What I Wish the Police and Public Knew About Trauma and Trust

While we like to think of our law enforcement officers as stoic, strong, and resilient, officers are not immune from the effects of trauma simply because they wear a uniform, enforce the law, or carry a badge and gun.

Precisely because of their profession, they experience both primary and secondary trauma at higher levels due to their proximity to death, illness, accidents, and crimes.[i]  While traumatic experiences are not always violent, they can and do elicit feelings of “fear, terror, helplessness, hopelessness, and despair” which are “often subjectively experienced as a threat to the person’s survival.”[ii]

In other words, the threat of survival in a traumatic situation goes both ways, between officer and citizen, no matter how it is portrayed in the media.

Intuitively, we understand that trust is critical for police officers’ ability to serve and protect their community. However, as a result of the trauma experienced by both officers and citizens, trust can be, and often is, compromised.

Successfully building trust between law enforcement and the communities they serve is dependent upon being hope-centered and trauma-informed. Implementing a hope-centered, trauma-informed approach begins with understanding “the extent of traumatic experiences in the human population and an understanding of the ways in which trauma responses affect people’s lives, capacities, and abilities to cope with life’s challenges.”[iii]

In other words, educating everyone and implementing trauma-informed and responsive policies and practices will exponentially help interactions between law enforcement officers and citizens.

Both law enforcement officers and citizens need to know it’s not weird or wrong to have strong emotions or the lingering effects of trauma as a result of life events.

Unfortunately, in some police cultures, officers may wrongly see themselves as weak or abnormal if they seek professional help for the trauma they experience. This culture can lead officers to fear they will be disciplined or dismissed for how they experience or respond to trauma. However, without help officers may begin responding to stress with apathy, absenteeism, and (substance) abuse.[iv]

I want all police officers to know that repeated exposure to stress (i.e., trauma) can impact a person’s behavior, emotions, and cognitive functioning.  Many of the people officers seek to help are fully enveloped in their own long-term effects of the trauma. Combine their trauma with an officer’s trauma and the potential for escalation is amplified.

Consequently, both officers and citizens can exhibit symptoms of “dissociation, diminished problem-solving abilities, inaccurate memory, blunted emotional responses, and depersonalization.” Additional symptoms include “burnout, reduced awareness, hyper-vigilance, anxiety, increased blood pressure, shallow breathing, and sleeping problems.”[v]

Unfortunately, the results of trauma and lack of trust don’t stop when an officer returns from the street and walks into the police station. National surveys and research among law enforcement officers have demonstrated that “lack of trust among co-workers was positively correlated with both burnout and physical stress, and negatively correlated with health.”[vi]

In other words, police officers are caught in the middle between what they experience on the street and what they experience in the precinct.

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