“Change the game; don’t let the game change you.” - anonymous
“Remember that when you stare into the abyss, the abyss stares into you.” – Nietzsche
This morning, as usual, I started my day scrolling news in my various social media feeds. The first quote above popped up and I immediately thought about how the law enforcement professionals can be changed by everything they’re exposed to during their years on the street. As I considered the impact of the potential lessons learned and those we veteran officers should ensure we pass along to the next generation(s) of officers, I remembered the quote from Nietzsche and it only added to the thought stream.
Through the course of my 40 years behind a badge I encountered quite the variety of officers with different motivations, different protection mechanisms, different approaches to insulating themselves from the potential negative emotional impact of the job.
For some, it was all about being “coldly professional.” They focused on doing the job within all laws, general orders, operating procedures, etc. but with limited compassion or care. It’s not that they didn’t care, it was just that by not demonstrating it in any unnecessary way, they limited their emotional involvement with those they encountered.
For others, it was all about statistics and measuring their impact for good, against evil, purely by counting amount and type of arrests they made. Compassion was 99% set aside and they never exercised any level of discretion. If an arrest could be made, they made it and if it was or could be a felony arrest, all the better. I remember the officer who said this to me the first time I ever heard it: “Take no excuse; cut no slack. Hook ‘em and book ‘em and don’t look back.” I heard it repeated by other officers over the years and those officers had phenomenal arrest rates. Their conviction rates were equally impressive as well. The only downside that could be observed was that they didn’t do much to help people outside of enforcement duties either. For them, “Protect and serve” was all about the protect part and none of the service part.
Another type of officer I encountered was the one who used discretion everywhere it might have a positive impact on the community served, but without ignoring potential threats to the community. That was the officer who frequently gave warnings instead of citations for first-time traffic offenders, or he caught someone in the midst of shoplifting something minor and instead of arresting them, he stopped them, gave them a warning “lecture” and cut them loose. He was the officer who caught a homeless veteran shoplifting a packaged lunch mean valued at less than $3 and rather than arresting the man for shoplifting, he helped the man find a place to stay, a job and the ability to salvage his dignity.
At the end of the day – or actually, at the end of a 20+ year career of dealing with humanity’s darkest parts, which type of officer walks away least emotionally impacted? The one who ignored and kept hidden away all emotion stirred by doing the job? Or the one who embraced the emotional side of the job’s interaction with those served?
I submit to you that there is as much inherent risk to ignoring and compartmentalizing all emotion on the job as there is embracing every tidbit of it. In other words, no matter how you manage your emotional responses, you run the risk of emotional trauma during your career. That brings me to another quote I saw last year: “The average person experiences two traumatic incidents during their life. The average police officer experiences approximately 800 during their career.”
If you go into a law enforcement career thinking you’ll experience no emotional trauma – ever – or that you can handle it 100% without challenge 100% of the time, you are seriously deluding yourself and potentially opening yourself up to long term negative effects of the job. On the other hand, if you go into it 100% expecting to come out the other end with some form of a Post Traumatic Stress Injury, you’ll probably fulfill your own prophecy. If you’re somewhere in the middle of your career and think you’re doing okay, I encourage you to step back and re-examine your outlook. Be brutally honest with yourself and consider discussing experiences with those you trust around you.
As you do so, take a look back at those first two quotes:
If doing the job is “the game,” remember that it’s better to change how you play the game than to let the game change you into anything you don’t specifically want to be.
When you’re examining your career, “stare into the abyss,” remember that doing the job has/had huge potential to change who you are, or “the abyss stares into you.”
