By Chief Michael Gabrielson, Loveland (OH) PD

Law enforcement agencies across the country are struggling to keep pace with attrition and to fill the vacancies we all have with the best candidates we can find. There are many theories as to the cause of this struggle and I am sure each of us has their own take on why we’re facing the staffing challenges we are.

In recent years I have read articles on this issue and now, given how prominent an issue this is, you can attend full training sessions focused on recruitment and retention. I also see articles and the occasional study on the negative impact our profession has on the brave men and women who join our ranks. This has generated discussions about mental/physical health, officer wellness, and peer support to name just a few.

Selfishly, every organization wants to maximize the return on the investment we have made in every officer. We want to ensure that our immediate staffing needs are met, and that we are able to provide safety and service to our communities. But at what cost to the officers?

We all have stories about the officer who tragically died a few months or years into retirement. If you have been in this profession a while, how many retired officers do you know who are living in retirement longer than they served? Sadly, they are the exception to the rule.

A study published in 2013 found that, “The probability of death was also higher among the police across all age categories. For example, a male police officer in the 50–54-year age category had close to a 40% probability of death compared to a 1% probability for males in the general population in that same age category. Overall, male police officers had a significantly higher average probability of death than did males in the general population.”

That statistic in this study, and every statistic like it, has led me to ask myself; are we spending too much time focusing on the now, and neglecting the 25 or 30 years of life after retirement every officer deserves?

I am not advocating that we turn our focus away from the recruitment of exceptional candidates who are willing and qualified to join one of the most honorable, difficult, and dangerous professions. Nor should we deviate from doing whatever we can to secure a long, happy, healthy, and safe career for them. In fact, I am advocating that we embrace that, but for another compelling reason.

It is hard to find any recent studies on how many years an officer makes it into retirement. You will see an average officer’s life expectancy listed as low as 57 years and the number of years they live into retirement tracked at one to two decades fewer than other occupations. These numbers have been floating around since the late 1980’s and yet we have done little to address them. It is as if we just accepted the fact that it was a tough job, and we were going to die before everyone else. Have we as a profession created our own self-fulfilling prophecy for an early death?

A Chinese Proverb states, “The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second-best time is now.” Most organizations did not “plant a tree” 20 years ago by trying to mitigate the long-lasting negative impact this profession has on the mental and physical health of our officers. Instead, we simply dusted those officers off after traumatic incidents and sent them out to answer the next call for service.

I am sure there are those who will read this and say, “Nope. Not me. Not my agency. We do more for an officer now than they ever did for me.” Is that the benchmark we should be using here? Because if it is, we are still failing miserably. Very few retired officers ever see a birthday cake with sixty or seventy candles on it. We owe it to every officer to do what we can to give them the best possible chance at not only surviving a law enforcement career, but beating, or better yet changing, the odds and surviving life long after law enforcement.

The articles we have all read contain valuable information and recommendations about what you can do to protect your officers now. As a leader, are you addressing the impacts of stress and fatigue on officers by authorizing time off, even when it requires overtime?

Do you allow a few “go to” officers to grab as much overtime as they can, or do you limit work hours (on and off duty) to provide officers the opportunity to rest, even when they can’t see they need it?

Have you considered mandatory mental health checks for officers, or do you only require them after a critical incident?

Do you allow officers to work out on duty, even with the knowledge that it could create a workers compensation claim if they are injured?

The list of changes you can make as a leader goes on and on and only you can decide what is best for your officers and organization, but the simple question remains: What are you going to do about it now? Are you going to be the one to plant that tree?

Who knows the life you save, long into retirement, may be your own.

Thoughts? Feedback to share? E-mail us at: editor@calibrepress.com