Analysis of Sources About Trauma in Law Enforcement

The purpose of this essay is to critique two scholarly sources suffered around the topic of trauma within law enforcement. This essay will provide examples of the different types of trauma law enforcement suffers from, coping mechanism, if there any, do law enforcement agencies offer programs to treat such trauma. The essay will express the strengths and weakness in each article, followed by a summary of each article and lastly my personal reflections of the essays and biblical worldview.

Critique of Strengths and Weaknesses of the Article

The article The Trauma Lens of Police Violence against Racial and Ethnic Minorities by Thema Bryant-Davis, Tyonna Adams, Adriana Alejandre, Anthea A. Gray. The article was published December 04, 2017.

The article starts by explaining the broad term of trauma in someone has a life threatening experience in which they cannot cope. Trauma can cause people to develop depression, PTSD, aggression, fear, distrust in others, and the list goes on. When trauma is untreated, it can lead to what the author explained as intergenerational trauma. Racist‐incident–based trauma and complex trauma, one of the strong suits of the article.

Racist-incident-based trauma is explained as an incident transpired based on stereotypes and racial bias. Racist-incident based actions and trauma usually transpire when someone has encountered an unlikely incident with someone of another race and uses that one sour encounter to sculpt their views on the entire race. The author explains that based on this type of trauma every 7-hours police officer kill an American citizen. This type of trauma can cause police misconduct to be structured based upon race.

The continuation forte of the article touches on complex trauma can be described as threatening and high risk events that can cause someone to experience a traumatic shock. Complex trauma is usually developed over times due to the series of violent events such as abuse, war, gentrification, genocide, terrorism, and the list goes on. The author explains that complex trauma relates to police brutality due to repeated acts of biased racial profiling, corrupt politics and physical injuries. The author does an interesting job expressing that individual racism and institutional racism are negative results of complex trauma. Individual racism is personal racism, for example illegal traffic stops on racial profiling. Institutional racism is described as racism embedded in institutions, work force and educational culture. The authors explain each of institutional and anyone racism based complex trauma is one of the reasons for police misconduct being masked as trying to protect and serve and creating unjust policies such as Stop and Frisk.

Intergenerational trauma can be described as severe trauma such as poverty, slavery, war, genocides that has been passed down generations and is now affecting the youngest generation. This type of trauma is one reason to example police misconduct. For example, children are the reflections of their parents so if a parent or grandparent is racial biased it is likely the child will be instilled with this way of thinking. The author sums up this ideologically up expressing that children of parents with post-traumatic stress disorder is more likely to display those same symptoms their parents suffer from. Many police officers usually come from families with a law enforcement background, a parent, uncle, or grandparent was an officer and if anyone of the three displayed misconduct it is likely the child will conduct in such a manner if they decide to become an officer.

At the end of the article, the author offers some suggestions on officers that partake in racially motivated misconduct. The author suggests that police departments are held accountable for racial incidental behavior, more police supervision and acknowledge the trauma officers are suffering from and mandate they receive help. Due to police officers not seeking help for their trauma, every 1,000 people killed by law enforcement, one is convicted of a crime.

Lastly, the author explains intergenerational trauma, racist‐incident–based trauma, and a complex trauma are one of key factors for police misconduct. In results of intergenerational trauma, racist‐incident– based some officers may tend to handle, it results in high profile killing. For example, black americans are twice as likely to murder while unarmed than their white counterparts. Also, native american groups are also only as likely to suffer

from high rates of unarmed killings from police officers. The articles do a great job expressing how racial trauma can lead to police misconduct. The article does fall short with how to break these barriers and ensure the next generation of police officers will not suffer from such traumas or at least be treated accordingly. The programs mentioned in the article for police officers to help cope with their trauma did mention the success rate of programs. If the programs are unsuccessful, the programs should be re-evaluated before achieving the goal to mandate all law enforcement to seek help.

Critique of Strengths and Weaknesses of the Article

The article Psychiatric Disability in Law Enforcement Officers was written and published by Marilyn Price M.D. on March 17, 2017.

