By Barbara A. Schwartz
What can the law enforcement profession do to prevent what happened in Memphis from happening again?
The Memphis officers not only hurt themselves, screwed their own careers and futures, but they hurt the people they love and cherish the most-—their families—-spouses, parents, siblings, and children. Children who will have to live—-forever-—with the sins of their fathers.
They indelibly scarred the profession. And the profession cannot take another hit.
The answers have to come from the officers and agencies. Otherwise, the future of the profession is left in the hands of the activists who want to defund law enforcement and the politicians who want to reform law enforcement. Officers must take responsibility and create change and evolution before others outside the profession, who have never done the job, do that for law enforcement.
We might not like their solutions.
Morale has to be healed before the bond with the community can be mended.
Jim Glennon, in his January 30th article “The Memphis Police, Tyre Nichols Incident: Raw Opinions,” pointed out that morale is at an all-time low. That officers have lost confidence in their command staffs. That officers fear not being supported by their command staffs more than getting injured or killed on the job.
That needs to change.
Command staffs and supervisors need to fix the low morale issues in their departments and pledge to support officers when they do their jobs per policy, law, and procedure.
Officers need to be able to count on their first-line supervisors to be there for them, to supervise, and provide guidance.
No other profession scrutinizes employees, requires body worn cameras, like policing. Because of that intense scrutiny, law enforcement leadership must take better care of its officers.
The profession needs to mandate standards of care for officers and provide trauma-centered training to teach officers how to heal what the job injures in them. Educate officers about why they react as they do to repeated exposure to evil and trauma.
The profession needs to give officers the skills to decompress after a shift or horrific call in a healthy manner, shed their anger, and manage their traumatic stress.
That includes the right to declare a timeout after witnessing a horrendous or violent crime scene or being exposed to a deadly threat before being sent to another call.
We need to mandate peer support teams that are actively reaching out to officers and not wait for the officer to take the first step in asking for help.
Law enforcement leaders must make safeguarding officers’ physical and emotional safety a priority.
High morale parlays into increased productivity.
Law enforcement cannot afford to lower hiring standards.
Let’s not succumb to the recruitment crisis by lowering hiring standards.
Agencies owe it to the communities they protect and serve to keep standards high and improve how applicants are vetted. Officers must demand excellence and competency within their ranks.
Agencies need to increase training in decision-making and problem-solving under stress. Officers need to understand the neuroscience of how their brain functions and understand why their ability to make sound decisions can be sidetracked by the body’s natural, hormonal response to a threat.
Understand why adrenaline and cortisol can make you stupid and a bad witness. Train officers to recognize when their sympathetic nervous system, the flight, fight, or freeze response, has caused them to move from assertiveness to aggressiveness; and how to compensate and regulate that response.
This training must begin in the academy so cadets who can’t function and perform soundly under stress can be weeded out.
Agencies need to employ technology such as virtual reality and offer more hands-on, scenario-based courses to provide officers with the best training and decision-making skills limited budgets can buy.
Transparency has to go both ways.
Everyone is calling for transparency. That transparency has to be a two-way street.
Departments are quick to initiate a press conference when an officer has done something wrong.
For full and true transparency, departments need to conduct press conferences when an officer has done a heroic act. Or, when an officer’s actions result in the reduction of crime, a crime being solved, or improves the police/community relationship.
Law enforcement needs to conduct regular training for journalists, activists, politicians, academia, lawyers, and community leaders that exposes them to realistic use of force and decision-making scenarios. Invite civilians on ride-alongs. Provide critics with insight into what it’s really like out there for our officers. Most civilians who have gone through such training state that their eyes were opened and their opinions changed.
If the only videos the public sees regarding police officers are ones that portray officers as bullies, hoodlums, cowards, and killers, then we have typified all officers as such. Law enforcement needs to release videos that portray officers as honorable peacekeepers and guardians of public safety.
True transparency: 99.9% of officers police ethically, honorably, lawfully, safely, and humanely.
We need to remind the anti-police critics, the news media, and the community of that.
Reality speaks for itself.
Reality is that there will always be a few bad cops in the ranks.
The question is what are the good cops going to do about them?
Reality is that if you are killed in the line of duty, the Vice President of the United States isn’t going to attend your services, sit with your family, and speak about your bravery.
