Peer support team provides counseling, coping for officers

ROANOKE, Va. (AP) — When members of Officer Najee Anthony Tynes' platoon returned to work July 29, the Roanoke Police Department's peer support team invited them to sit down and talk.

The team had been providing emotional support and peer counseling for department employees since the 29-year-old officer died in the department two days earlier. Outside counselors also rushed to help while the department grieved its loss. But checking in with Tynes' platoon and offering them support on their first day back was especially vital, Sgt. Andy Pulley said.

"Our command staff recognized we're going to have to address that. We're going to have to assess them to make sure they're physically and mentally capable of doing what they need to do today to help Roanoke," Pulley said. "They said, 'The first few hours when they come in, we're just going to sit down and talk. Command staff and peer support all go into room and shut the door, turn your radios off. We're just going to talk about this.'"

Since the department's peer support team was formed in the mid-1980s, members have reached out to struggling employees, whether they are going through a personal crisis or figuring out how to cope after responding to a traumatic incident. Peer support gives officers a chance to talk about their experiences with other officers without feeling judged, Pulley said.

"You have to understand the culture of policing, five years, 10, 20, 30 years ago is much different than the culture of policing today," he said. "And for any male, it wouldn't have been acceptable 20, 30 years ago to need help. That's just not a manly thing to do. We don't talk about feelings."

In some cases, providing resources and encouraging officers to seek help is still a challenge. A 2014 report from the International Association of Chiefs of Police noted that mental health often fails "to receive the same level of attention and resources within the officer safety continuum." The same report cited statistics from FBI data and results from a 2012 study on police suicides showing that officer suicides are twice as high as deaths caused by traffic wrecks or assaults.

"You come into law enforcement as a newbie, you're with your (field training officer), maybe you see a fatal accident, maybe a suicide. It all starts to accumulate," said Ron Clark, chairman of the Badge of Life Police Mental Health Program and coauthor of the 2012 study. "Cops don't like to talk about this stuff. They're tough guys and women."

Roanoke's peer support group was formed in 1986 after 23-year-old Officer David Rickman was killed by accidental gunfire during a routine domestic violence call, Pulley said. The shooting prompted several employees to find a better way to help officers cope after traumatic incidents.

"A core group of officers recognized, 'Hey, the way we normally deal with these things isn't generally the healthiest way that anybody can deal with them,'" Pulley said. "They also recognized that the police department, the police culture, it's its own entity. Police officers are much more comfortable talking to other police officers."

When those officers retired about a decade ago, Pulley and others worked together to revamp the program. They slowly expanded services to others who work in public safety, teaching dispatchers how to provide peer support. Roanoke Fire-EMS, which eventually created its own team, also offered support to the department, Pulley said.

"We started going, 'Hey, we really do need this. We can't just let this disappear,'" Pulley said. "We reinvigorated and set some goals for ourselves. The biggest one was: We needed to mainstream peer support. We needed to make it acceptable for police officers and those associated with emergency response to feel comfortable asking for help."

Both Roanoke and Roanoke County police try to normalize the idea of seeking support from the start of an officer's career. Roanoke officers take peer support and crisis-intervention classes at the training academy, and then again during their annual in-service training, Pulley said.

Though the Roanoke County Police Department does not have an internal peer support team, it also discusses stress and trauma management with new recruits.

"We tell them in the academy, tell them that you will have days that push you to your limits. You're going to come across an injured child and it's going to remind you of your own child," Roanoke County Sgt. Dwayne Cromer said. "It's not a badge of honor like it used to be years ago where you say, 'This doesn't bother me,' and then you feel wore down."

Peer support teams also approach officers and others in the first few days after they've experienced a "critical incident" — a crime involving children, a sexual assault, a homicide. Team members check in with first responders and invite them to a group debriefing with others who worked the same scene.

"Knowing other people's perspectives tends to lead to better coping in dealing with the critical incidents that we deal with," Pulley said.

While younger officers are often more receptive to peer support, Pulley said, older officers sometimes need reassurance. Some may fear that coworkers will doubt their ability to do their job if they need help after a traumatic incident.

"A strategy that I use with the more seasoned officers or the more salty officers is, 'Hey, I know you're good' — even if I know they're not — 'I know you're good, you don't need help, I wouldn't even dream of asking you to be here. But this new guy, he's struggling with this,'" Pulley said. "They won't come for their own help, but they'll come to help someone else. And just getting them there is the biggest obstacle."

Though more departments are creating peer support groups nationally, they shouldn't be used as a panacea, Clark said.

The Badge of Life program recommends that officers see a therapist as part of their routine medical checkups, and also encourages departments to emphasize employee assistance programs. However, some officers don't feel comfortable talking to therapists provided through Employee Assistance Programs, fearing reprisals at work, Clark said. Asking supervisors and other leaders in the department to talk about their own therapy sessions can help officers feel more at ease.

"Peer support is great. But peer support is not therapy. It's simply peer to peer," Clark said. "The thing is to get the peer, if they need it, to see someone on the outside, a licensed therapist. The chief of police should be the first to go in to one of these annual check-ins."

While some of Roanoke's peer support group members have taken psychology classes, they aren't licensed therapists. Pulley said area mental health providers often offer free services to law enforcement. Programs like the Virginia Law Enforcement Assistance Program and the Western Virginia Emergency Medical Services Critical Incident Stress Management Team also provide peer support services for departments that don't have their own team.

Cromer, who also works with the Critical Incident Stress Management Team, said the team recruits firefighters, paramedics, police and others to better serve a wide array of public safety personnel.

"If we see an event where multiple people may have been affected, we can come in and talk to larger groups that were involved in the incident," Cromer said. "Some people, what they do, they think that there's a problem with them. Allowing them to talk it out, especially with other people that were at the same event, they see that some of these reactions are normal. We give them some ways of helping them cope with it."

Cromer and Pulley both emphasized that services are confidential. Many of the officers who volunteer their time have previously needed help themselves.

"There's always support in Roanoke, 24/7," Pulley said. "We didn't ask for compensation for it. There's no way the department could pay us for all that we do. But we recognize that this is a needed, necessary service and this is our way to give back to our own."

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Information from: The Roanoke Times, http://www.roanoke.com

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