As journalists, we sometimes have to report on carnage and lives that have been shattered.
At a crime or accident scene, the police stand tall and seemingly fearless as they take command.
For the Star project on post-traumatic stress disorder among OPP and other officers, we saw a different side of police. The broken part.
We saw big, strong men crumble, their eyes laying bare their tortured psyches. To a man, the officers we interviewed, by phone or in person, were at times tearful, anxious, fearful, scattered and ashamed.
However, they didn't want to hide behind a mask anymore.
Once we reached out to them, they wanted to tell their stories of collapse, and of perceived abandonment by their employers.
One officer even drove to the Star building from Ottawa.
Marc Fleming arrived with his wife, Debora. At a photo shoot, they were asked to move closer together, and Debora snickered under her breath, "Oh, this is going to be a historic photo."
Unbeknownst to us, they had separated. She had been assaulted by her husband at one point in the past. They are in couples' therapy.
Sometimes, the officers talked to us with their wives present. Some wives were long gone.
Some wept openly when asked to recall incidents. And some wouldn't talk at all because of fear of reprisal from the OPP.
One officer said: "I feel that by my words being made public I am putting my current disability benefits at risk. Because of the fact that OPP management exacerbated my current level of disability, those who decide if I continue to receive my benefits could quite easily turn my case into one that prevents their continued approval. I apologize for my on again/off again positions."
You can't see PTSD as you would a facial scar.
When you first meet the officers, you don't witness the inner pain.
When we first met former OPP detective inspector Bruce Kruger over lunch at his Swiss Chalet restaurant in Bracebridge, he was everything you would expect in a man spearheading the charge to improve the way the OPP treats officers diagnosed with PTSD.
Well-spoken and intelligent, he has won medals for bravery and exemplary service.
But when he tried to talk about the time he shot and killed an escaped prisoner, he choked up. His eyes quickly filled with tears, and he couldn't continue.
In our photo studio a few weeks later, there was unexpected trouble.
We had not alerted photo staff to Kruger's anxiety. When two employees suddenly burst in, his face flushed scarlet, his eyes darted back and forth, and he began twitching as if they were assassins in disguise.
"I don't think I can do this," he muttered. We calmed him down.
In most interviews, the officers were soft-spoken and nervous, and they rambled. "Oh, I lost my train of thought," was a common refrain.
Some seem to bear their PTSD rather well on the outside. But you can feel anger below the surface.
One of the saddest stories was that of a former Peel police officer, Gary Maidens.
He was the first Peel officer shot in the line of duty, in 1977. He had been lured by a false accident report and shot through the neck.
He survived, but something in him died. He and his wife split up within the year, and a few years later, his career unravelled. He admitted that after the shooting, he was self-destructive with money, alcohol and womanizing.
Now living in Halifax, he has been happily married to his third wife for 25 years, but he regrets how his life turned out otherwise.
In all, the officers were gracious, thoughtful and open.
Police tend to keep things bottled up, so it was poignant to see them letting their emotions spill out.
Copyright 2012 Toronto Star Newspapers Limited
