Emotional Survival Flashcards
How do recruits usually feel on graduation day?
It is a time of high spirits, they feel a tangible sense of accomplishment for getting through the academy and believe in the promise that an exciting and fulfilling career is just beginning.
Do recruits generally stay in touch with fellow students?
They can often flourish over years of shared service into lifelong friendships.
Are all changes in a new recruit positive ones?
No, one of the first costs of the journey through a police career can be the old friendships that predate police work.
What is a negative to new recruits relying on the support of more experienced officers?
Although experienced officers do know the job and the streets, often the rest of their lives do not run as effectively.
Interesting Fact:
The message passed along to new recruits by veterans is often incomplete. It focuses on the job only.
Do new recruits earn the respect of veteran officers easily?
No way.The trust of other cops is often an uphill battle. Being accepted and trusted is the major goal during the first few years.
How do new officers become accepted by veterans?
It is earned only when the younger officers can demonstrate that they can be counted on in tough situations and they can be trusted when the chips are down.
Social isolation
As the years pass, many officers experience social isolation from everyone except other cops.
What are positive outlooks and emotions replaced by?
Dark, moody, negative views of the world
What happens to their personal lives?
They often become strained, distant, and dysfunctional.
Great quote:
Idealism can become cynicism, optimistic enthusiasm can become pessimism, and the easygoing young recruit can become the angry and negative veteran police officer.
Quote
The job takes on more and more of the officer’s time and becomes more than just a job-it can become the central and defining aspect of the officer’s life.
What happens to the significant people in the officer’s life?
They can find themselves pushed aside, searching for a way to adapt to these changes or risk losing the relationship. Marriages strain and break, children become alienated from parental emotional support, and
Describe the relationship that can often occur between the officer and the people in his life.
The new officer can become emotionally distant, hardened, or physically absent from the lives of the people sharing the journey through the police career from the home front.
Are the changes in the officer’s life often addressed?
No, they are rarely, if ever, spoken of in the police culture. Also they are rarely seen as a major priority to correct.
How are recruits told to deal with these changes?
Recruits are told that the job takes its toll, but they are hardly ever told or shown how to minimize the negative effects of the journey through the police career.
Quote
Helping officers keep their personal lives intact is not a priority for many law enforcement agencies. Typically, agencies give no strategies or preventative game plans to the recruit.
Are these issues isolated to just a few officers?
These changes impact many new officers and families. Look around any law enforcement agency and see the wreckage, personal and professional.
What changes occur first?
Emotional changes, such as
How do veteran officers view their life when looking back on their career?
They look at the journey through the police career from a very different perspective.
Quote
The officer’s journey, all too often, takes its toll-a toll in world-view-and outlook from positive to negative, from idealistic to cynical, from physically active and fit to sedentary and potentially unhealthy.
What are some of the costs of the journey through a police career?
1Professionally, minor dissatisfaction with the organization or agency can become all-consuming anger, hostility, and open hatred toward the management hierarchy of the police agency. Personally,failed marriages, children in trouble, life views dominated by negativity, social isolation and alienation from fellow human beings.
Quote
The veteran officer retiring after twenty or more years of service may not even vaguely resemble the positive, committed, and highly motivated recruit who began the journey.
Quote
The scars, both physically and emotionally are all too often clearly visible.
Quote
Taking into account the adage “If it’s predictable, it’s preventable,” why are the predictable emotional changes and difficulties in an officer’s life not prevented? Why aren’t law enforcement organization at least attempting major efforts to prevent the destructive effects on employees brought on by years spent as officers?
WHat about police psychologists and employee assistance programs?
They traditionally have been focused on resolving issues once they develop not on preventing them.
Quote
The law enforcement culture does, in fact, clearly value certain types of prevention and survival training. Any training that reduces and prevents injury and death to officers is highly valued.
What is the focus of this training?
It is on physical assault and injury.
What is the goal of law enforcement agencies?
Keeping cops alive on the street.
