THE FIGHT AGAINST CRIME: NOTES FROM THE BATTLEFRONT : More Officers Seeking Help of Counselors

The images of the bloody shooting in which he killed a man kept racing through the mind of the sheriff’s deputy. His sleep was filled with nightmares, and in his waking hours he was so jumpy he was startled even by his wife walking into the room.

When she asked him what was wrong, he replied tersely: “I’m fine.”

But he wasn’t, which is why his wife went to see Elizabeth White, a psychologist at the Antelope Valley Sheriff’s Station, where her husband worked. White spoke with the deputy, and reassured him that no, he was not going crazy, and yes, the flashbacks would eventually stop. It was, she told him, a common reaction to a fatal shooting.

“You’re a normal human being,” she said.

Putting on a uniform and badge exposes the men and women in law enforcement to frequent physical risk, but can also be hazardous to their mental well-being. The high rate of divorce and suicide among police has been well documented, but many officers silently suffer the traumas of their jobs. That’s why police agencies over the years have added psychological counselors to their ranks.

“They are very normal people, and they handle more than the average person in terms of awful events, and they handle it very, very well,” White said of officers. “But once in a while, they need help.”

The Los Angeles Police Department was the first in the nation to fund a staff psychologist, according to Dr. Kris Mohandie, who succeeded Dr. Martin Reiser two years ago as coordinator of the LAPD’s behavioral sciences department.

Since 1968, psychologists have counseled LAPD officers saddened by the deaths of colleagues or traumatized by suspect shootings or grisly murder scenes. The LAPD has nine counselors who see about 700 officers a year, and the Sheriff’s Department has six who see about 1,900 officers a year.

“The key issue where our officers tend to have problems with job-related stuff are incidents that make them feel powerless, or hopeless,” Mohandie said.

“That’s a human thing, but police, specifically, are used to having things turn out and being able to manage it. And when these things come up it pushes the limits and deflates that sense of being in control.”

Particularly bad, Mohandie said, are child-abuse and murder investigations, or failed rescue attempts. The worst times, he said, are following the killing of an on-duty officer, such as the recent fatal shooting of Simi Valley Officer Michael Clark, a former LAPD officer who had worked in the Valley.

The killing of fellow officers makes some of them feel guilty for surviving, Mohandie said.

Said White: “They go out there [in the field] prepared to have a shield up around that event, but when it’s one of theirs, it goes right around that shield and hits them below the belt.”

Spouses of officers are also traumatized, White said, as they realize that their loved ones are vulnerable.

White estimates that about half of her job is relationship counseling, as she helps couples deal with the stress of inconvenient shifts, job-related trauma and the pressures of the law-enforcement life.

Mohandie says LAPD officers have become more open to counseling since the 1991 videotaped beating of Rodney G. King, with a 20% to 25% increase in officers seeking help. “Just the pressure and all the transitions that have been taking place,” he said. “People are seeing the impact that not dealing with these issues can have.”