Brownwood Police Department’s Assistant Chief James Fuller recently attended a 3-day Critical Incident Stress Management class in Plano, Texas in order to learn more about how the police department can help their employees who suffer a traumatic incident or loss.
The reason for taking the class, Fuller stated, was to provide more resources to those suffering through a traumatically stressful event such as and death, divorce, injury/illness, or other painful experiences and situations. The workshop was designed to provide assistance in individual and small group settings, teaching attendees tips on how to get victims of traumatic stress to open up.
“National Police Week (May, 13-19) is a great time to remember and honor fallen officers and also to realize that law enforcement officers are human—they have families, hobbies they enjoy and at the same time they are human and feel pain and hurt like everyone else,” said Fuller. “The problem is we have a job to do while we are experiencing the trauma. We are the ones that run to danger, feeling the same trauma as the public that is experiencing it, but it’s our duty and responsibility to perform during problems.”
Law enforcement officers must hold themselves emotionally “together” during an incident and are forced to react to it later, according to Fuller. He stated that it is important to be reminded that we all need to understand the dangers of law enforcement.
He stated that he had the chance, through the class, to learn not to try to cure/relieve a mental problem, but to provide guidance in dealing with mental trauma, something that has been lacking in the Brownwood Police Department for many years.Fuller stated that there is a stigma that all police officers are supposed to deal with problems by “bottling it up.” For this reason, there are far too many police suicides.
“There are national studies of police suicide that point to the fact that there is still a problem when you keep it bottled up and don’t seek assistance. It can become overwhelming,” said Fuller.
As a patrol officer in 2005, Fuller himself experienced a very critically stressful incident when responding to a domestic disturbance on Bowie Circle in Brownwood. It was May 27th, a beautiful day, when multiple officers were called to the scene which ended with the male shooting and killing his wife. The shooter also died in the incident.
Several officers, including Fuller, came face-to-face with the male, who in front of Fuller, shot his wife and then tried to shoot his step-daughter. He looked straight at Fuller and then retreated inside the house. After that, multiple officers entered the house and were involved in a shootout. This near-death incident severely impacted Fuller and some of the other officers. In fact, one still to this day has nightmares about the incident.
At the time of the Bowie Circle homicide, there was no counseling offered, and Fuller even had to complete his report of the incident before he went home. At that time, officers had to seek out and pay for their own counseling. The incident that day affected more people than just family members of the victims. There were dispatchers that worked through the event, not knowing if the officers were okay and hearing the violence happen first hand. Even those employees not on scene were impacted, such as evidence clerks and secretaries who have to see graphic items and photographs from the event. Even family members of the employees can suffer and often relationships can be affected from traumatic stress, explained Fuller. He also pointed out that people such as employees of cleaning services can also suffer this critical stress, such as those at Draco’s Janitorial who often help clean up crime scenes. Other emergency responders such as firefighters and EMS are also affected by critical stress during their work.
After the Bowie Circle shooting, some of the officers and a dispatcher got together to discuss and vent their feelings from that day. It was good for them, according to Fuller who stated bad things can happen such as suicide and divorce without the proper care.
One of the best things to do after a traumatic incident is to find a like-minded person to listen, provide support to the affected person, to let them vent and release trauma; someone who can give a different perspective, said Fuller.
“Trauma is something you just can’t understand how you will react until it happens,” said Fuller. “It’s important to have people looking after you—a support group.”
The goal of critical stress management is to figure out how to help the employee/family member, show them that people care and want them to come out of the situation okay.
During a more recent event, when a 4-year-old girl was accidentally shot in her home and died, officers experienced another critical stress incident. The department held a debriefing in order to help officers talk out their emotions in a small group setting; however, this effort was interrupted by two more critical stress incidents, a stabbing and suicide by hanging, which the investigators and officers had to “pull themselves together” and handle.
Fuller stated that law enforcement is a very difficult and emotional job that most are called to it in order to help the public.
“Death and sexual assaults are viewed by law enforcement every day. Dispatchers, with every call that comes in, never know what is coming in until they pick it up,” explained Fuller. “If you think about it, in this profession at every level, you gain experience but we don’t have that level of training in coping with that experience.”
To honor National Police Week, the public is asked to take time and thank law enforcement officers for their service, often putting themselves in harm’s way physically, mentally and emotionally to protect the public.