What is the most basic necessity for cops?
The development of professional skills in the area of officer safety.
Quote
No one would argue against the need for significant investment of training resources in the area of officer safety to maximize street survival skills.
Quote
The development of skills to survive the emotional aspects of a police career is given far less, if any, attention relative to the development of skills to survive the physical assaults of police work.
What should be the number one training priority?
Street survival and officer safety.
Quote
The development of officer safety training as a legitimate area of expertise over the past two decades has produced significant results and have saved many police officers’ lives.
Quote
Although the number of officers policing the U.S. has grown significantly over the past 4 decades, the number of those officers dying feloniously continues to reduce. This is the result of good cops practicing effective officer safety.
Quote
In spite of being faced with increasing gang activity, readily available automatic weapons, and a court system imparting questionable consequences for criminal activity, police officers are surviving the streets.
What specifically has produced an increased the chance of survival for officers confronting lethal threat?
Making officer safety training a high priority.
How is the current safety training perceived?
Traditional forms of training are accepted and valued in the police culture. Officers take a personal sense of ownership and responsibility for the development of their officer safety skills while working in the street environment.
What is the number one priority for street officers
Stay alive so you can go home after shift.
Quote
Officer safety training does not need to be at the expense of training in the realities of the emotional effects of the career.
Statistic
An average of 69 law enforcement officers died feloniously in the US each year in the 1990’s.
Statistic
According to the National Police Suicide Foundation police suicides averaged more than 300 per year during the 1990’s, more than 4X the felony death rate.
Quote
The numerical difference between felony death and suicide should raise significant concern among both police officers and agencies, but the startling information often falls on deaf ears.
Quote
The loss of even one police officer’s life to a felony is unacceptable in the police culture.
Reducing felony death
Training, equipment, and resources are dedicated to reducing felony death.
How does the suicide rate for police officers compare to the national average?
Police officer suicide rate is 3X the national average.
How has the suicide rate changed between 1950 and 1990?
The suicide rate among cops has doubled.
Quote
The reports of a higher suicide rate among police officers are even more alarming when you consider the fact that most agencies conduct pre-employment screenings.
Quote
Due to the fact that pre employment screenings are given great effort, it is safe to assume that officers begin their careers more stable, physically fit and with fewer ongoing significant emotional crises than the general population,
How do officers view the high suicide rate?
Many say, “That’s big city cops. I work in a small town and that kind of stuff doesn’t happen here.”
Who are the FOP?
The Fraternal Order of Police represents law enforcement professionals from agencies of all sizes. Of 600,000 police officers in the US, 270,000 are represented by the F.O.P.
Statistic
Compared to the average U.S. suicide rate of 12 per 100,000 (as reported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), the FOP found rates among officers of 22 per 100,000 officer members.
Statistics
F.O.P Death Rates are
Quote
Suicide isn’t the only form of self-destruction. They include depression, social isolation adn chronic anger.
How do officers react to a co-workers suicide?
They rationalize it away with
After a suicide,
Many officers have to develop strategies to avoid acknowledging the real emotional impact the job can have.
Emotional distance
Officers design techniques to blunt and deny the realities. This means putting emotional distance between what happened and the world the officer still works and resides in each day. Officers tell themselves that the suicide must have been the result of some flaw in the individual psychological makeup of the dead officer.
Why is psychological distance essential?
For the officers to keep doing the job without any insight of strategy for emotional survival.
Quote
Denial creates the belief that psychological distance exists between what was going on in the dead officer’s life and what is going on in the lives of the remaining officers.
Denial creates the illusion that…
I’m doing ok. That stuff doesn’t apply to me.
Quote
It is a primitive attempt to ignore the emotional changes caused by police work and to deny emotional vulnerability. It is an attempt to avoid acknowledging the darker side of police work, the downside of the job.
