Until the mid-1990s most studies of stress in law enforcement focused exclusively on post-shooting trauma. Kureczka (1996) identified a number of other traumatic events, collectively known as critical stress incidents. His definition encompasses any event that has a stressful impact sufficient to overwhelm the usually effective coping skills of an individual. Among the events listed are a line-of-duty death or serious injury of a coworker, a police suicide, an officer-involved shooting in a combat situation, a life-threatening assault on an officer, a death or serious injury caused by an officer, an incident involving multiple deaths, a traumatic death of a child, a barricaded suspect/hostage situation, a highly profiled media event, or any other incident that appears critical or questionable.
According to Kureczka, the definition of a critical incident must remain fluid because what affects one officer might not affect another. This particular assumption is extremely valid for the expanded definition of critical incident stress (CIS), which will be presented in the next section of this article.
In 1980, the American Psychiatric Association formally recognized the existence of a disorder, similar to what was frequently referred by the military as ”battle fatigue,” that became known as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Symptoms of the disorder include intrusive recollections, excessive stress arousal, withdrawal, numbing, and depression. Pierson (1989) claims that critical stress affects up to 87% of all emergency service workers at least once in their careers. Critical incident stress manifests itself physically, cognitively, and emotionally.
Walker (1990) provides a slightly different definition of a critical incident and describes it as ”. . . any crisis situation that causes emergency personnel, family members, or bystanders to respond with immediate or delayed stress-altered physical, mental, emotional, psychological, or social coping mechanisms.” She recognizes the need for critical incident stress debriefing procedures, using Mitchell’s (1983) process, which includes the elements of factual description of the event, emotional ventilation, and identification of stress response symptoms.
Stress Management Training as a Function of an Ill-Defined Problem
The approaches to the CIS, as defined earlier, are among the prevalent definitions of the problem, and the stress management training modules, devised by and for various law enforcement training academies, rely heavily on those definitions. Finn and Esselman Tomz (1997) published a thorough manual about developing law enforcement stress programs; however, this publication seems to ”suffer” from a similar disease—the multiple and intangible definitions. The overreliance on fluid and elusive terms on one hand, and on an infinite host of traditional traumatic events (such as shootings, deaths, injuries) on the other, provides for a misguided approach to training.
The problems enveloped in the CIS are ill defined and inadequate. First, one cannot devise an effective training module if one cannot define—and define precisely—what it is that you would like your recruits to be trained in, against, for, and so on. Undoubtedly there are a number of good definitions, offered by the researchers; however, those definitions cover only a small percentage of the problematic issues involved in a critical stress incident. If, as the researchers claim, the definition must remain fluid, since what constitutes a critical incident for one officer might not affect another, then the only rational conclusion is that we must abandon stress management training since we are targeting only a very small percentage of our audience.
It is extremely difficult to identify with certain situations that are supposed to generate feelings and emotions, when one cannot generate those feelings and emotions if the situations presented are not relevant to one’s emotional buildup. The theoretical depiction of the events, in a given training environment, no matter how realistic and potent, remains theoretical for a significant segment of the audience. The examples, mentioned by the researchers, such as the death of your partner, death of a child, traumatic media event, and so on, remain in the sphere of ”unreal,” since the training is offered to the recruits who still do not have a partner, most of them do not have a child, and they cannot possibly envision the power and influence of the media on their daily performance. When stress management training is offered only to the officers who are already on the force, then the new recruits enter the workforce exposed to the dangers of being affected by CIS and having no coping mechanism whatsoever, nor the ability to recognize the danger (Haberfeld 2002).
Redefining CIS: ”It’s a Cop Thing; You Wouldn’t Understand”
The new, and expanded, definition of critical incident stress offered in this article is based on the assumption that police officers, en masse, join law enforcement agencies to serve and protect the public from the so-called bad guys. These sentiments were adequately defined by researchers. Crank (1998) believes that police see themselves as representatives of a higher morality embodied in a blend of American traditionalism, patriotism, and religion. According to Sykes (1986), as moral agents, police view themselves as guardians whose responsibility is not simply to make arrests but to roust out society’s troublemakers.
