Tag Search Result: Handling Stress

You can expect to be put through the ringer and served up some humble pie, but a police department is not a college fraternity.

Ours is the best job in the world. However, no place in these oaths does it say anything about how we take care of ourselves while we protect and serve. The new recruit is not always prepared for a culture that does not easily lend itself to teaching how to protect oneself from the damaging effects of stress.

One of the most stressful episodes an officer can face during his or her career is making the decision to shoot and dealing with the aftermath. Officer-involved shootings spawn a variety of questions, and many of them may be unanswerable.

Many police psychologists believe that if you don’t feel bad, something is wrong with you.

Police officers have one of the world’s toughest jobs. In fact, our job is also rated as one of the world’s most stressful. Heart attacks, alcohol abuse, and other results of long-term stress run rampant through every police department nationwide.

As an American law enforcement professional, you are a special individual who has followed a higher calling, voluntarily defending the lives and property of others. You have set yourselves apart as the true warriors of our modern society.

Ah, the first month of the new year. It’s a month of parties, football, snow or snowbirds (depending on where you live), and just generally good feelings. Then the winter wears on. Football ends for nearly everybody’s team; ice appears on the roadways at the worst time (who hasn’t had the thrill of that tactical 360-degree spin en route to a call); and all those resolutions you made suddenly become ancient history.

Everything has just gone to hell since the internal affairs investigation. And nothing makes sense anymore. So John takes out his off-duty piece, an old wheel gun. He sits down on the bed, puts one in the cylinder, snaps it shut, and stares down at the blued metal machinery in his hand. The world around him is very quiet as he starts to raise the weapon to his head.

Officers of the Hempstead force say they have learned to accept the glares of hate. What they find more unsettling is that they are being surveiled.

Holidays can be a trying period for many, but particularly for the police officer. Sandwiched between familial obligations and departmental expectations, pulled from one preventable call to the next, you find your emotions stretched to the point where you'd like nothing better than to find some nice, dank chimney to climb into and hide.