 Headlines from 2008 Daily Item coverage.Where do police turn after a traumatic situation?
By Dan O'Brien / The Daily Item
Police officers often project a certain image: They're tough. They're seasoned. They're ready for anything.
Most know once they clock in for work, there's a real possibility they could face a life-or-death situation. However, in a slow change of attitude over the past several years, more officers are likely to seek the resources available to help cope with emotional distress, local police chiefs say.
"By and large, officers are more agreeable to the idea because it's a more acceptable behavior than 25 or 30 years ago," Revere Police Chief Terence Reardon said.
In 2008, officers locally and nationally found themselves in the middle of several traumatic situations that are, unfortunately, part of the job.
In Lynn, there were three known police-involved shootings in 2008 - two of which resulted in the suspect's death.
In Peabody, a fatal police-involved shooting occurred in September; in Revere, two non-fatal police shootings occurred this year.
Local police chiefs say the life-or-death situations certainly take a toll on the officers involved. But now more than ever cops are likely to throw their stereotypical "macho" mentalities to the wayside to get proper mental health treatment.
"I think that while police officers tend to have a kind of macho existence, more and more of them are realizing that critical stress incidents exist," Reardon said.
"Years ago, we'd say, 'We're tough. We don't need this psychoanalysis.' But over time things have changed," Lynn Police Chief John Suslak said.
Suslak points out that his officers can seek help without facing the stigma of others knowing about it.
"If someone has an issue I think the key to success is confidentiality," Suslak said.
While police shootings are the most obvious high-stress situation an officer might endure, Peabody Police Chief Robert Champagne says oftentimes an officer will seek help after responding to a series of traumatic events.
"Sometimes it's the case of ... an officer going to multiple fatal accidents of multiple shootings," Champagne said. "It's really a shock to your system, even if you're a veteran."
Suslak agrees.
"The kind of things police officers or firefighters see are very disturbing even to a trained professional," he said. "What we're really trying to offer is a range of services to officers to give them what they need."
Champagne says many police officers re-thought the idea of therapy and critical stress debriefings after the terrorist events of Sept. 11, 2001.
"There were a lot of lessons learned," he said. "The police and civilians who were there started to decompress and they said, 'Holy smokes, this affects me more than I thought.'"
Reardon points out that being a police officer causes stress even without critical situations.
"The job even without critical incidents is very stressful," he said. "We're in a different part of society, telling people what to do everyday. It's stressful enough having to tell your own kids what to do."
All three chiefs say officers seeking treatment are offered services, including peer counseling, from the Boston police department's Critical Incident Support Team. BPD often provides the services to other smaller local police departments that lack such programs.
Within one year, the Revere police department had to deal with two tragedies: the murder of Officer Daniel Talbot and the suicide of Sgt. Peter Papsadora.
"In the kind of year we had, what we did was bring people in to address roll call and give the information out to the officers," Reardon said. "We let them go as a group or individually, it was up to them."
"I would say that everybody benefits from it," he added.
After the Sept. 21 police shooting in Peabody, police said a member of the BPD support team was dispatched to the officer's location to conduct what the BPD calls "a post-incident defusing" - a type of assessment.
"The on-scene [support team] members will further assess the situation to determine the need for a formal debriefing and communicate their findings to the coordinator who shall further advise the director [of the] Stress Support Unit," BPD literature of the program said.
While members of the support staff may suggest that an officer undergo treatment, all three police chiefs say it's 100 percent the officer's decision if he or she wants to pursue treatment further after a traumatic situation or not.
"It's up to the officers," Reardon said. "You can't force them to go but we make every indication to set it up for them we bring them here and we give them time off of the job."
Suslak says police officers are more aware of the services after observing high-profile cases of officer stress, such as the suicide of a New York City police lieutenant who came under scrutiny after he ordered a junior officer to shoot a Taser at a mentally ill man standing on a 12-foot ledge who ultimately fell to his death.
The lieutenant left a suicide note saying he was distraught over his actions.
"It's a tragic case," Suslak said. "It just goes to show how officers undergo tremendous stress."
Suslak believes trying to alleviate a problem before it manifests is key to solving certain emotional problems.
"If you can provide them with help and intervention early on you can help prevent that," he said. "Cops are people too."
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lynn123 wrote on Dec 10, 2008 9:40 AM: