I’ve never been able to tell what kind of day my husband has had when he arrives home from working as a police officer.  His demeanor never changes whether his day has been chaotic or boring, or if he’s worked on patrol or as a detective. He’s been an officer for over twenty-five years, and he’s detached enough to seamlessly move back into regular life once his workday is complete.

One day when I asked him how his day went, instead of his usual “fine,” he mentioned that he had to investigate a death where the scene was gruesome because the weapon was a rifle. The evening carried on as normal—we hung out, he ate dinner, there was nothing amiss. 

But about an hour after he went to bed he woke up after having a nightmare about being attacked. He was casual about it and a bit annoyed at having his sleep interrupted, but I recognized it for what it was: the violent crime scene had disrupted his nervous system, and this manifested in a nightmare. Although he hadn’t been in outward distress, his brain was jumbled.

I would be hysterical if I walked into a death-by-rifle scene. The ambulance would come for the body, but they would have to take me first. I imagine most people would have a significant reaction to witnessing this level of brutality, and they would be met with sympathy and understanding. We aren’t meant to see these things.

My husband has witnessed so much death in his years as an officer, and his response was the same as it was every other time: he went back to work the next day and we didn’t talk about it again.  When he read this article, he couldn’t even remember what incident I was referring to even though it was a recent event.  What is lauded as admirable stoicism in the face of violence is actually deeply troubling. 

I’m a therapist in a children’s psychiatric hospital and every day I witness the effects that exposure to constant threat, violence and abuse have on bodies and brains.  When we are repeatedly placed in stressful situations, we start to perceive threats where there aren’t any.  This hypervigilance results in a host of behavioral and interpersonal issues but also impacts a person’s worldview. The world becomes a dangerous place and this undoubtedly—and understandably—can lead to harmful and aggressive responses.

We’re likely to respond with grace and compassion when we hear about the struggles someone has gone through and how this adversely affects the way they show up in the world. But when we talk about the police and how they’ve hurt us, often missing from the conversation is a recognition of how the police themselves are impacted by their job. We complain about the police (and rightly so sometimes) and want them to be accountable, but how often do we truly listen to their experience?

Society recognizes the effects of toxic stress as a bad thing we don’t want, but the singular goal of law enforcement is to be in a constant state of high alert. We don’t want officers to get out of the fight-flight-or-freeze response. On the contrary, we’re paying them to be in it.  When called, we want them to choose to fight instead of taking flight or freezing, and if their brain innately chooses something besides fighting, we ridicule them for cowardice. We want them to be hypervigilant with their head on a swivel because that’s how they keep us safe. 

When we’re in danger we need them to be ready to contend with whatever is hurting us.  At a moment’s notice we want them to be ready to break up fights, intervene in domestic violence, provide lifesaving CPR, administer Narcan to an overdosed addict, fight an attacker, disarm a homicidal suspect, talk down a suicidal individual. Over and over and over again.  Day after day after day.

The trauma brain tricks a person into thinking that danger is lurking around every corner when it’s not.  The problem when you’re a cop is that danger actually is lurking around every corner because the entire point of your job is to run towards danger.  The thing alerting a cop to threat isn’t a confused amygdala.  It’s a dispatch operator’s voice blaring through the radio strapped to their shoulder.

We talk about a lot of things when the police behave badly. We talk about racism and poverty, as we should. We talk about accountability and solutions, as we should. But we don’t talk enough about the mental health of officers and how toxic stress impacts service delivery, and we should. It’s hard to make rational decisions when we’re amped up. I see this in action every day at the psychiatric hospital, and we likely experience it ourselves in our daily lives.  We just aren’t making the best choices when we’re fired up or under threat. 

You might think I’m sticking up for officers only because I’m married to one, but I’m not.  In 2013, I was investigated by the police because a child I provided care for was discovered to have a spiral fracture in her arm. I was nearly arrested because of the lead detective’s incompetence and unethical behavior, and being on the wrong side of the law gave me a deeper understanding of those who suffer at the hands of law enforcement. A cop temporarily destroyed my life, but I recognize that calling for heads to roll usually gets us nowhere.

