KCPD officers are taking advantage of Save a Warrior program

I've put a big emphasis this year on the overall wellness of our department members. I wrote about it on this blog last month, and now I want to highlight one of the programs I mentioned, Save a Warrior. Six KCPD members now have graduated from it, and it's featured in this month's issue of our Department's newsletter, the Informant. I've pasted the text of the article below, and I look forward to seeing how this program can help more of our members.


Officer Adam Baker was unprepared for what would happen after he was in a fatal officer-involved shooting.

With all his Marine and KCPD training, he thought everything would be fine. But then came the night terrors. Then no sleep for four days at a time, and anxiety that rendered him unable to leave his house except for appointments with the Department psychologist. One medication after another. A wife who was terrified and didn’t know what to do to help him.

“It made me really feel like I’m broken, and I can’t get fixed,” Officer Baker said.

Then one of the Department’s psychologists, Kay White, suggested Baker try the Save a Warrior program. After launching in Malibu, Calif., it came to Kansas City last fall. It is “an innovative, evidence-based program that provides a powerful healing experience for active-duty military, veterans and first responders who are suffering from post-traumatic stress,” according to the organization’s web site. The site states 22 “warriors” commit suicide every day in the United States.

Adam Magers, the project director of Kansas City’s Save a Warrior program, attended the one in Malibu and thought it was so powerful and life-changing that he wanted to make Kansas City the organization’s second location. The first K.C. cohort, or 5-day course, took place in fall 2014.

Magers said Save a Warrior’s founder, Jake Clark, was a military veteran but also had served in the FBI, U.S. Secret Service and at the L.A. Police Department.

“He had just as much drama from law enforcement as he did from his time in the military, and it took him 13 years to overcome it,” Magers said. “… If there’s anyone who needs this program, it’s police officers.”

Los Angeles Police officers have found great success in the program, so when it started here, Magers wanted to see if Kansas City Police would be interested. An architect working on the Headquarters renovation project, Dale Duncan, runs the Spencer Duncan Make it Count Foundation in honor of his son, who died when his helicopter was shot down in Afghanistan. The Foundation supports organizations that help veterans, including Save a Warrior. He introduced Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) Commander Captain Darren Ivey to the program. Then he, Ivey and Magers sat down with Chief Darryl Forté, who agreed it would be an excellent opportunity for officers experiencing post-traumatic stress. The Spencer Duncan Foundation and Kansas City Royals Charities have so far paid for KCPD members to attend. It costs about $2,500 per participant for the cohort.

Officer Baker said it’s not just for people like him who are involved in critical incidents. It’s also for officers who experience hardship day after day and never get to decompress.

“After you have to see an abused or dead baby during the day, how are you supposed to act when you go home to your own kids at night?” he asked. “You have to push that stuff down. It builds up.”

Captain Ivey presented about Save a Warrior at a commanders’ meeting in April. He told the commanders to let him know if they knew of anyone who could benefit from the program.

“I was still presenting, and my phone started blowing up with e-mails,” Captain Ivey said. “They said stuff like, ‘This person would be perfect,’ and ‘I’d like to volunteer.’”

He said he was surprised by the outpouring from his fellow officers because many view police as macho, stodgy and unconcerned about emotional well-being.

“It seems we’ve evolved,” he said. “Overall wellness is really becoming part of our culture now.”

Officer Baker was part of the first group of three KCPD officers to go through Save a Warrior. Another three graduated as part of the 13-person cohort on May 8. Baker said the program focuses on how warriors throughout history have been able to overcome trauma, and it offers things like meditation and peer support as tools to do so. The majority of people who come to Save a Warrior are suicidal, according to the organization’s web site. Baker said he hadn’t reached that point yet, but he was in enough pain to know he needed something quickly.

“It literally is like looking in a mirror when you go there,” he said. “You really understand that all of us are going through the exact same problems.”

Officer Baker said that thanks to the program, he is healing and has regained his sense of self-worth. He went back as a “shepherd” with the May cohort, to serve as support and share his experiences.

For more information or to donate to the program, go to www.saveawarrior.org. 

Remarks from 2015 Police Memorial Service

We conducted our annual Memorial Service yesterday to remember the 119 officers who have died in service to our city since 1881. It was part of National Police Week activities - a week dedicated to fallen officers across the country. Below are my remarks from yesterday:

Again, thank you for coming to the 2015 Kansas City Missouri Police Department Memorial Service. I’m pleased to be back here in front of our newly renovated Headquarters building. If you’d been here before the renovations, you’ll notice that our memorial statue now is in a much more prominent and accessible place. It’s now at ground level, so everyone who passes by can read the 119 names inscribed there. And the original KCPD memorial is just to the south, also now at ground level so the public can read and appreciate the sacrifices made by the members of this department over the last 140 years.

