Officers are impacted by shootings, too

We’ve seen several news reports lately of what first responders to the San Bernardino shootings experienced when confronting active shooters last week. That’s made me think about those officers and what they must be going through one week later. This was certainly a different circumstance than most officer-involved shootings. No one has questioned that they were justified in shooting the suspects. And the subsequent media coverage that followed has been unusual, as well, exploring what the officers went through. Usually when an officer fatally shoots someone, we hear about the person who died. The media shows the deceased's family and the grief they are suffering. And they are suffering. They have lost a loved one. No matter the circumstances, that loss is painful. But beyond their identifying information and the debate over whether what they did was justified, we don’t usually hear much about the officers – about what they’re going through after such an incident. I realize many would say, “It can’t be that bad. They’re still alive.” Yes, but many of them are forever changed. Their careers and families can be ruined. Some even take their own lives.

All officers involved in fatal shootings on our department must see a psychologist afterward to determine what, if any, assistance they need in the short or long term to cope with the trauma. I spoke with our licensed psychologist recently, Kay White, and she said the impact these incidents have on officers runs the gamut. But one thing she said they all have in common is that not one officer has ever indicated he or she was pleased about or satisfied with having killed another person. As I mentioned in my last post, no officer wants to take the life of another human being. But sometimes, we must. Below is a video we released of an officer-involved shooting six years ago in a South Kansas City park. You’ll see that it’s from two different angles. The officers saw the man strike a vehicle and flee. He drove off-road, and this is what happened (warning - the linked video contains disturbing images):

Ms. White told me the impact a fatal shooting has on an officer depends on several factors, but large among them are community support and media portrayals. If the public tends to stand behind the officer, that officer tends to suffer less psychologically. But Ms. White said she’s seeing more and more officers who are worried about the litigation involved with protecting themselves and/or others, and what impact possible litigation could have on their family, the department and the community.

Even for officers against whom there has been no public outcry, being forced to shoot someone can be incredibly traumatic. One of our officers was brave enough to tell his story publicly, so others would know they were not alone. This officer was one of three who responded to a man calling 911 last year who said he “had a psychotic urge to kill people.” Officers did everything they could to diffuse the situation, but when the man came out of his house and pointed a gun at one of them, they had to protect themselves, and all of them fired. The suspect died. A subsequent search of the man’s house revealed five loaded long-guns with large amounts of ammunition on the kitchen table and a note indicating the man intended to have a protracted gun battle with police officers. Prosecutors cleared all the officers of any violations of law. Still, one of them couldn’t sleep. He replayed the incident over and over in his mind. He stopped leaving his house. His wife and children didn’t know what to do to help him. He is now receiving the treatment he needs and has played a significant role in implementing mental wellness initiatives on our department.

Indeed, our psychologist said one of the primary physical symptoms she sees among officers involved in shootings is the inability to sleep. They have bad dreams. They can’t stop thinking about and replaying the situation. Adrenaline is pumping in them all the time, so they can never rest. They become socially withdrawn, anxious, irritable and afraid to go to work. They feel like no one understands what they’re going through. They don’t feel like they can tell anyone about their depression because they think it would be unacceptable in a law enforcement environment. I have seen too many of our officers who were medically retired because of mental health issues following a traumatic event. Sometimes that’s not a shooting. Sometimes it’s working the case of a murdered child or something equally horrific. Our department is working to ensure these officers are taken care of and given the time they need to recover emotionally before we send them back out on the streets. 

And it’s not just the officers who are impacted. Their families suffer, too. Ms. White said many family members will look at the officer differently after the event, or want the officer to quit his or her job because it’s too dangerous. Others want to “fix” the officer so he or she is like the loved one they knew before.

Pressure on family members even affects loved ones of officers NOT involved in shootings. After the officer-involved shooting in Ferguson, Mo., last year, the teenage daughter of one of our officers wrote a private message to our department’s Facebook page saying she was being bullied at school because her father was a police officer. She said she knew the danger he put himself in daily, even to protect people like the bullies, and she just wanted us to know she was very proud of him. And the family members of one of our sergeants who just happens to be named Darrin Wilson (the same name as the officer in the Ferguson shooting, but spelled differently) received death threats. (KCPD’s Sgt. Darrin Wilson, for the record, just won a Gold Award for Valor from the Metro Chiefs and Sheriffs Association for working with another officer – both of whom were off duty at the time – to stop a man who robbed a bank in a downtown office tower in January, planted a live bomb in the bank and then carjacked several people. That man pleaded guilty to federal charges of bank robbery and carjacking on Nov. 19 and is awaiting sentencing.) 

