Stress and the Law Enforcement Officer

Writing back and forth with so many of our Officers, and Officers from other departments, I have come to a conclusion. Working for Law Enforcement especially a prison system, can be stressful.

I remember starting with the department. I had been in the military doing hi-speed things, fought for my country, been an EMT, been a Police Officer, gone through divorce, and other things. I thought I was mister tough guy when I started way back in the day. HA! I got eaten up by Ol Dogs and Convicts.
I watched as my fellow meek Officers became strong willed foul mouthed commanders of their area. But, I have seen a lot fail under the stress of the job when combined with the stress of life. Most of my friends are dead now after or just before retiring. I have as many friends that have killed themselves as I have fingers, and yes, I have them all.
If you ask someone that has been around for a while about someone that killed themselves you will most often hear, “What a *****”. To me this is wrong! Why are we like this, yet we go to the funeral and cry like a cat’s meow.
This blog is to point out issues in the design, to give suggestions of how to relieve stress and become a better Law Enforcement Officer, and if need be to get you help.

Now, I am not a counselor, just a talker. But I do know things, am one of you, have been through it, and by GODs mercy, I want to help raise my grandchildren and not die of a heart attack in two years.

"Let’s talk about stress baby, let’s talk about you and me!" Sorry, if you don't know the song, then you are too damn young.
Let’s talk about the beginning of stress. Stress starts at the academy. The academy begins to put demands on you, to be professional, strong, and smart. This adds stress in your life, trying to keep time lines, and dealing with yelling Sergeants and learning that a lot of people in your class are just downright mean.
One of the first reactions your body starts to have is called hyper vigilance. You can call this situational awareness; know your surroundings, paying attention to what’s going on, or whatever. But what is happening is a sub-conscious event where your brain and body start to change to be more aware of events and dangers around you. This is a good thing for you and the people you protect. But in the long run it will make you tired, wasted, old, irritable, and STRESSED the F@&% OUT!
Hyper vigilance can be cool. My wife used to wake me up with every little sound outside in this big metropolis of ours. But one night from a dead sleep I heard the lock on the shed being moved. Like a spring I was up and out the door with the scatter gun. I chased two future residences out of the yard. No other noise woke me up except the sound of evil in action. This folks is hyper vigilance, it is what keeps you from getting deep sleep, and it is what makes you grouchy and tired, it is what causes you to make bad decisions, and in some cases, you start to act just as bad and dangerous as those we have to arrest or supervise. To lower its effects on us and stop it for the night we may choose alcohol. Don’t get me wrong, alcohol is not a bad thing if used in moderation. But start using it as a medicine and you’re looking for trouble.
They have this new movie out, you take a pill and you become smarter, you use more of your brain. Think of hyper vigilance as that nasty pill. You get hyper vigilant and sub-consciously your brain starts to use more of its self without your knowing, and it does not stop, even while you are trying to sleep.
Good news is, you can control how much hyper vigilance controls you. I know you don’t want to hear it, but I applied what a Chaplain at work told me to do, and I am still here, I am successful, and I AM STILL MARRIED TO THE SAME WONDERFUL WOMAN!
You get to know everyone at work and realize you all have the same thing in common. So you start to hang out together and party, then drink, then fight, then you become your own little click that does dumb crap at work, try to cover each other’s ass, sleep with each other, make each other miserable, have heart attacks together, and die together. Sound farfetched? Don’t lie to yourself because you know you do not want to be doing it.
I love my friends and we still hang out and have some beers. We golf, hike, go to car shows, concerts, camping, bike riding, vacations, and other fun stuff that does not involve bars, bar fights, DUI’s, and everything else that goes with all that.
The best way I can tell you to learn more about this is Google or Bing “Law Enforcement Hyper Vigilance and Health Issues”, “Hyper Vigilance and the Police Officer”. You can also go on www.corrections.com and search for “shameful secret” or google “Caterina Spinaris Tudor, Ph.D.”

