Calming the Storm
Officer Darren Wilson was proud to pin the badge of the Ferguson Police Department to his dress blues, but since he discharged his Sig P229 pistol on August 9, 2014, the badge reminds him that he mortally wounded a teenager in the line of duty. A nationwide study conducted from 2008-2012 by Pamela Kulbarsh, a psychiatric nurse for over 25 years and a member of San Diego’s Psychiatric Emergency Response Team, found that nearly 150,000 officers have experienced symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, not to mention the officers who, because of the stigma of appearing weak, have yet to come forward with their symptoms. For years, we have ignored the calls for help from the guardians of our safety who have pledged to protect our nation.
It has been argued that officers are in no way affected by cultural influences in their field of duty. If an officer is in distress, he or she will seek out help. On the contrary, John Seifert, a Boulder County Sherriff’s Deputy, who earned a medal of valor for his actions in a 2008, a gun battle that saw dozens of rounds fired, struggled for years with post-traumatic stress disorder. He left the police force two years later and began heavily drinking. In 2015, Seifert was found at his home outside Nederland with a single shotgun blast to his neck. Why did Seifert choose not to seek help? Mike Violette, an executive director of the Colorado State Lodge Fraternal Order of Police, emphasized that it was “difficult enough to have officer’s come forward who have this problem. There is an ‘I can handle it’ attitude that cops have.” Seifert is one of hundreds of officers nationally who have taken their lives in the past 4 years, many of them suffering from PTSD. It is a condition long ignored by law enforcement, where confessing emotional trauma is looked down upon.
Perhaps the largest barrier to finding effective treatments and support systems is the culture that exists within law enforcement. The profession requires officers to restrain from their emotions and rein their feelings of pain or suffrage. It is presumed by law enforcement that officers can make that emotional switch and focus on another case, regardless of what they may be experiencing. In a predominantly male culture emphasizing toughness and a shrug-it-off, suck-it-up mentality, officers are forced to keep their feelings to themselves and resort to unhealthy methods of coping, which result in negative outcomes (such as alcohol abuse, risk-taking behaviors, etc.).
When a traumatic incident occurs, officers are left with the images, the smells, and the sounds. It lingers around them. A study conducted by psychologists from Harvard School of Public Health and the University of Rochester found that suppressing emotions can lead to negative emotions like anger, anxiety and depression. We know that stress can build up and become chronic when our “natural” fight-or-flight responses meant to help us survive in conflict situations are frustrated. Similarly, detrimental effects may occur when negative emotions remain unexpressed. When stress starts to interfere with an officer’s ability to live a normal life for an extended period, it can wear and tear on their bodies creating new problems or make existing problems worse. An officer, who does not come forward because of the stigma of appearing weak, will drive themselves crazy under the constant reminder of a horrific incident.
Law enforcement personnel receive training on the warning signs of alcohol use, abuse, and dependency. Informing police officer’s about the negative effects of alcohol abuse can only help them to a certain extent. But when police officer’s actually accumulate astronomical amounts of pressure in their field of duty, alcohol seems like a reasonable solution to their problems. Why not drink alcohol as a temporary relief to help cope with a murder case? Law enforcement is both a mentally and physically demanding job. Alcohol provides an outlet for police officers because they refuse to seek treatment for their anxieties or symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. The most remote cause for alcohol abuse in law enforcement lies in alcohol’s ability to alter levels of neurotransmitters in the brain that takes officer’s away from their line of duty and into a mindless bliss.
Police officers are more at risk alcohol abuse than the general public, as a result of their stress levels. Internal stressors, such as administrative stress, include lack of support, long hours, overtime, no room for advancement, and family complications. External stressors are correlated with outside factors such as the attitude of the general public, daily exposure to trauma, negativity, and uneasiness when dealing with challenging and dangerous situations. Vicki Lindsay, a professor of Criminology and Penology at the University of Southern Mississippi, conducted a study of police officer’s in urban communities and found that of those officers surveyed, 11% of male officers and 16% of female officers reported alcohol use levels deemed “at-risk” by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. Problems that develop (such as alcohol dependency) are usually the result of officer’s, because of the stigma of appearing weak, reluctance to seek help.
We need to eliminate the stigma surrounding the culture of law enforcement regarding the harsh judgment of police officers who seek professional help for mental health concerns. It is critical that officers learn healthy coping strategies to minimize stress on a regular basis, rather than attempt to mask stress with alcohol or other unhealthy behaviors. We cannot simply teach them about the negative effects of alcohol. We need to be there when it matters most.
Works Cited
New Source
“Police and PTSD” The Law Enforcement Magazine. 22 Feb. 2013. Web. 4 Nov. 2016.
http://www.policemag.com/channel/careers-training/articles/2013/02/police-and-ptsd.aspx
New Source
“Police Officers struggle with PTSD” The Denver Post. 18 Jun. 2014. Web. 4 Nov. 2016.
New Source
“Keeping Your Emotions Bottled Up Could Kill You” Huffpost Living. 31 Mar. 2014. Web. 4 Nov. 2016.
http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/timi-gustafson/bottling-up-negative-emotions_b_5056433.html
New Source
Willman, Elizabeth A. “Alcohol Use Among Law Enforcement.” The Journal of Law Enforcement. 2.3 (2008) 1-4. Print.
Rowan Counterintuitive 
Feedback moved to Causal Rewrite
—DSH
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