even worse, it amplifies the stigma attached to law enforcement deaths at a time when all else has failed them. I cannot stand by this exception to what may be obvious line of duty exposure and police officer death especially after 9-11 and after the Capitol insurrection. But it should in no way minimize the loss of life attributed to suicide when years of exposure have gone unnoticed and even unreported by a law enforcement officer.
After the September 11, 2001 attack on the World Trade Towers there was an increase in LEO suicide. Men and women who witnessed the enormity of the attack coupled with the deaths of hundreds of police officers and fire fighters lost the will to grudge onward by no fault of failure character of their own. They swam in the muck and got wet and could not recover from darkness that engulfed them. The psychological autopsy would quantify these wounds just as the pathologist counts entry and exit wounds from an ambush.
The juxtaposition of these facts cannot be ignored. Every one of the hundreds of police officers put their lives on the line as a result of the former president’s truculent narcissism. It would be a dishonor to the men who gave their lives by denying the causal underpinning of their deaths. Suicide by law enforcement officers exceeds the number of officers who die in in gun fights, car accidents, on-duty heart attacks, attacks by citizens, calls for domestic violence, and other police calls for service. “This fact thrust these most private of acts into the national spotlight and made clear that the pain of the insurrection of January 6 continued long after the day’s events had concluded, its impact reverberating through the lives removed from the Capitol grounds” as written in a recent Washington Post report. “It is time the District recognized that some of the greatest risks police officers face lead to silent injuries,” Weber said. “Why do we say that one person is honored and another person is forgotten? They all faced the exact same circumstances.” according to a report in the Washington Post by Peter Hermann in February 2021.
There are things that must be done when law enforcement officers die as a direct result of the the calls they take and the trauma they experience that directly results in their death. Neither of these officers would have died if they had not jumped into the crisis taking place at the U.S. Capitol. Both men were solid members of the Capitol and Metropolitan Police Departments and had no history of behavioral health claims. Neither officer was in trouble with finances, gambling or substance abuse, internal affair investigation, or marital trouble. In the days that followed, Erin said, her husband, Capitol officer Jeffery Smith seemed in constant pain, unable to turn his head. He did not leave the house, even to walk their dog. He refused to talk to other people or watch television. She sometimes woke during the night to find him sitting up in bed or pacing. Her husband was found in his crashed Ford Mustang with a self-inflicted gun shot wound that occurred on his way to the job.
Peter Hermann Washington Post 2-12-2021
Rioters swarmed, battering the officers with metal pipes peeled from scaffolding and a pole with an American flag attached, police said. Officers were struck with stun guns. Many officers were heard screaming into their radios “code-33” the signal for “officer needs help”. This usually is a signal bringing an “all hands” response to the scene of the emergency – in Metro DC, that would mean hundreds of officers would roll. Situations like this send chills down the spine of officers responding to calls for help – some are injured in car crashes racing to back-up officers in danger. It is always hoped that when the call for help goes out as it did that day that enough manpower will respond with enough force to push back on the crowd, however large. In this case, the crowd far exceeded the number of LEO’s available for duty and many officers expected to be killed by the mob.
The psychological autopsy is a single case study of a death event that serves to uncover the psychological causes of death. This study would answer these questions and establish an understanding of worst case scenario of frontline exposure to trauma and possibly offer insight into underlying history that may have been anticipated and stopped. Without its use men and women die alone and often flooded with shame and loss of dignity. When law enforcement officers take their own lives this careful analysis of the hours and days preceding their time of death is essential to understand. “From this information an assessment is made of the suicide victim’s mental and physical health, personality, experience of social adversity and social integration. The aim is to produce as full and accurate a picture of the deceased as possible with a view to understanding why they killed themselves.This would answer the question as to whether or not the deaths may be considered to be line of duty, as they must. Psychological autopsy is probably the most direct technique currently available for determining the relationship between particular risk factors and suicide” Hawton et al. 1998
The evidence on Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) programs is thin, in part because these programs vary widely, with some representing basic officer awareness training and others composed of full-fledged and well-funded co-responder programs. However, the evidence on the impact of de-escalation training, which includes instructing police in how to identify and respond to people in crisis, is relatively strong.