Quote
What about the loss and deterioration of other aspects of the cop’s lives. There is the destruction of functional intimate relationships,
Quote
The suicide rate of cops is not nearly as numerically significant as the number of marriages that are lost and the number of children who grow up emotionally distant from their police parents and who grow up experiencing the secondhand effects of a police career
What affects many police homes?
Cynicism, anger, isolation, and social distrust
Hilariously appropriate quote
When a police family is discussing the neighbors, who might have a different opinion on an issue, the idea of differences are not discussed, easier to conclude “the neighbors are assholes.”
Concepts of social isolation and cynicism are
Not a problem; they are just “the way the world really is.”
Do all new recruits have a difficult time adjusting to police work?
No, many officers do survive emotionally and remain functional even after many years.
Do agencies and unions often provide counseling services before incidents occur?
No, many services are available after problems surface, for agencies and unions rarely make the emotional well being of their officers a hight priority from a prevention perspective. This can become evident when a high profile event occurs in the community that throws the agency into a controversy.
What kinds of questions are asked by the media after a high profile event?
Are your officers psychologically screened before you give them guns?
How does the media both support and vilify the police?
The media, at first, seem to hold the agency’s feet to the fire in the area of the psychological well being of its officers. Their questions seem to be a genuine effort to produce change, a desire to obtain assistance for the officers and also to produce and demand change, how the officers treat the public, how they treat minorities. However, usually the media reports from a fundamentally antipolice perspective in order to sell papers. This type of reporting causes the officers, as well as management to circle the wagons and take a defensive perspective.
How do officers end up feeling about the media?
The media really are a bunch of bleeding heart assholes. People in the community don’t have any idea what working on the streets as a cop is really all about.
What often happens during a crisis that does nothing to help the officers?
Sometimes the crisis becomes a missed opportunity for labor and management to form a necessary partnership to enhance the help that could be available for officers and their families. Sometimes aggressive labor leaders consider the crisis situation a great opportunity to initiate a vote of no confidence against the chief. Then higher level management attempts to show the community that the chief is addressing the issue while also becoming defensive to the media.
Quote
When controversies concerning officer behavior erupt, they typically indicate that an officer or group of officers have failed to survive the job emotionally.
Quote
Even if genuine management action is taken concerning the controversial behavior of the officers, it usually represents a disciplinary reaction to the problem and fails to address correction and prevention. The agency deals with the symptoms without addressing the root causes of the problem.
What questions should be asked in the mutual interest of all parties?
Why did this happen?
What questions should be asked of officers to determine what changes an officer goes through?
Do you see the world differently now that you are an officer?
How do experienced officers respond to these questions?
Most experienced officers respond yes to all three questions.
Fast fact
Most officers realize they see the world differently but have never stopped to assess just how differently they perceive things. The people they spend the majority of their time with see the world pretty much the same way they do. These people, of course, are other cops.
How do officers feel about looking at the fact that they see the world differently than other people?
That would be a waste of my time, absolute nonsense, little more than touchy feel garbage.
Example of a changed world view
Think of the phrase “scout leader.” Most people think an adult man or woman interested in helping youth. Most officers think pedophile, child molester or sex offender.
Why do officers think in a narrow way about people?
Their experiences encompass a very narrow slice of humanity. Their police work can become the officer’s entire world view. As the years go by, because of the world the officers are immersed in, the data becomes more and more contaminated and so do the conclusions the officers draw.
Quote
Law enforcement personnel, like all other human beings, form their world views and predictions about life from the situations and events they see every day. Who calls the police to their home because things are going well? It has been said that officers see people at their baddest, maddest saddest. Is it any wonder that the officers’ world views change?
Fun fact
Does being distrustful of human nature and motive have a purpose? Yes, it keeps cops alive. It is highly essential that every police officer practice excellent officer safety skills, which translates into being distrustful.
What happens when the distrust does not remain just a skill set on the job?
No one is trusted, except, obviously, a few select cops. Everybody has an angle. Don’t be naive. He’s not as nice as you think he it.