The trauma amongst law enforcement officers is caused by long work hours, mistreatment, high levels of danger, little supervision and the list goes on. The article gives statistics on the rates of injuries, mental illness and turnover rates. Law enforcement, officers deal traumatic events daily with little to none mental health care. Law enforcement, officers from 2009 to 2014, about 30,990 officers reported having a non-lethal injury to the department which led to many short terms paid of absence. To Price, most traumatic event, a law enforcement officer experience in an officer making an honest mistake that results in their partner becoming seriously injured or dies. The least traumatic experience for a law enforcement officer is to witness a dead body, although this is the least type of traumatic experience it still has some negative mental effects on law enforcement officers. The author explains high the rates of trauma have been amongst law enforcement since 1970 about 70% of law enforcement officers use deadly force within 5 years of employment.

Another forte for the article is the author explains that for law enforcement officers to deal with their daily trauma, they can find comfort in peer support officers. Peer support officers are fellow officers that have specialized training with identifying the early on stages of mental illness and substance abuse such as alcohol. Law enforcement, officers likelihood of suffering from alcohol abuse for inner-city officers is 18% for males and 16% females and about 7.8% suffer from lifetime abuse. Peer support officers can be helpful by offering support and referring those in need to employee aid programs. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) also has a program called the FBI’s Critical Incident Stress Management Program. The program offers peer support, family outreach, manager support, therapy, and coping with trauma based incident seminars. The author also sheds on light on how law enforcement agencies do have indeed had legitimate ways to deal with this trauma by counseling, etc. but officers are not required to seek help. The article falls short on expressing why managers can still use discretion when determining to require a traumatized officer to seek help although the law makes it mandatory in the circumstances. The article concludes that traumatized officers are the reason that suicide amongst male officers, the average age is 38 years of age with about 12 years of law enforcement experience is the most common.

The article concludes that trauma is coming the stress high workload, high levels of danger, deaths, and aggression. The author suggests law enforcement officers should be required to seek help in order decrease the high rates of early retirement due to mental disability. The author concludes that for law enforcement to deal with these traumas, law enforcement agencies offer coping mechanisms but does not require officers to seek help. Due to lack of supervision measuring which officers are truly in need, the trauma goes untreated, and the cycle continues. One of the few ways the article fell short was brushing up on the topic of how this trauma affects citizens, whereas the article more so focuses on how the trauma affects the officer mentally and ways to seek help. I believe this article is a good way to start the conversation on how trauma can detrimental to officers personal lives, how they have the tools to seek help, but the law enforcement agencies does not take police officer mental health as serious as they should.

Summary of Articles

The articles give potential solutions to handle trauma in law enforcement such as mental health programs and coping mechanisms. The authors do an impressive job also explaining the cause of trauma law enforcement experiences. One article touches on the negative effects on law enforcement officers traumatic events have on police officers that do not properly cope with these issues. The other articles also touch on the same topic but also add racial examples such as intergenerational trauma, racist‐incident–based trauma and complex trauma understand and break down police misconduct. I think, both articles are great and are like follow up articles to one other, where article lacks, the other makes up for it. I enjoyed reading and analyzing both articles.

Personal Reflection, Position, and Christian Worldview

I think, as a person of color I have seen first hand the unjust conditions the black community suffers such as illegal traffic stops or not being taken seriously while dealing with law enforcement. It was enlightening to look at how trauma can affect these officers personals and professionally and how it is a domino effect in leading to police misconduct. It was also enlightening to educate on how trauma can lead racial misconduct on the job, the articles gave me hope that if law enforcement was seeking help to deal with this trauma it could decrease the rates of suicide, depression, and other mental illnesses and bring communities and law enforcement closer to focus on the main goal, public safety. In a biblical sense, trauma is something that is hard to overcome also if the someone is unwilling to acknowledge such trauma. The scripture Psalms 107:13-16 “Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble, and he delivered them from their distress. He brought them out of darkness and the shadow of death, and burst their bonds apart” which tell this trauma in law enforcement is that if officers entrust in the Lord to seek help, he will be with them every step of how and will relieve their stress and bring them back to happiness!