So do you recomend talking with cirt. I talked to them and they just ry to recrute me. Then they just sat there and listen to me and did not reely say any thing. I just left confused and still not better. I tried the free counseling but the guy is in peoria like 30 miles from me thru all PHX traffic. How come work doesnt have something better for us anyway. I was pretty messed up when my frien got shot and killed not long ago and all the assaults and bs at work. I tried talking to my sergeant and he called me a complainer and he told me not to poisin the other staff if I was not good enough to handle things. Soooooooooooooo whats up. :oops:

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Originally Posted by ASUfan#1

So do you recomend talking with cirt. I talked to them and they just ry to recrute me. Then they just sat there and listen to me and did not reely say any thing. I just left confused and still not better. I tried the free counseling but the guy is in peoria like 30 miles from me thru all PHX traffic. How come work doesnt have something better for us anyway. I was pretty messed up when my frien got shot and killed not long ago and all the assaults and bs at work. I tried talking to my sergeant and he called me a complainer and he told me not to poisin the other staff if I was not good enough to handle things. Soooooooooooooo whats up. :oops:

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Isn’t prison life funny? I cannot say that it amazes me that anyone that works for a prison is that callus to not care for a fellow brother or sister whether they like them or not, because I forget and am sometimes just as cold.
As for what is supposed to be the departments stress debriefing group, in my opinion, needs to be revamped. It used to be run by the Chaplains that were trained by a national organization called International Critical Incident Stress Foundation (http://ICISF.org). To me it worked very well, I used it often. It was nice to pop in their Office as an LT. and vent knowing that it would not be repeated. I would send all of my staff to them and sometimes still do.
This new thing was started by someone with a different idea of what stress debriefing is supposed to be. I attended the training and felt they had more issues than resolutions to offer. After it was implemented I began to hear everyone’s problems, so no confidence with them.
I am not a strong religious guy, I don’t go to church, but I believe faith is important when being in such a negative and violent environment such as ours. YOU DO NOT HAVE TO BE RELIGIOUS TO TALK TO THE CHAPLAIN. They talk to anyone and don’t shove religion down your neck. You would be surprised how many of our staff are actually religious leaders in the community. We have Chaplains, Pastors, Imams, Rabbi’s, agnostics, and others that are Officers and can provide a good ear.
I have also talked to a psychiatrist for some visits after seeing so much death and injury to staff and inmates through my long career. And as any of us, I also stop to help at bad accidents. There are a lot of those in this huge city where I work. You have to pay the $30 co-pay and go for more than 6 or 7 visits to really get things off of your chest. The psychiatrist knows how your brain works and lets you know why things are happening and what part of your brain is doing it. This was nice to know and I began to feel better to know why things were happening to me. After my visits the chest pain I was having stopped. They don’t always pump you full of drugs and often avoid it at all cost.
If you cannot find help, e-mail me direct and I will try to help you. Tell your supervisor to e-mail me so I can help them as well.

For those in PHX try this if DOC does not help;

Tempe P.D. CISM Team, 480-350-8306

For Tucson try;

Northwest Fire CISM, 520-887-1010

According to my budy that is one of our Chaplains, there are professional groups that can help you for free. I will compile this and post it here. My friend will be wending me a brief on PTSD in our job soon.

We just had an officer from our complex here in tucson killed on his way to work. He was in uniform and all. There was nothing on the news about it at all. A tucson police officer got killed the same way and it was all over the news. He even got a flag at half mast. When I went through the academy they told us that azpost regulates us and certifies us. I know we are not peace officers but we work for a government criminal justice agency. Why is there now love or respect for us.

I was pretty upset even though I didnt know him. I talked to my unit sert person and they handed me info on joining the union. I called the number on the post and got refered to our insurance. What gives.

I am sorry that I am not as tough as the guys but I would like some one to talk to.

I think it is pretty sad that we are not recognized. I did see that he was recognized as a soldier recently returned from Iraq though. Plus that may have been a request from his family to not mention that he was an officer with the department. Then again that is normal not to be recognized for their duty. Look at the officer that was murdered here in PHX. I never saw that he was an officer.

As for our wonderful stress/recruiting tool; you need to report that through your chain of command. You may also report it to CIU in PHX as well. That needs to stop PERIOD! Our stress should not be played upon to recruit us for any employee organization, and such organization should be ashamed of its self. The stress member doing the recruiting should be ashamed of themselves.

The complex that I am at was bad about that. I cringed every time they hit my yard for an incident. Their whole purpose was to recruit, that was evident with the "union" shirts or hats they were wearing.

I am sorry for Tucsons loss, 15 years on the job, he had to be a fine officer. My suggestion, their are good chaplains on that complex that can help you. United health care has a good behavioral health connection there as well. Call the 1-800 number on the back of your insurance card and ask for behavioral health. If that does not help you, e-mail me direct to Mod613, link is connected.

I found this on a blog. You can e-mail this doctor direct. Good luck filing a report industrial injury and having it accepted.

