In recent years, much of the focus for treating post-traumatic stress disorder has centered on traditional “talk therapy” and newer abatement techniques like EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing). Now the latest research seems to be expanding an emerging frontier that involves unexpected mind-impacting drugs. Several physicians who specialize in pain management, for example, are...Read More
Force Science National Advisory Board member and award-winning law enforcement author Chuck Remsberg has just released a ground-breaking new officer-survival book, Blood Lessons: What Cops Learn From Life-Or-Death Encounters, which offers major training opportunities regarding traumatic use-of-force confrontations. Published by Calibre Press, a subsidiary of PoliceOne, for whom Remsberg serves as a columnist and senior...Read More
Part 2 of a 2-part series [Editor’s note: In our last transmission, we reported on a new documentary film, “The Pain Behind the Badge,” which features 3 officers who experienced emotional melt-downs from the cumulative stress of life on the street. Two contemplated suicide and the third saw the near-dissolution of his marriage before they...Read More
Part 1 of a 2-part series A few hours earlier, Sgt. Clarke Paris, a veteran of 22 years on the Las Vegas Metro Police, had finished a shift on which he’d responded to 5 suicide calls, the victims ranging from a 70-year-old man to a 13-year-old boy. Now he was lazily floating with his wife...Read More
You’ve no doubt read or watched the national coverage about the off-duty law officer in a one-stoplight timber town in Wisconsin’s North Woods who recently burst into an early-hours pizza party of high school friends…slaughtered 6 of them, including his ex-girlfriend, with his AR-15…opened fire on a responding fellow officer, a friend of his…eluded authorities...Read More
Looking for guidance on a protocol for Excited Delirium calls? A recently updated training bulletin from San Jose (CA) PD might be a good starting point. “It’s the closest thing to a policy on the subject that I’ve been able to find,” says Wayne Schmidt, executive director of Americans for Effective Law Enforcement, the organization...Read More
If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s a duck, right? Not always. Especially when “it” is “excited delirium,” the complex phenomenon currently regarded in law enforcement circles as the likely cause of many in-custody deaths. What appears to be the often-irreversibly fatal physical and mental meltdown...Read More
Does being angry put you at higher risk for getting injured? In one way, yes–and it’s a way with great relevance for law enforcement. Researchers at the University of Missouri-Columbia studied some 2,500 patients in 3 ERs and about 1,500 unharmed residents selected from the community at large to see what relationship, if any, exists...Read More
The latest study of officers’ reactions during and after shootings has yielded some upbeat conclusions–and some surprises. The full report, “Police Responses to Officer-Involved Shootings,” is available in both Word and pdf formats at: https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/192286.pdf Under a federal grant, Klinger used questionnaires and personal interviews to explore the emotional, psychological and physical reactions of 80...Read More
Are antidepressants dangerous medications for cops? That question was raised recently on the listserv for the IACP’s Psychological Services Section. A psych professional from south Florida reported noticing of late “a marked increase in police officers being prescribed” antidepressants, known pharmacologically as SSRIs (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors). These include common brand-name drugs such as Prozac,...Read More