Firefighters Do It Better...

By Metropolitan Alliance of Police Board Member John Holiday

That’s right I said it. In fact the small town volunteer fire departments do it best. What do they do? They take care of each other and themselves. They debrief after each critical incident they handle. They talk about what went when well, what went bad, and what images they would like to erase from their mind.

What do we do? We get back in our squad, by ourselves, and go to the same domestic battery call we go to every week. You know the one. The one where the couple wants you to fix 10 years of abuse in 5 minutes.

Sean Riley, the founder of Safe Call Now, recently spoke at our annual seminar.  He talked about how we are trained to do the job the vast majority of the population are unwilling or unable to do.

Think about it. There are 325 million people in the United States of which only 765,000 are sworn law enforcement officers. That’s 0.2%. We take 0.2% of the general population and train them to not think like the rest of the population.  We train your brain to do the exact opposite of what other people’s brains tell them to do. We train you to run toward the gunfire, run toward the danger, and go down into the dark basement where someone is screaming for help. We train you to have a “Warrior Mindset.” Then at the end of a 12 hour shift, we expect you to turn it all off, forget everything that happened, and go back and function with the other 99.8% of the population. We are very good at training you how to do the job, but we have zero training on how to go home at night. 

The Drug Addicted Cop...

Safe Call Now's Sean Riley

A dear friend of mine always says and he’s right, “We treat our cars better than we treat our first responders in addiction who are going to die”.   When the red light comes on in our vehicles we immediately take the vehicle into the mechanic and have it assessed, evaluated and fixed.  When we’re dealing with the alcoholic or addicted first responder, the red lights come on and as a profession we will enable them to protect our partners (blind loyalty), try to fix the problems ourselves (which only a professional can do) or cast them aside and throw them away as if it is someone else’s problem (the easy way out).  The diseases of addiction and mental health when combined are two of the deadliest diseases known to mankind, yet they are the only two diseases that we allow the first responder who’s brain is incapable of making logical decisions dictate the terms of treatment.  Maybe for fear of not offending them, ending their career, who knows there are many other reasons usually associated with “The Thin Blue, Red, Green Line”.  Ultimately I have determined that the main cause is that “It’s always been done this way in the past”.   

This is why Safe Call Now® exists, an organization that is willing to change the culture and thinking of an entire profession that experiences these diseases at twice the rate of the general population according to some studies and some say even higher.  Who knows?  I just know first responders are dying from it.

I want to educate you about the alcoholic and addict mind and what the first responder may be thinking and doing when they are in this situation.  I am familiar with this because I was “That guy”.  The guy who would lie to your face, smile, tell you everything is alright, convince you that everyone else is crazy, function within the work environment, control the situations, create drama within others to direct the attention away from me and convince you that I was right.  Fortunately or unfortunately I do not think like you.  

Treatment & Redemption for Police Officers

By Police Magazine

Police officers deal with addiction constantly. Drug addicts are responsible for a great deal of crime in the beats they patrol, so officers are quite skilled at dealing with addicts on the streets. 

Unfortunately, law enforcement agencies are not as adept at dealing with addicts in their own ranks.

But that may be changing. There are positive steps being taken to help law enforcement organizations see that an addicted officer as not a throwaway employee but a valuable human resource who can be treated and redeemed. With the help of strategic partnerships and programs aimed at treating addicted officers, treatment centers are opening their doors to first responders, helping them get better and return to work.

The Addicted Officer

Statistics show that 20% to 25% of working police officers are chemically dependent on either alcohol or drugs.

Addiction tends to manifest itself differently in officers than in the rest of society simply by the nature of law enforcement work and societal expectations. Officers most likely won't resort to petty theft or drug dealing to feed their addictions, but that doesn't mean that their addictions aren't destructive and dangerous to their careers, families, and even their lives.

Friends, family, and co-workers are most likely to see an addicted officer gradually slip into dysfunction and despair. If left unchecked, the addiction will do damage to the officer's career. Co-workers of an addicted officer may say that the officer is moody, lazy, or a pain in the ass.

It's usually not long before command takes notice of the addicted officer, and not in a good way. "Supervisors may see an officer who is a poor performer, late for his or her shift, or who just looks bad in the uniform," says Sgt. Andy Callaghan, director of the Peer Support Program of the Philadelphia Fraternal Order of Police Lodge #5.

Callaghan has 24 years of police experience and believes that addiction among law enforcement officers is closely related to post-traumatic stress disorder. "Many officers who have PTSD turn to alcohol or prescription drugs to self-medicate," says Callaghan.

Off duty, addicted officers' lives will most likely be wrecked. They may spend their days off struggling to keep it together with their families and trying to hang onto their health. But when the weekend is over, it's back to work where they try to keep their careers from falling apart. It's a spin cycle that will end in either loss of job, freedom, or life.