Shameful Secret? Post-traumatic Symptoms in the Corrections Ranks

by Catarina Spinaris Tudor, Ph.D.




The following article appeared originally as the April 2010 Correctional Oasis newsletter,

Volume 7, Issue 4, of the Desert Waters foundation

It is reproduced here with permission of the author




The anecdotes presented below are used with permission. Some details are changed. If your own issues get triggered as a result of reading this, please see suggestions for help at the end of the article.


March 15, 2010 - When I began talking and counseling with corrections personnel in the year 2000, I noticed that several of them suffered from post-traumatic symptoms. Some even exhibited full-blown PTSD, often self-medicated with alcohol.

I also noticed that, in the proud corrections culture, staff abhorred to admit that they had been negatively affected by traumatic work experiences. Theyd often say, Im good. It was just an inmate. But their eyes had the 2,000-yard stare.
It didnt take me long to realize that staff feel ashamed about being affected by life-threatening or horrifically violent work-related circumstances. Due to lack of understanding of what psychological trauma does to peoples brain, soul and spirit, some corrections staff even call traumatized coworkers weak. Consequently, trauma sufferers may refuse treatment, sentencing themselves to long-term torment.
Psychological trauma occurs (a) when people are exposed to circumstances that threaten their life or physical integrity or the life or physical integrity of others; and (b) when they experience intense fear for their lives, helplessness because they cannot stop the traumatic event, or horror due to the gruesome scenes of injury or death they witness.
What does psychological trauma look like in the corrections ranks?

Here I offer some examples, by category of PTSD symptoms. For simplicitys sake Ill use the term C.O. and he. However, these examples are not limited to security staff or males. They are found among both genders and in all ranks and positions.



Physiological Arousal
•C.O. suffers from insomnia, so much so, that he has been consuming large amounts of alcohol to fall asleep. While sleeping, he thrashes about and grinds his teeth. He fights inmates in his nightmares to the point that he has elbowed and punched his wife as she slept next to him. She now sleeps in the spare bedroom. Sometimes he wakes up at 2:00 AM and cannot go back to sleep.
C.O. seeks help after becoming terrified that he may hurt family members without meaning to. His 4-year old daughter walked into her parents bedroom one night after having had a bad dream. As she tried to climb onto their bed, she bumped against him. C.O. became fully awake due to his wifes screaming, No! Its Susie! C.O. realized that, startled in his sleep, he had grabbed his daughter by the throat and was hauling off to punch her in the face. All that had happened in an instant, before he could become fully conscious. C.O. is almost always irritable. To release his anger ??to have an adrenaline dump, as he calls it ??he purposely provokes inmates by staring at them and by saying humiliating things to them in front of their homies. As he gets ready for work, C.O. begins to sweat profusely. Sometimes he has to change his undershirt and shirt before leaving the house, because dark stains start to show under his armpits and on his chest and back. He of course does not want inmates or staff to notice. The sweating, at times accompanied by a slight uncontrollable shaking and weak knees, worsens as he gets through the prison gate. He also sweats at night to the point that in the morning the mattress is soaked. C.O. has become prone to rages. After particularly hard shifts he drives home at 90mph in 65mph zones screaming at the top of his lungs. C.O. can see fear in his childrens eyes when he approaches them. His wife has pleaded with him to not give her the prison look anymore. She has told him that when he gets enraged at her, she is afraid he wants to kill her. Wherever C.O. goes, he believes people are watching and studying him. He hides behind dark sunglasses. To lessen his anxiety, he avoids public places as much as possible. His wife does all the shopping now. When he cannot avoid going to a public place, he feels vulnerable, in danger. To him everyone he comes across may be affiliated with a gang or be an inmate family member. At times he gets so worked up in a public venue that he goes to the bathroom and vomits. A C.O. is confronted by a road rage young guy who, at a stop sign, jumps out of his car and starts screaming at him. In a flash, the C.O. bolts out of his vehicle and lifts the guy off the ground. He raises him up over his head and body-slams him on the pavement. He then restrains him and talks to him, like he would with an inmate. Dude, its over now. Just relax and let go. C.O. realizes that he only remembers the beginning and the end of the event. Later on his wife fills him in. She witnessed the event while sitting petrified in their vehicle. C.O. worries greatly about his familys safety. He has installed several security devices in his home and has hidden weapons in key locations in his house. After an inmate escapes from a nearby prison, C.O. booby traps his back door and patrols his living room every night, fully armed, until the inmate is apprehended. C.O. becomes so afraid that its going to be his life or an inmates life, that he does the unthinkable. When he gets home, he takes a steak knife and practices putting it through his belt buckle. He even tapes the handle with black tape to make it blend with his belt. He then rehearses pulling it out rapidly. In his mind he practices slashing the inmates throat with one swift move as the inmate is coming at him. C.O. goes to work armed with the knife hidden under his jersey. C.O. is so locked onto the moment, what he believes is the battle for his life, that he does not consider consequences of his actions. He never stops to ask himself what may happen to him and his family if he indeed hurt the inmate. Having seen so much killing and wounding, he has lost his inhibition about causing serious injury or even death to someone. Thankfully, miraculously, the inmate pleads to have all animosities between the two of them dropped and asks to be put in segregation.