As you can see, the effects on officers from officer-involved shootings are widespread and varied. For many, that split-second decision in which they did what they were trained to do to protect themselves and others is life-changing. They may not have lost their lives, but some will never be the same.

Send comments to kcpdchiefblog@kcpd.org. 

Officers need breaks, too

You surely have heard about a Texas police officer who has now resigned over the way a cell phone video depicted him treating a teenage girl too roughly at a pool party. If his lawyer is to be believed, there are previous incidents that contributed to his actions at the pool party. That same day, the officer purportedly had responded to a suicide in which a man shot himself in front of his children. He tried to console the man’s wife and then had to take pictures of the body. Also that day, the officer is reported to have talked down a teenage girl who threatened to commit suicide by jumping off a roof. His lawyer said, “He allowed his emotions to get the better of him.”

I don’t know whether that’s true, and if it is, I can’t say whether it exonerates anything he did. But if all that is true, it is a recipe for disaster. Expecting officers to go from traumatic call to traumatic call leaves them emotionally unhealthy and thus unable to perform as we expect them to: with professionalism and integrity.

Our officers see the worst society has to offer, and I’m making it a priority to give them time to decompress from that. I’ve heard about too many officers who have been involved in a critical incident, get three days off, and then they’re thrown back into work and left on their own to deal with everything. Then a few years later they get medically retired because they’re suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. That’s no way to treat your people. The Kansas City Missouri Police Department is focusing on whole-person wellness now more than ever before.

I want to make sure officers tap each other out if they’ve handled a stressful call, and I want our supervisors to encourage that.

One simple change we can make is ensuring our officers get time to eat. Too often they run from call to call to call for 10 hours straight. We’ve got to stop trying to be superhuman. We need nourishment and rest, not only for our health but also to serve our community well.

When I was an officer, we got in trouble for having too many police cars parked outside one restaurant. I'm now sharing with staff and other segments of the community my desire for officers to be and feel safe while taking breaks, so there will no longer be emphasis placed on the number of vehicles at any given location. Officers eating together provides them an excellent opportunity to decompress. They get the chance to talk about what they have experienced and what’s bothering them. They can give each other support. Of course call volume will continue to be considered. But increased ambush-type incidents on officers have emphasized the old adage that there is safety in numbers. Many of you reading this get the chance to go out to eat with your coworkers. Officers should be able to do the same. Or simply have the chance to sit down at the station and eat the meal they brought.

We have sometimes put public perception above officers’ well-being. We worried what people might think if they saw four or six officers eating together instead of responding to a burglary call. We’re doing things differently now. Officers’ health needs to be a priority.

Community needs will of course be paramount, and officers always will respond to emergencies in a timely fashion. (Our median response time to Priority 1 calls was about 7 minutes, 50 seconds in May.) But we need to do more public education about our call prioritization. Although we understand how scary a home invasion can be, if there are no suspects in the home or nearby, we often must prioritize other calls before that. This blog I did about call prioritization two years ago still holds true: Actual or potential harm to people always will be the first thing to which available officers respond. And if there are several of those calls, it could be hours until we get to the burglary call. We have finite resources, and we use data and intelligence to deploy them as effectively as possible.

And amid all those calls, our officers may need to grab a bite to eat. And I’m going to encourage them to do so.

Send comments to kcpdchiefblog@kcpd.org. 

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. 

We're making changes to enhance community trust and officers' well-being

Whenever unrest between police and residents breaks out in other cities, our local media often ask me to comment about it. I don’t do that because I don’t want to lose my focus on improving trust here in Kansas City.

That said, I certainly am not oblivious to what is happening with police in other places. I actually spent time in Ferguson, Mo., today to talk to residents there and learn about their concerns. Law enforcement is under more scrutiny than ever before. That’s why we’re constantly working to build relationships with other segments of our community, rethinking the way we approach volatile situations and ensuring that our members are well enough mentally and physically to protect and serve with professionalism and integrity.