How do these negative feelings translate at home?
Activities and social gatherings can be extremely difficult on non police friends and members of the officer’s family. The officer can be viewed as negative, distrusting, hard and unforgiving.
Are officers aware of their cynicism?
Officers often admit to being cynical, but often they are not aware of the long term impact cynicism creates on attempting to maintain a normal social, family and emotional life. There is a high cost to one’s personal life.
Describe the cynicism ratio.
Basically you take the square root of the number of times you say bullshit on an average day. :)
What kinds of bullshit do officers often see?
They see political bullshit, administrative bullshit, affirmative action bullshit, management bullshit, union bullshit, touchy feely bullshit and total bullshit.
What does the bullshit list reveal?
It represents officers’ anger, frustration, and growing intolerance of things that bombard them every day while doing their jobs as police officers. It’s easier to shut down psychologically and distance yourself from the events around you. Officers can put up protective shields and not be affected. They don’t have to think about things they disagree with. They just label them bullshit and move on.
Quote
Officers don’t have to try to explain or deal with events outside their comfort zone. Creating this distance is a much less painful way of facing the emotional challenges of police work in the short run.
Who or what is the source of all the bullshit?
After much consideration, the officer determines that it is the assholes that are the source of all the bullshit. Now there is no longer any need to deal with the problems officers encounter every day. It’s just bullshit anyway.
Who are the assholes?
Anyone they don’t agree with is just an asshole. All alternative life forms are assholes. Anyone officers don’t like, don’t trust, are uncomfortable with, or don’t even know is an asshole. The longer someone is a law enforcement officer, the larger the number of assholes he or she knows. By retirement, they can count on one hand the people who are not assholes.
Describe the categories of assholes
There are the known assholes, flaming assholes, management assholes, union assholes, federal assholes, local assholes and political assholes.
Fun fact
The term asshole really designates an individual who causes the officer to experience a state of physical uneasiness or discomfort. This state lets the officer know he or she is in potential jeopardy when this person, the asshole, is present. It could be physical risk, occupational risk or emotional risk.
When is this feeling of jeopardy experienced?
Early in a career, the feeling of jeopardy is experienced only in street encounters where physical risk occurs. This street survival mode permits the officer to be prepared in case something potentially threatening occurs. As the years pass, the officer becomes competent in his or her street survival skills and the feeling of jeopardy comes mostly from people within the agency. A common feeling is, “I can handle the assholes on the street. I just can’t handle the assholes running this agency.”
How does the cynicism show up at home?
Unfortunately, many law enforcement parents, without thinking let their cynicism and social isolation dictate the manner in which they admonish their kids. Quit acting like a little asshole. If you don’t straighten up you are going to grow up to be an asshole.
Is cynicism unavoidable?
No. However, without effective training in emotional survival skills all through a career, a cynical outlook is a predictable result. Without taking time to make emotional survival a priority, many police officers lives will be typified by a lifetime of cynicism based thinking and decisions. The consequences of this type of thinking and interaction with children and loved ones are typically felt only years later in terms of failed love relationships and strained, or even broken parent child relationships that may never recover.
Hypervigilance
What causes the psychological changes in law enforcement personnel? Is the negative, cynical, angry outlook that typifies many law enforcement officers directly related to and caused by the many tragic, negative, and violent events that an officer is forced to witness over the years of being a cop? Officers must learn to see the world differently than most folks in order to increase the odds of going home each day after work.
How does an officer reduce lethal threat?
Officers reduce lethal threat by practicing this perceptual skill set known as officer safety.
Fast fact
Central to the development of any officer safety skills is the understanding that officers not only must perceive the environment as potentially lethal, but also must accomplish this perceptual task immediately, when time is if the utmost essence. Interpreting each unknown as potentially lethal permits the officer to have a greater sense of preparedness, regardless of how the unknown event actually plays out in the end.
food for thought
Not accepting the potential risk in any situation is not practicing good officer safety. Not being perceptive of every nuance of the environment can prove lethal. It is better to approach a harmless situation prepared for risk that to approach the lethal situation unprepared.