Intrusive Memories
•C.O. who was assaulted by an inmate has a flashback of the attack while driving. To avoid the inmate in his minds eye, he ducks and swerves, driving his vehicle into the ditch. As the flashback subsides, he sits in his car shaking until he can compose himself enough to drive to his destination.
C.O. has nightmares about the violent incident he witnessed. The nightmares are like a movie playing or a slide show of the event. The images remain unaltered, identical to those on the day of the incident. He wakes up with a start, sweating, heart racing. To avoid reliving the event in his sleep, he tries to stay awake as much as he can. When anyone mentions a gruesome inmate murder that C.O. witnessed, he sees the image in his minds eye, hears the gurgling last sounds of the stab victim and smells the blood all over again. The rest of the day he keeps having images of the murder pop up in his mind unbidden and causing him grave distress. At night he has 10 beers before he can go to sleep.


Avoidance & Emotional Numbing
•Since a life-threatening incident at work, C.O. has withdrawn from social activities in his community. He now feels safe only at home because he believes that he can control what happens there.
C.O. now sends his family members to get the mail from the mailbox in front of his house. He is uncomfortable getting the mail himself because you never know who may be driving by and see me standing there. When asked by family about how is doing at work, C.O.s response is typically Not much is going on or I dont want to talk about it. C.O. now avoids friends who do not work in corrections. He cannot relate to them, their interests and their ways of having fun. Instead, he spends hours playing computer and video games at home. C.O. is told by coworkers that in the heat of responding to a prolonged, particularly life-threatening incident, he did and said things that he does not remember doing or saying. C.O. avoids going to grocery stores or malls. He is afraid that some punk there may provoke him by staring at him or by saying something, and that hell lose self-control and get arrested for taking him down or worse. C.O.s young daughter comes to him crying after she falls and skins her knees while bicycling. While tending to her injury, he realizes that he cannot feel compassion for her like he used to. He remembers that he felt nothing while performing CPR on the dead body of an inmate who had committed suicide by hanging. C.O. feels like his life has lost its flavor and color. Even pleasant family activities that he used to enjoy now feel to him to be empty, meaningless. C.O. is haunted by the fear that he will die soon. When he goes to bed at night he wonders if hell be alive the next day. Heparticularly fears dying by the hand of an inmate. To defy these fears, he dares death by taking serious risks while riding his motorcycle on winding mountain roads. Fearing he may get attacked by inmates, C.O. trains himself on his own time to endure physical pain and duress in order to be able to fight in spite of pain or injury. He takes that to the extreme, putting his health and safety at risk.



These are some examples of post-traumatic symptoms experienced by correctional workers. Even if an employee suffers from only one symptom, home life and work performance are impacted, affecting ones overall quality of life. That is why the issue of post-traumatic stress needs to be addressed in corrections in depth, as is currently done in the military. And, as you probably know, several corrections employees are also war veterans, compounding the risk of post-traumatic stress and its dire consequences.
Administrators and supervisors, let your staff know that corrections workers do get affected by what they experience at work, and that these effects have nothing to do with weakness. Terror and horror leave hard-to-erase imprints on peoples brain, soul and spirit. These traumatic memories and associated reactions can pop up again and again, unexpectedly and out of control, unless they are processed and digested.

I implore those of you who relate to these symptomsto get appropriate help to get better and to prevent hurting yourself, your loved ones, those at work or innocent bystanders.

If youve been triggered by reading this, you have several good options. Contact Desert Waters at 719-784-4727 or desertwaters@desertwaters.com. Call our Corrections Ventline at 866-YOU-VENT . Write us at youvent@desertwaters.com. Seek professional help through your EAP, mental health specialists in posttraumatic stress treatment, or clergy.

Do not put it off any longer.

Pursue your healing!

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