I have proposed a Behavioral Health initiative in conjunction with changes in police policy and transparency that has been the central posit of social clamor since the death of George Floyd this summer. The International Association of Chief’s of Police (IACP) has a broad-based Mental Wellness program it is reporting on its website that highlights the importance of this kind of support. “The IACP, in partnership with the University of Pennsylvania (Penn) and the Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA)’s VALOR Initiative, is customizing a program specifically designed to help officers and agencies by enhancing resilience skills. The cost of such a program will reap rewards in the form of career longevity, officer well-being, officer morale, quality of community policing, and greater faith and trust in law enforcement in general. Without psychological autopsy systemic failures in training and support often go unnoticed leaving men and women without a life saver to hold on to.
This investigation is an individually designed case study that elicits a broad range of factual data regarding the antemortem behavior of a decedent in the immediate day or days leading up to the suicide. In this case, what are the events that transpired in the days before the two Capitol police officers took their own lives? The fact is that both men were exposed to incidents and participated in protecting the Capitol on January 6, 2021. Both men were engaged in hand to hand combat. It is known that the insurrection resulted in the death of a fellow officer and the deaths of 4 other people engaged in violent mayhem in which these men and hundreds others may have been killed. Both men believed the insurgency was potentially deadly to them or their fellow officers. The psychological autopsy is especially important when first responders and essential workers are involved and die soon after. When LEO’s and first responders are put in fear of death or see other officers being placed in the direct line of fire, are vastly outmanned, and have no way in which to stop an attack, they are at high risk for the “hook” that comes from an acute stress reaction and over time and soon becomes a monkey on the backs of so many fine men and women.
Some agencies, such as the Fairfax County, VA Police Department, are beginning to implement periodic mental health check-ups for their officers and other employees. The goal is twofold: 1) to “normalize” the act of visiting a mental health professional, thus reducing the stigma against seeking mental health care, and 2) to identify and address potential issues early on. (PERF 2019)
“This heroic sequence of behaviors is besmirched by the bias against mental health responses to events that would bring any one of us to our knees. Men and women of law enforcement walk in the darkness, always in death’s shadow. It is time to recognize these officers and help them and their families to know they do not walk alone.”
Michael Sefton, Ph.D. 2018 Direct Decision Institute, Inc.
Departments should consider flexible job assignments or adding exercise to work schedules as a way to release stress. Mental health should be regularly addressed at roll calls, and departments generally have to reduce the stigma — in part by acknowledging the deaths. According to Dr. Leo Polizoti at the Direct Decision Institute, Inc. in Worcester, MA, an annual stress inventory should be conducted as part of the official officer evaluation program. This may be easily done by tracking high lethality calls that may be followed by mandatory defusing/debriefing as close to high stress incidents as feasible. Officers in Worcester, MA are given paid time for these aftermath behavioral health sessions.
Hawton, K., Appleby, L., Platt, S., Foster, T., Cooper, J., Malmberg, A. & Simkin, S. (1998). The psychological autopsy approach to studying suicide: a review of methodological issues. Journal of Affective Disorders 50, 269–276.
This is a photograph produced by Dave Betz who lost his son (pictured) in 2019 to suicide.
Officer Dave Betz lost his son David to suicide in 2019
The code of silence. It surrounds the culture of police work and always has. I was once told there are two kinds of people: police officers and ass holes. If you were not a police officer then you were an asshole. It was a brotherhood with a formidable blue line that defined the police service as a singular force against all that is bad. Some have said that law enforcement offers a front seat to the greatest show on earth. Until what is viewed in the front row cannot be unseen and slowly chips away the veneer of solidarity by threatening the existing culture. For police officers to have long term career success the organization must come to grips with its membership and relieve them of the stigma they feel that prevents them from coming forward. Who would go for that?
If the organization devalues its rank and file for experiencing the natural, neurobiological reaction to repeated, high lethality exposure to violence and death, then who would join such an organization? Fewer and fewer applicants are signing on in 2019. If a police officer is emotionally denuded by the job why would he or she step up and break the code of silence and be labeled a “nut case” only to lose his badge, firearm, and police authority? No one will sign on for that kind of treatment.