In many ways, our officers are safer now than they were, say, in the 1920s, when three or more were killed annually. That was the deadliest decade for our department. We now have things like bullet-resistant vests and advanced training, which I’ll talk more about in a bit.

Last year, we started a tradition of having surviving family members of our fallen officers share their experiences. I’d now like to ask Trudy Meyers to come speak. Her husband, KCPD Officer Tom Meyers, had 25 years of service in law enforcement when he was struck and killed by a drunk driver on January 14, 1998. I’d like to invite her to tell her story now.

-Remarks by Trudy Meyers -

Thank you, Mrs. Meyers, for sharing your experiences. Nothing I can say can change what happened or ease the sting of your loss.

Law enforcement remains a dangerous profession, and recent incidents of civil unrest across the nation have made it even more so. Police are under more scrutiny than ever before, and some people are willing to commit violent acts against officers. After several years of decline, American law enforcement officer deaths increased by 24 percent in 2014, according to the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund. A total of 126 officers were killed in the line of duty last year. Firearm-related deaths spiked by 56 percent, accounting for 50 officer deaths last year. And perhaps most frightening, ambush was the leading cause of felonious deaths against officers.

But I can assure you we are doing everything we can so no other Kansas City Missouri Police Officer’s family has to endure what the Meyers family did. There are so many people behind the scenes who work to protect our personnel out on the street, and I wanted to recognize some of them today. The lives of our officers indirectly rest in their hands, and they get little recognition for that.

To start with, I’d like to recognize our training staff at the Academy. They lay the foundation for all officer safety. Our officers know almost everything they know about how to handle situations with professionalism and caution because of our trainers. The Academy staff provides recruits with nearly eight months of training in everything from firearms to legal studies to defensive tactics to first aid. They conduct research into best practices and always are updating their approaches. At this service last year, I spoke about the Below 100 training two of our drivers’ training instructors developed for KCPD. It now is required for all sworn personnel. The goal of this training is to reduce officer fatalities nationwide to fewer than 100 each year. This is just one example of the innovative work our trainers do. They also provide annual training to officers to keep their knowledge, skills and abilities in top form. When officers must make split-second, life-and-death decisions, they must rely on their training. Surely you’ve heard someone say, “I just went back to my training.” The work our Academy staff members are doing provides that critical training, and it has served KCPD officers very well. 

Once they’re out on the street, the lifeline of every officer is the dispatcher. Calltakers and dispatchers work together to provide officers with the information they need to be prepared to enter any situation. They keep track of where the officers are so they can provide whatever resources the officers need, from back-up to an ambulance. They are expert multi-taskers, and our officers rely on them for their safety.

Of course the officers could never talk to a dispatcher if they didn’t have their radios and other communication equipment. The folks in our Communication Support Unit install and maintain this technology. This equipment is absolutely mandatory for police to do their job and do it safely. And this isn’t the equipment we used when I came on the department 29 years ago. More than $20,000 in equipment goes onto every patrol car, including video cameras and recorders, in-car computers, E-ticket printers, LED light bars and so much more. Even the radios are no longer just radios. They’re all small computers. The officers know if anything goes wrong with any of those pieces of equipment, they can’t do their job safely. They also know they can count on the staff of the Communication Support Unit to get it up and running again as quickly as possible, even though that unit maintains radio equipment for the entire city’s fleet of vehicles.

And the cars that those officers drive are maintained by the Fleet Operations Unit. A properly functioning vehicle is essential for keeping officers safe and serving our residents. Forty-nine officers died last year in traffic crashes nationwide. Despite the amount of miles and rough driving our cars endure, Fleet Operations personnel make sure they’re running as well as possible.

The Supply Unit ensures every officer is properly equipped with all the tools they need to do their job and keep them safe, from ballistic shields to bullet-resistant vests.

There are other less obvious positions supporting officer safety. Much of the animosity toward police in the past year has been driven not by people’s actual experiences with police, but what they saw in the news and social media. Our Media Unit works constantly to build trust and support for our officers in the community. Just take a look at the department’s social media pages some time and see the tens of thousands of people on them who support the KCPD. There always will be people who want to harm us simply because we are police officers. But the Media Unit works hard to create a positive perception of police and create champions for our officers in Kansas City. Ultimately, that enhances officer safety.

I just wanted to take this opportunity to thank all the people who help prevent police fatalities here but get very little public credit for doing so. I could go on and on about these behind-the-scenes folks, from the Benefits Section to the Fiscal Division. The officers know how valuable they are, but rarely does anyone at a podium say so. I’m glad I got to do so today.

I also want to thank Trudy Meyers for her touching remarks about the loss of her husband. And to her and all the survivors here today, words cannot express our sorrow at your loved one’s sacrifice in service to their community. We offer you our continuous support. We also want you to know there are hundreds of people here working to ensure no other KCPD officer is killed in the line of duty. I mentioned many of those groups today. In addition to thanking an officer for their service when you see one, I’d encourage everyone here to thank our other staff, as well.