Healthy Police - Healthy Policing: Addressing the Police Health and Wellness Crisis from a New Perspective

People in a trauma-induced crisis sometimes react to in ways that may appear threatening to a law enforcement officer. If an officer fails to recognize this as trauma-based or mental health-related behavior and does not safely de-escalate the situation he may instead rely on a force response; which only compounds the trauma to both parties. To date, the field of police reform has failed to focus on the full scope of the problem in developing solutions – the trauma experienced by police officers and its contribution to force-based community interactions. In a profession with the highest suicide rate of any other, untreated trauma within law enforcement affects not just officers, it extends to interactions with co-workers, family members, and the community. Officers living with untreated depression, trauma, anxiety, and PTSD[1] are four times more likely to self-report engaging in violence in the home and twice as likely to use excessive force on duty. Peer support programs are a critical lifeline for officers but can no longer be passive lifelines; the field has to address officer trauma, health, and wellness with the rigor of any other population health epidemic; or perhaps even greater, given that officer wellness is interconnected with community wellness, fair and just interactions, and that officers who understand, address, and receive quality healthcare for their exposure to trauma are more likely to recognize it in others and have fewer incidences of misconduct and excessive force within the communities they serve.