They perceive themselves to be a superior class (Hunt and Magenau 1993), or as people on the side of angels, the sense of ”us versus them” that develops between cops and the outside world forges a bond between cops whose strength is fabled (Bouza 1990). Police believe themselves to be a distinct occupational group, apart from society (Van Maanen 1974). This belief stems from their perception that their relationship with the public, with brass, and with the courts is less than friendly, sometimes adversarial. As outsiders, officers tend to develop a ”we-them” attitude, in which the enemy of the police tends to shift from the criminal element to the general public (Sherman 1982).
”To serve and protect” entails, at least in an officer’s mind, to deliver justice. In other words the ”good guys” (the police officers) are here to enable ”us” (members of the society) to live in a civilized manner, protected, or at least being under constitutional certainty entitled to the protection, from the ”bad guys.” This profound, sometimes taken for granted, subconscious belief enables ”us” to function on a daily basis, without looking over our shoulders for predators and enemies. This sense of security is almost built into our civilized systems; we ”know” that around us there is this invisible fence of protection provided by law enforcement officers. Of course, sometimes, we do experience some erosion in the sense of this built-in security, predominantly when we are involved in an incident, from which we emerge injured physically, psychologically, or both, since there was nobody out there to protect us, on an immediate basis. This sense of insecurity could be extremely traumatic, for the rest of the person’s life, and frequently one cannot regain the ”built-in” feeling of security.
Police officers, despite serving as protectors from evil and messengers of justice, no matter how symbolic, have the same ”built-in” need for security and justice, even though they are supposed to provide these needs for themselves. They are fully prepared, at least mentally to do so;however, very frequently, as opposed to a citizen, they face the reality of danger and injustice. From these assumptions, a new and expanded definition for CIS is presented as follows:
A critical stress incident can be generated by any situation /encounter with a citizen, peer, organization, or others, from which a police officer emerges with a feeling/perception that “justice has not been served” for him and or the others.
The sense of being on the “right side,” on the “side of the angels,” crumbles when the officer realizes that, although he or she is expected to provide justice for others (again in a symbolic way by serving and protecting the “good citizens” from the “bad ones”), there is no justice for him or her. The “built-in” mechanism that produces the faulty, but effective, sense of safety and security disintegrates, the sense of “fairness” disappears, leaving a residue of fear and cynicism, a proven formula for stress.
Future Recommendations
Crank (1998) asserts that danger is a poorly understood phenomenon of police work. Police officers believe that their work is dangerous, although they perceive it in a different way than the one depicted by the media. It is not necessarily the actual danger but rather the potential for danger. The reality is that anything could happen on the streets.
A counseling session, therapy, a peer support group, or any other environment that contains a potential “stigma” for being weak and fearful is usually and rather routinely met with complete resentment on the part of law enforcement officers. They spend their days and night preparing to deal with danger, to protect others and themselves; a sign of weakness (which can be associated with any reaching out for help—whether external or internal) will immediately decrease an officer’s perceived ability to face danger in a boisterous and forceful way. The officers who are willing to admit that they need the offered “support” inadvertently admit their weakness; they are stigmatized not so much in the eyes of the others but first and foremost in their own view and perception. This is the reason why counseling and support sessions, in the format offered today, are not as effective as they might have been had they been approached from a different angle.
Time must be set aside for all members of a given agency to participate in meetings during which individuals will take turns revealing their feelings of injustice. Time should be provided for inputs from other participants, as well as tips and tactics about how to deal with a given injustice in the future. Nobody should be excluded from those meetings, or excused for any reason. Even members who feel that they have nothing to share with others have to participate, the same way as in any other mandatory meeting or activity, regardless of the enthusiasm or willingness. Only by securing the attendance of the entire personnel of a given agency will it be possible to get rid of the stigma, the label, and provide for a productive and preventive forum. Mandatory, in-service stress management training for police personnel is no longer a luxury; it is a necessity in a law enforcement environment that is more stressful than ever.