Reality is that an officer’s first goal when showing up for work is making it home alive and well. We need to add another caveat to that goal: making it home without being indicted or jailed.
Where the profession goes from here is up to YOU—every officer in every department at every level.
Will you intervene? Will you be the solution? Will you put duty before loyalty?
The future of this noble profession is in your hands.
Copyright©2023 Barbara A. Schwartz All Rights Reserved.
No part of this article may be reproduced in any manner without the expressed written consent of the author.
About the author
Barbara A. Schwartz has dedicated her life to supporting the brave officers of law enforcement. She is certified in first responder peer support. She maintains specializations in grief after trauma, injured officer support, suicide prevention, and traumatic stress reactions and injuries.
She served as a police explorer scout and reserve officer in her hometown working patrol and investigations.
She has volunteered for the Houston Police Officers’ Union for 30 years, helping establish their peer support team and writing for their newspaper. She is a veteran of thousands of hours of police training and ride-alongs.
She maintains memberships in the National Tactical Officers Association (NTOA) and the International Law Enforcement Educators and Training Association (ILEETA).
She has been associated with Calibre Press since 1999 and writes regularly for Newsline.
Culture is what drives the officers response in all interactions. Supervisors create that Culture, from the Chief down, I saw it in every Change of command (I served under 5 Chiefs during my 20 years)
I agree with most of your points but the practicality of your two way transparency isn’t real. Your error is in your premise of two way transparency, you talk about heralding the good accomplishments is 100% correct but I can tell you with 40 years on the job, as a city police Chief, a county Sheriff, and now chief of small borough police depart you missed the reality. The fact is that the press, or all media, care little about police officers’ good deeds. The press wants print inches, I know an old adage, but still true. A good cop is not news, there is an societal expectancy for all to be good cops, but a bad one keeps peoples interest and attention and front page display. This has been borne out by my 4 decades of service. When a police officer is accused of improper use of force, front page, and once cleared through a full and transparent IA, no print or if you guilt the media maybe a blurb on page 20 in the local section.
The first time I heard a department head declare that he was very big on loyalty, I thought of loyalty as a positive quality. In the next few months I observed his concept of loyalty, and came to the realization that every criminal organization that has ever existed has also been big on loyalty. Over the years I have heard two other department heads of the same agency make that same declaration. I’m not sure where they got that statement from, but it hasn’t yet been backed up with the ethics required to keep it a positive quality.
If only command staffs would act on even some of these suggestions.
Law enforcement officers WANT to do a good job. They love the job, and begin to become disenchanted when their efforts are met with “hand-slapping” and other discouraging behaviors from those in command for simply doing their job. Offering realistic scenarios as suggested in the article is a terrific way to get the community involved and to raise their level of awareness of how difficult this job can be.
I’ve been retired LEO for a few years now and am dismayed at how law enforcement is being portrayed, especially by the media. I am not sure, as much as I loved my job/occupation if, under current circumstances, I would do it again.
Thank you Barbara Schwartz for pointing these things out. Maybe someone in law enforcement is listening
What she is saying is, of course, true. However, she is wasting her time. Law enforcement trainers have tried for over fifty years to get the type of training needed. All of the care for officers that is suggested requires money. But, most of all, it requires leaders who care. It requires a little effort from law enforcement leaders. Unfortunately, like our regular politicians, police leaders neither care nor want to put out any effort. Like most politicians, most police leaders are sociopaths who care only about themselves and the position they hold. Across the country, legislatures and the media are advancing ridiculous and harmful legislation. Officers are being wrongfully prosecuted based upon unrealistic armchair quarterbacking like the Supreme Court discouraged in Graham vs Connor. The real proof that there is no police leadership with integrity is the fact that almost no police leader is standing up and challenging the present trend. There is no one to present the officers’ viewpoint about the absurdity and the danger it presents to the public and the officers. The courts and the prosecutors are onboard with the craziness. There can be no real transparency. The reason is that it would expose to the public how incredibly poor police administrators are. The system, will continue to protect itself at the cost of the officers and the public. If we are transparent, we will see that the real; problem in police work is a lack of ethical leadership. It is the reason for the poor police performances and will be the reason that nothing is really done to address the problem. But, I commend her for her effort. At least she is speaking out.