While attending the FBI National Academy, I chose an elective entitled stress management. It was taught by a couple of FBI psychologists who were supremely capable of delivering the sobering news. Policing is a high stress occupation and one where we often mask our true feelings. This mask was deemed “image armor” and recently my old agency experienced the true meaning of this descriptive.
What is the difference between an emergency room physician and a police officer aside from the obvious? ER docs tend to be in absolute control of their emotions, reacting mechanically to the event confronting them. They are wrapped in the trappings of extensive, grueling training in emergency medicine and are surrounded by a team of like minded professionals and the latest in technology enabling them to make life saving decisions on the run. Even so, they do not always enjoy success.
Police officers are often confronted with the same gruesome circumstances in a world where they are not supported by an immaculately trained staff, have only rudimentary equipment, often with families present and hellish circumstances they have no control whatsoever over. The stoic image we attempt to project is just that, an image. We are trained to respond coolly, maintain control, administer basic life saving measures while lending dignity to scenes that leave little room for such. In addition to the world we protect, the internal pressures of life in a paramilitary career can be taxing, and expectations that exceed normality are firmly in place. The political realities, alone, can be hellish with internal competition taxing to the orderly mind.
The physician practices in a defined arena, staying in his or her lane as much as practical. The police arena is anything but defined. I recall talking a wife down from a hysterical plateau after cutting her drunken husband’s hands to ribbons with a paring knife, leaving him sitting on a concrete stoop in freezing temperatures. He was attempting an entry into their modest trailer house, thoroughly soused and enraged at some injustice, and she stopped him with the little knife. On another occasion, I was asked to help guide a young mother in the decision making process to harvest her 9 year old son’s organs as he lay dead in a cubicle mere feet from her in an ER. She had pulled out in front of a car, was broadsided and her son killed as a result. The conversation took its toll on my thought processes for years afterward. These are but two examples of what officers confront and keep bottled up inside, ever aware of the image they present.
I am not a psychologist, but am a retired police officer. Rural troopers are tasked with the full gamut of police services from homicides to suicides, from wrecks to family disturbances, from sudden death to marriage counseling and must project image armor in all cases. We are not always successful leading to an inordinate number of police professionals who are overwhelmed and terminate their worldly existence. The true tragedy is that more often than not, those around us have no clue as to what we feel. It is Image Armor that’s provides the insulation from reality. Our support systems are mostly internal as we are loathe to seek help when help is desperately needed.
God bless the modern centurion who strives for dignity in every situation and who may be suffering silently. It is not easy and leaves scars on one’s psyche.
From the heart..
SR
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