If you read this blog regularly, you’ve learned about many of the ways the members of the Kansas City Missouri Police Department are partnering and building trust with other community members. (I say “other community members” because we live here, too, and also are part of this community.) The latest initiative we undertook to ensure trust was earlier this month on Election Day. I appointed one of our captains to be an election liaison. His job was to investigate any complaints of officers interfering with the election process (something that happened during an unfortunate chapter of KCPD history in the 1930s), such as any officers intimidating or interfering with voters. One anonymous caller informed us that he thought he saw police officers passing out campaign material. The election liaison went to the location and investigated, but he couldn’t find anything. That was the only reported incident. We will continue using the election liaison at all future elections.

We’re also trying to change the way our officers think about volatile situations that can lead to officer-involved shootings. At this year’s in-service training (required for all officers), we’re teaching a course about tactical disengagement and redeployment. The instructor of the course, Sergeant Ward Smith, describes the idea well: “I can remain in this same position, and I’ll have to use force. But if I use tactics and training and think my way through this, I can pull out of this location and avoid shooting it out with someone.” This is a change of mindset for many. Throughout the history of law enforcement, we’ve had the idea of “never back down, never retreat.” We are encouraging and training our officers to use critical thinking and problem solving to avoid a situation in which they have to shoot someone to protect themselves. This is easier said than done, because oftentimes situations unfold rapidly, leaving officers seconds or less to make decisions. Although we've stressed critical thinking and problem solving in the past, with Sergeant Smith's training, we’re emphasizing the idea that there may be other options. Ultimately, however, we’re only in control of our actions, not the actions of suspects. When a suspect endangers the life of an officer or innocent person, that officer has the legal right to protect himself or herself and others using lethal force.

Our officers are trained to administer first aid and call for an ambulance at the earliest and safest opportunity when lethal force is used. Officers on this department are taught that if they are forced to shoot someone, and if that person is no longer posing a threat to them or others, the officer should immediately render medical care. Their care has kept those they’ve shot alive while awaiting ambulances on too many occasions for me to recall.

Our officers now must qualify on their firearms twice a year. But it isn’t just about hitting a target. A big part of this semiannual firearms training is threat assessment. It’s just as important for officers to know when not to shoot as it is to know when to shoot. Officers are tested in a number of shoot/don’t-shoot scenarios and must pass them to remain in service.

But all the training in the world won’t help an officer who isn’t well enough to effectively do his or her duty. I don’t just mean physical wellness. I’m putting a big focus this year on the overall wellness of our department members. One of the major components of this is addressing secondary trauma. First responders like police officers (and civilian staff like dispatchers and crime scene investigators) see and hear the most disturbing and evil things our society has to offer. They regularly see murdered bodies, abused children, mangled victims of car crashes and more heinous things that are unthinkable to most other people. They deal with angry and grieving loved ones. They are placed in stressful and life-threatening situations.

Those things undoubtedly have a physical, emotional and mental impact on officers, as they would on any human being, and can lead to devastating consequences, both on and off the job. Officers can experience compassion fatigue. In an attempt to protect themselves psychologically, they can stop caring for others. Cumulative secondary trauma also can change the way officers’ brains and bodies respond to things. They become hyper-vigilant and act out of a fight, flight or freeze state. That’s not safe for them or the people with whom they interact. Off the clock, secondary trauma also can devastate officers’ personal and family relationships.

We’ve teamed with Truman Behavioral Health to create training to address this issue. The first course was offered to KCPD employees this month. By the completion of training, participants should be able to define and identify secondary trauma and risk factors; describe the mind-body connection to secondary trauma in work and life; complete a variety of assessment tools; and practice, reflect upon and develop coping skills to build resiliency for self and peer support. Several peer support initiatives are underway, as well. We already have several informal groups meeting whose members are coping with a variety of issues from work and home, and we plan to expand and formalize those. We’re often so busy helping others that we can forget we need help, too.

Some of our officers also are participating in the Save a Warrior program. The Kansas City Star did a great feature on it a few weeks ago. It seeks to help those who have been in the military and suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder. Our department has many military veterans.

These are just some of the many ways we’re trying to better care for our people so they can better care for their community. We’re sponsoring a peace rally at 10 a.m. this Saturday at 31st and Prospect. I want members of our department to come together with other members of the community to rally for peace in our city and our nation.

Send comments to kcpdchiefblog@kcpd.org