Define hypervigilance
The perceptual set of elevated alertness of the surroundings which is required of law enforcement officers for survival, often referred to as officer safety. A more accurate term is hypervigilance. it is the necessary manner of viewing the world from a threat based perspective, having the mindset to see the events unfolding as potentially hazardous.
What does an officer have to do during a routine traffic stop that reflects hypervigilance?
Who is in the backseat? Where are everyone’s hands? Where do I stand? Where do I move if this traffic stop goes bad and I have to defend myself?
Is there a biological dimension to hypervigilance?
Yes, the brain of the competent street police officer perceives the world from a perspective of hypervigilance. Rapid perception, quick interpretation of events, perceiving unknowns as potentially lethal until proven otherwise- these are the mindset.
How does this perceptual set of hypervigilance affect the officer psychologically over a significant course of time?
Each action of the officer demonstrates the impact of hypervigilance on behavior. Every move is controlled by the perceptual set of hypervigilance; positioning and movements, how close he permits the citizen to stand, requesting and then requiring the citizen to step away from the vehicle or to step away from a weapon of item of threat. Soon, this becomes the officer’s way of viewing the world. One could say that good officers learn to see the world as one big felony in progress. They are just driving through it and they don’t want any of it to splash on them.
Does the average citizen need to develop hypervigilance?
No, the average citizen encounters an average level of daily risk. Most people have the luxury of living between the lines, living within the normal range of emotion, risk and reactivity to the environment. Living in the normal range of vigilance is a perfectly acceptable range for the average person dealing with a normal level of risk, threat, or demand.
How does the average citizen react to the world around them?
Average citizens live in the normal range of risk without consequence. They can see the world as a basically safe and positive place. They don’t need to experience hypervigilance on d daily basis. Average citizens might experience it rarely. In a dark alley, for example.
What questions might an average citizen ask themselves when encountering a dangerous situation?
Am I in harms way?
Fact
The average citizen in the course of his or her daily routine rarely experiences hypervigilance. When a situation develops where there is risk, they may interpret the sensations as alertness, anxiety or fear.
The biology of hypervigilance
Hypervigilance is a biological state. Its foundation is in the neurological functioning of the brain. In the brain, the Reticular Activating System (R.A.S) determines the level of alertness that is necessary at any given time.
What does the Reticular Activating System do when a risk is experienced by a person?
The R.A.S. engages the higher functioning levels of the brain into a higher level of awareness and perceptiveness of the environment. This response is meant to increase survival by enabling the brain to perceive potential threats before they take place. This increased level of alertness and awareness needed for officers to safely work the streets is caused by the hypervigilance response and produces an increased functioning of the sympathetic branch of the autonomic nervous system.
What is the Autonomic Nervous System?
It controls the body’s internal organs and automatic functions, such as pulse, respiration, body temperature, and blood pressure and other functions. The level and pattern of responsiveness of the autonomic nervous system is how an individual reacts to risk, demand, or threat.
Fact
The autonomic nervous system is the biological aspect of the officer’s sixth sense on the street, that capacity to be ready when something takes place of needs an immediate reaction.
What are the two branches of the autonomic nervous system?
They are the SYMPATHETIC and PARASYMPATHETIC branches.
What is the sympathetic branch of the autonomic nervous system?
The sympathetic branch is the part of the autonomic nervous system that reacts and controls bodily function in times of challenge or threat. It is the branch that is involved during the officer’s day to day functioning. During hypervigilance, it turns on those bodily functions that are required for physical survival.
What are the heightened functions that are the body’s way of increasing survival during hypervigilance?
They are increased peripheral vision, improved hearing, faster reaction times, increased blood sugar, elevated heart rate, increased blood pressure, and a general sense of energy to meet and overcome any threats that are challenging the body’s capacity to survive.