Each time a member of the law enforcement community takes his or her own life the unspoken silence becomes a lancing wound to the festering emotional infection that is from repeated exposure to traumatic events. The reappearing wolf in sheep’s clothing cuts his teeth on the souls of unwavering academy graduates now paired with senior field trainers who promise to teach the tricks of the trade. Academy graduates come forth like professional athletes with all the confidence and enthusiasm of an elite athlete. They need experience and mentoring so they know what they are up against. I was asked to speak at the annual Society of Police and Criminal Psychology meeting in Scottsdale, AZ in late September, 2019 on the importance of the field training program on long-term officer wellness and career satisfaction.
Country music blared from the car radio as Dave, dressed in pajama pants and a t-shirt, stood over his son and realized he was dead.
Father of 24-year old police officer David Betz, 2019
The psychological autopsy may provide insight into the manner of death and must include prior exposure to trauma. How many first-in homicide calls had the decedent handled? How many unattended SIDS deaths? How many death notifications? How many cases of domestic violence where the victim was too frightened to speak about the nightly horrors in the marital home? How many times did he witness the remnants of a violent motor vehicle crash with ejection? Each time he bears witness to this inhumanity he risks never coming back. Some spouses will say they remember when they lost a husband or wife. “It was after the 4-alarm fire – sifting through the rooms for possible causes and finding the old woman who rented the place in an upstairs bathtub” or “the time the addict threw his newborn son off the 14th floor balcony because his baby mama did not return from work when she was expected.” Many espouse the use of the psychological autopsy as a way of honoring an officer who died by suicide as a means of linking the suicide to their tour of duty.
High lethality calls must be tracked allowing for paid psychological defusing time in the aftermath of these calls. Defusing and psycho- education can be provided for the entire group who handled the high lethality call rather than identify a single officer. Aftermath check-ins and peer support should follow. An officer who begins to exhibit changes in his normal work routine, e.g. increased tardiness, citizen complaints, or substance abuse should be referred for psychological follow-up that is linked to annual performance reviews and recommendations for corrective action.
In truth, the reader may wish to put himself into the position of the first arriving police officers at Sandy Hook Elementary School in a place called Newtown. In December, 2012, twenty seven people were violently murdered – most were first grade students. I have read the Connecticut State Police report of the Sandy Hook shooting and was left feeling numb and physically sickened. It is over 1000 pages of grueling detail. Now, when I see TV images of LEO’s running on campus toward the sound of gunshots, I know they must step over the desperate victims, some of whom take their last breath reaching for a pant leg or a blue stripe or a black boot covered in blood all the while begging to live.
Recruits enter the police service with high hopes of making a difference but quickly learn that their purpose in life is being sucked out of them like embalming fluid moving though the lifeless remains of a brother or sister officer who could endure no more. Coming forth and asking for help is not a sign of weakness but a sign of strength, resilience, and heroism. There should be no penalty or secondary administrative sanction when an officer comes forth. They must be provided behavioral health treatment and a pathway to return to the job.
Police officer suicide impacts police agencies everywhere in America and across the globe. Many officers feel abandoned by their agencies and become marginalized because they struggle with depression, substance abuse, and PTSD after years of seeing the worst life has to offer. It is time to lessen the expectation of shame among the troops who serve communities large and small. No father should be first in at the suicide death of his own son and be expected to stand with a photo and share his story at the same time he remains stoic and brave.
Scope of the Problem: Police Suicide and the goal to eliminate it – modified December 28, 2022
Police job-related stress is well-identified and reported in the media daily and the rates of suicide nationwide are being debated by Aamodt and Stalnaker. They are actually less than one is led to believe but even one law enforcement officer suicide is too much. During the week of Christmas 2022, 3 police officers took their own lives at Chicago PD. Some law enforcement officer deaths may be reduced by using a stress intervention continuum. This ties the continuum of calls into a stress reduction protocol that empowers resilience and recognizes the importance of stress mentoring and the soft hand-off for defusing the growing impact of high stress and high lethality exposure. The stress intervention continuum does not single out one officer but identifies all officers – including call takers, dispatchers, and supervisors for defusing particularly abhorrent events like mass shootings. This way, personnel who played a roll in a “bad call” will not be overlooked nor stigmatized for stress reduction defusing and/or debriefing.
Stress is defined as any situation that negatively impacts an officer’s well-being. The rate of suicide and divorce among law enforcement is approximately the same or lower than the general public according to a meta-analysis conducted by Professor Michael Aamodt. But there are areas in the country and agencies that have higher rates of self-inflicted death.
When the suicide rate of police officers (18.1) is compared with the 21.89 rate for a comparable demographic population, it appears that police officers have a lower rate of suicide than the population according to Aamodt, 2008.
Incidence of suicide tend to be elevated in cities like Chicago, where chronic gun violence and a murder rate in the hundreds per year means cops see a staggering amount of traumatic events. As a result, they may gradually become numb to the exposure of pain and suffering (Joyner, 2009). A Department of Justice report found that the suicide rate in the Chicago Police Department is 60 percent higher than the national average. According to the 2018 Chicago Sun Times, in a note to department members, former CPD Supt. Eddie Johnson said in 2018, “Death by suicide is clearly a problem in Law Enforcement and in the Chicago Police Department. We all have our breaking points, a time of weakness where we feel as if there is no way out, no alternative. But it does not have to end that way. You are NOT alone. Death by suicide is a problem that we can eliminate together” CST September 12, 2018. Chicago PD is not alone with the problem of suicide among its men and women in blue. In fact, smaller departments with fewer than 50 officers often have high rates of suicide and lack the peer support and clinical resources that enable officers to find help during times of crisis.
Law enforcement officers (LEO’s) encounter the worst of all experience on a routine basis. The people who call the police may be society’s best upstanding citizens but on this occasion it could be the worst day of their lives and they seek help from police. Many times it is not the pillars of society seeking help but those people in the fringes or margins of society now victims of violent crime or abuse.
According to Hartley, et.al., 2007, “repeated exposures to acute work stressors (e.g., violent criminal acts, sad and disturbing situations, and physically demanding responses), in addition to contending with negative life events (e.g., divorce, serious family or personal illness, and financial difficulties), can affect both the psychological and physiological well-being of the LEO population.” When these officers are identified there needs to be a planned response using a peer support infrastructure that provides for a continuum of service depending upon the individual needs of the LEO and the supports available. In many agencies, especially smaller departments lacking resources, officers’ languish and sometimes spiral downward without support and without somewhere to turn. Police officers must have support available to them long before they are expressing suicidal urges.
As programs are identified and service continuum grows the risk of peer conflict over perceived betrayal of trust must be addressed. This must be addressed in the peer support training with emphasis on preservation of life over maintenance of confidentiality or the status quo of abject silence. “In itself, it’s a product of centuries of police culture in which perceived weakness is stigmatized. Cops know their brothers have their back, no matter what, but they still don’t want to be seen as the one who’s vulnerable.” according to a recent Men’s Health article written by Jack Crosbie in a report about suicide in the NYPD published during Mental Health Awareness month in May 2018.
The argument is made that the recurring uncertainty of police calls for service often leave LEO’s with low-level exposure to trauma of varying degrees. It is common that LEO’s move from one violent call to the next without time to decompress and process what they have seen. The repeated exposure to trauma can slowly whittle away LEO resilience – defined as the capacity to bounce back from adversity. In a national media study published by Aamodt and Stalnaker, legal problems were a major reason for the law enforcement suicides yet no other study separately cited legal problems. In another study, relationship problems accounted for the highest percentage of suicides at 26.6% (relationship problems plus murder/suicide), followed by legal problems at 14.8%. In nearly a third of the suicides, no reason was known for LEO suicide.
Police suicide has been on the radar of advocates of LEO peer support for months or years. The incidence of suicide has remained stable across the country but some agencies have higher rates of suicide. Smaller departments – those with less than 50 officers in general have the highest rates of suicide. This may be linked to the lack of availability of peer support programs and a paucity of local practitioners to provide professional service with knowledge in police psychology. “While police officers may adapt to the negative effects of chronic stress, acute traumatic incidents necessitate specialized mental health treatment for police officers (Patterson, 2001)”. A referral to the department EAP often falls flat and makes it more difficult to make the hand-off when peer support is not enough.
Points of entry to Peer Support – Stress Intervention Continuum
Exposure to highly stressful events in close sequence
Change in work assignment, district/station, deployment undercover or return from deployment
Increased absenteeism – over use of sick leave – missing court dates
Increased use/abuse of substances – impacting job functioning, on-the-job injury
Community – citizen complaint(s) for verbal abuse, dereliction of duty, vehicle crash
Citizen complaints of excessive force during arrest, supervisory or peer conflict, or direct insubordination
Abuse of power using baton, taser or firearm, recurrent officer involved use of force. Officers are sometimes strongly embittered and angry at this point in their career due to perceived lack of support and powerful feelings career disappointment and alienation – copyright Michael Sefton, Ph.D.
