Originally Published in the International Association of Chiefs of Police Newsletter : June 1994
We’ve seen the pictures in our newspapers and on’ our television screens, a devastating hurricane destroys parts of Florida and the south, Floods inundate the midwest bringing indescribable misery and destruction.
War in Bosnia destroys homes, lives, families and a whole nation. The IRA continues its terrorist activities in Northern Ireland and Great Britain. Little kids are afraid to leave their crowded inner-city homes least they be hit with stray bullets. Their whole families live in never-ending fear.
These are all referred to as critical incidents, events that take place on or off the job, outside the realm of normal experience. Law.enforcement personnel have ranked eighth out of the top 10 stressors to be associated with violence, while two of the top 10 are associated with the loss of jobs.
Shootings
The most effective intervention is early intervention, giving the individual support, encouragement, reassurance, a place of safe retreat, opportunity to face and express feelings, and insights that help the person understand what happens, and why it influences us like it does.
“Of those officers involved in a shooting, 70 percent have left the department within five year’s, They. may be suspended fired or just cannot work up to full capacity and just resign.” (Jerry Vaugh, 1990)
Seventy percent who quit after killing someone do so because of a lack of proper support (Mary Simmons, NYC Police Dept.)
Law enforcement officers will criticize someone who got shot. They think he screwed up, and if any of us as fellow offices criticize someone, we deny that person the support he needs. Why do we do this? It’s because we think “I’m not going to get shot”, we really harm those individuals (James Horn, FBI, 1990).
Post-traumatic response to the threat of death includes the following:
An emotional experience of terror, several physiological responses, rapid heart rate, and respiration/reflex motor responses – fight, flight, or freeze – dissociated (out of body) experiences and distorted perceptual responses.
Perceptual disillusions are a wild experience: You have tunnel vision, you see everything in slow motion and that is wild. You wonder what is going on, you don’t even hear your partners yell, “Police, drop the gun”
In a slim little volume titled Horrific Trauma (Haworth Press 1993), Episcopal priest N. Duncan Sinclair published an overview and pastoral response to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which he described as “our common illness and a growingphenomenon in our line” According to a 1990 study, as many as 828,000 Vietnamveterans continue to be plagued byPTSD symptoms, and they are joined by law enforcement officers and victims of incest, rape, hostage situations, and other types of violence.
“The effects of the victimization are too often so removed in time from the events of the victimization itself that cause and effect are no longer seen,” Sinclair writes. But subsequent life stressors “open past wounds in ways that leave the victim vulnerable to severe pain without awareness of its cause”.
Providing support to survivors, lethality is not just from the wound. Shock alone can also kill. Thanks goodness people can be saved if they are immediately responded to.
I remember an FBI agent who was shot three times and critically injured Someone was immediately with him, touched him, rode along in the ambulance, talked continuously, and encouraged him with hope that he could survive. Although his pulse stopped, that agent is alive today, because of the actions of the agents that were with him.” (Horn, 1990).
In a survey of survivors of critical incidents; police psychologist Roger Solomon and special agent James Horn (1986) found an inverse relationship between the degree of support and presence of PTSD. A high rate of support brought about a lower incident of PTSD
“I can handle the adverse publicity and I can even handle the fact that this has created adverse situations in my family. But if I. don’t have the support of my department, I won’t make it” (Horn, 1990).
How can we help
The most effective intervention is early intervention, giving the individual support, encouragement, reassurance, a place of safe retreat, opportunity to face and express feelings, and insights that help the person understand what happens, and why it influences us like it does.
Victims need to find relationships where they are safe, accepted and understood. Sometimes, this is within a counseling relationship, in a supportive family setting, in a therapy group, in a caring church congregation, or in some combination of these.
Within a source and caring relationship, the PTSD victim needs to discuss the details of his experience, to recognize that the symptoms are relatively common and not evidence or psychopathology, to be able to share insecurities and secrets, to feel free to admit rage and insecurity, and to talk about spiritual losses and confusion that is almost always present