My investigation led to a strong distrust of the police in general, but it also led to a deep desire to be fair. I know what it feels like to be treated unfairly, to have my words twisted and taken out of context, and to have value judgments made about my behavior that are not an accurate representation of my experience. I don’t want to do that to anyone—not even to people who share the same profession as the person who did it to me.

We shouldn’t make excuses for the police, or suggest that exposure to trauma and toxic stress is responsible for every bad action taken by an officer, or ignore all the myriad factors that contribute to things going off the rails. At the same time, we can’t ignore officers’ experiences that contribute to the messes we find ourselves in. That is unfair, and also unproductive.

My husband is always quick to point out that he works in a mid-size department in the Midwest and that officers in larger departments contend with far worse than him. While I agree that departments in cities like Chicago experience more violence than in other districts, I would argue that the nature of the job is the same no matter where you work.

While every day for every officer isn’t filled with murders, each day has a negative focus because the job is negative. We call the police when we are unable to solve our problems on our own, which means the police are always called for bad things. The constant drip drip drip of unrelenting daily negativity is impactful because police officers are human just like the rest of us. 

Even if there isn’t a murder scene, there’s child sexual abuse interviews, rape interviews, unpredictable addicts, domestic arguments, unmedicated psychiatric patients that need transportation to the hospital, suicidal individuals who have to be screened.  Officers go from one thing to the next, constantly changing gears to offer whatever the situation dictates. 

And beyond the calls, a lot of people don’t really like law enforcement all that much. They are contending with disrespect and anger that is sometimes misplaced, but other times not. No matter who we are and what job we hold, constant negativity eats away at us. We become cynical, short-tempered, negative, hopeless. Dysfunction makes us dysfunctional.

So what should be done about this?  I’ll be honest and say I really don’t know.  Children enter our psychiatric hospital because their issues have manifested in behaviors that have become intolerable. There are two things I say repeatedly in treatment that are relevant here. First, we will not change the behavior by focusing on the behavior itself. We will fix the behavior by addressing trauma and calming the nervous system, and then the behaviors will naturally decrease. 

Second, I can address trauma and give coping skills, but not much will change if the child goes back into the same chaotic environment. An officer’s job will never stop being chaotic.  How do you solve a problem when the problem is inherent to the profession itself?

Police departments have gotten better at mental health initiatives and encouraging self-care, including offering therapy and debriefing after intense calls. This is good, but I worry about how effective it can be. I know how important environment is not only because I’m a therapist, but also because I’ve lived with PTSD since I was thirteen years old.  I have developed a strict self-care routine out of necessity, but no amount of prayer, exercise and meditation is going to help me if I keep showing up in an abusive environment every day. 

An argument against what I’m saying might be that police officers choose to work in this field. And of course they do, but this doesn’t mean that how the job impacts them shouldn’t matter. Saying, “Well, you chose this” is invalidating, especially when you consider that we have to have police officers in a functioning society. Also, we should be concerned about losing high-quality officers (or prospective officers) because the job is thankless and full of so much ridicule that nobody wants to do it.

I work with clients on personal accountability when their history has resulted in intolerable behaviors, but I don’t call them names and I never shame them. You don’t have to do any of that to get the results you’re after. And I don’t have any desire to do it, not only because it would get me nowhere fast, but most importantly because I sincerely do not believe they are bad.  I recognize the humanity in their situation and how they got there, and I want to work alongside them to help them function better.

Why can’t we try the same approach with police officers? You don’t have to justify someone’s actions to have broader conversations about why they did what they did. Not every law enforcement issue boils down to a dysregulated nervous system and a trauma response, but we can’t ignore its impact completely.  We’re not going to get very far in fixing the problem without a holistic understanding of how we got here in the first place.

Andrea’s book Renegade Agency: A Memoir of a Family in Crisis and the Systems Meant to Protect Us is available for purchase here.