Real-time model of change The use of force continuum is well described in the LEO literature and ongoing criminal justice narrative. What does that have to do with stress intervention in police officers? It sets the tone for officer behavior whenever they meet potential resistance and or increased aggression during citizen encounters. It may also be used for initiating peer support needs whenever an incident use of force has occurred. LEO’s change the force response based on the situation they encounter in real-time in a flexible and fluid manner. In this same way, peer support programs can flexibly shift to the needs of a presenting LEO and intervene early on – rather than when an officer is at a breaking point. “This continuum (use of force) has many levels, and officers are instructed to respond with a level of force appropriate to the situation at hand, acknowledging that the officer may move from one point on the continuum to another in a matter of seconds.” NIJ publication. Peer support too, must accommodate a law enforcement officer in real-time to begin the process of building a healthy, resilient response to sometimes horrific exposures and provide a continuum of unbiased employee assistance and when necessary professional consultation.
Protective Factors begin in Academy training
What topics should addressed while LEO recruits are in training? Ostensibly, the resilience of LEO’s depends upon the opportunity for in-service training in topics of mindfulness, stress management, physical health maintenance, nutrition, and trust.
“Emotional resilience is defined as the capacity to integrate the breadth of police training and experience with healthy, adaptive coping, optimism, mental flexibility and healthy resolution of the traumatic events. In general, resilient people are self-reliant and have positive role models from whom they have learned to handle the stressful events all police officers encounter” according to Leo Polizoti, Ph.D. a police consulting psychologist (Sefton 2018).
Police programs for health maintenance
The Police Stress Intervention Continuum or P-SIC, involves a system of police support that varies in its intensity depending upon the continuum of individual needs of the LEO including physical debility or other significant components impacting career success and satisfaction. The intervention protocol is flexible and fluid as well. The entry point into the peer support continuum initiates from supervisory observations of LEO history and behavior, peer recommendations, and exposure to a range of traumatic events.
The cumulative stress associated with a career in law enforcement cannot be understated. In the setting of police stress and stress support there is an intervention protocol that relates to the peer-support program continuum. Depending on where officers enter the peer support network will impact the level of intervention they may require in the P-SIC program. Peer support is not psychotherapy but officers occasionally must hand off the officer in trouble to a higher level of care. These hand-offs are key to linking at-risk LEO’s with range of professional support needed to keep them on the job. Yet fear of reprisal for acknowledging the cumulative impact of stress and its impact often derails the hand-off to the professional. The highest risk for suicide to a LEO is when he is denuded of badge and gun because he may be a threat to himself.
The career success they have may be directly related to the application of resiliency training to build and maintain physical and emotional hardiness that lasts a lifetime according to Leo Polizoti, 2018. Before this can happen the stigma associated with reaching out must be reduced.
Aamodt, M. G., & Stalnaker, N. A. (2001). Police officer suicide: Frequency and officer profiles. In Shehan, D. C, & Warren, J. I. (Eds.) Suicide and Law Enforcement. Washington, D.C.: Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Aamodt, M. (2008). Reducing Misconceptions and False Beliefs in Police and Criminal Psychology. Criminal Justice and Behavior 2008; 35; 1231 DOI: 10.1177/0093854808321527.
Patterson, G T. (200l). Reconceptualizing traumatic incidents experienced by law enforcement personnel. The Australian Journal of Disaster and Trauma Studies, 2.
Joyner, T. (2009) The Interpersonal-Psychological Theory of Suicidal Behavior: Current Empirical Status. Science Briefs, American Psychological Association, June.
Hartley, T., et.al.(2007). Associations Between Major Life Events, Traumatic Incidents, and Depression Among Buffalo Police Officers. International Journal of Emergency Mental Health, Vol. 9, No. 1, pp.
John M. Violanti, Anna Mnatsakanova, Tara A. Hartley, Michael E. Andrew, Cecil M. Burchfiel. (2012). Police Suicide in Small Departments: A comparative analysis. Int J Emerg Ment Health. Author manuscript available in PMC 2015 Aug 14. Published in final edited form as: Int J Emerg Ment Health. 2012; 14(3): 157–162.
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