The terrible toll of the job

“Life of a Police Officer: Medically and Psychologically Ruinous” is a rare, sympathetic look at how dealing with constant tragedy, violence and death, can lead to serious physical and emotional problems for too many of our law enforcement officers.

Professor Erika Hayasaki (UC-Irvine), has written a “must-read” piece on the profound impact the death of a young girl had on Officer Brian Post.

Erika Hayasaki, an assistant professor of English at the University of California, Irvine, posted this remarkable piece on the Atlantic Monthly website on March 14, 2014.

Erika tells the story of Officer Brian Post, who for 19 years has blamed himself for the death of Sangeeta, a 16-year-old girl. It’s the kind of tragedy that every law enforcement officer has coped with many times during his or her career. We hope you can take the time to read the article and pass it along to the people in your association and agency who are trying to help officers in the course of their careers deal with the many traumatic aspects of the job. Here’s a few excerpts from the article:

“The call came into 911 at 4:18 a.m. that someone was breaking into her apartment. James McCray, 21, had arrived dressed in dark clothes and a red and black stocking cap, according to police reports. He chased Sangeeta outside. “Please don’t,” neighbors heard Sangeeta scream, before he shot her.

For 19 years Officer Brian Post has blamed himself for Sangeeta’s murder and that has taken a terrible toll on his physical and mental health.

“Brian didn’t make it to the complex in time. He found her sprawled just beyond the sliding glass door of her neighbor’s apartment. He looked up and saw a little girl peering through a window at the teenager in the grass. He felt Sangeeta’s neck. It pulsed, and pulsed again. Then, no more. He touched her face.

“You never know when you’ve saved a life, but you know when you’ve lost one.”

“I know who the guy is, and I know where he went,” Brian told his partner. As the officers moved in on apartment 265 with weapons drawn, James looked out of the window and killed himself with a single bullet.

“It was 1995, and for the next 19 years, Brian would blame himself for not being closer to Whispering Pines, for not saving Sangeeta. Brian was 31 when she was killed, and had been an officer for five years.

“She was in the worst environment, and she was trying,” said Brian, now 50. “You never know when you’ve saved a life, but you know when you’ve lost one.”

“Sangeeta’s death marked the beginning of a downward spiral in Brian’s health, spurred on by a psychologically and physically challenging law enforcement career. Brian had been a healthy and fit ex-airborne infantry soldier when he began his policing career. But he eventually developed hypertension, anxiety, peripheral neuropathy, hearing loss, arthritis, and post-traumatic stress disorder.

When he was starting out, Brian says he wasn’t warned of how the career could do such damage. In 2012, an unprecedented study of 464 police officers, published in the International Journal of Emergency Mental Health linked officers’ stress with increased levels of sleep disorders, Hodgkin’s lymphoma, brain cancer, heart disease, diabetes, and suicide.

Other studies have found that between 7 and 19 percent of active duty police have PTSD, while MRIs of police officers’ brains have found a connection between experiencing trauma and a reduction in areas that play roles in emotional and cognitive decision-making, memory, fear, and stress regulation.

Read more.