LAPD-Style

Nobody warned Regina Chace that police psychology would be like this: wearing a flak jacket, dodging armor-piercing bullets and avoiding homicidal bank robbers who tote assault rifles and turn peaceful neighborhoods into urban war zones.

Just five days on the job as a shrink for the Los Angeles Police Department, Chace found herself rushing to North Hollywood last Feb. 28 to administer “psychological first aid” to cops involved in one of the most horrifying shootouts in the city’s history.

Officers shrieked into their radios that their volleys were bouncing off the seemingly bulletproof bandits, while dispatchers told sharpshooters to aim “for their heads.” Down one street, Chace saw a handcuffed bank robber lying on the ground, his face yellowed and drained of blood. Down another, a black LAPD tank was preparing an attack. “I was seriously thinking I made a big mistake,” Chace recalled recently from the comfy confines of her office. “I had no idea what I was getting into.”

Career reservations aside, Chace started shrinking heads, LAPD-style. In a furniture store, where police hastily set up a command post, she consoled a sweaty, trembling officer who was nearly paralyzed with fear after shooting at one of the robbers. She listened to an agitated rookie vent his anger about being outgunned by crooks.

“This is normal; don’t worry,” Chace told both, as she prepared them for feelings they might experience in the days ahead. Likewise, Chace’s colleagues worked nearby hospitals and station houses, calming down officers and gently laying the groundwork for the mental healing.

In many respects, the shootout was a victory for the LAPD. No cop or civilian died. The robbers were slain, and peace was restored to the neighborhood. But while police trumpeted their success, the incident only reminded them how vulnerable they can be. Scores of officers received psychological counseling. Two LAPD officers from North Hollywood later committed suicide, and several psychologists suspect that the stress of the ordeal may have contributed to their suffering. Nearly a year after the incident, some officers continue to seek help.

Perhaps nowhere are psychologists needed more than in a police department, particularly one as large as the LAPD and its 9,800 officers. Compared to the general population, cops nationwide appear to have more drinking problems, troubled relationships and shorter life expectancies. But the real shocker is that cops are more likely to kill themselves than die in the line of duty.

With incidents such as the North Hollywood shootout, the beating of Rodney G. King and the subsequent riots, there seems no shortage of clients for psychologists at the LAPD--the nation’s third-largest police force and arguably the one most in the public spotlight.

*

All at once, you lost your first name. You’re a cop, a flatfoot, a bull, a Dick, John Law, you’re the fuzz, the heat, you’re poison, you’re trouble, you’re bad news. They call you everything, but never a policeman.

--Sgt. Joe Friday, “Dragnet”

*

Cops are a strange breed. To treat them, you have to understand them.

As an actor and director, Jack Webb understood Los Angeles cops and made a Hollywood career portraying them. His character struck such a chord with officers that even today they can be heard quoting Friday-isms; a sort-of shrine is dedicated to Webb at the LAPD academy. Police psychologists say that, like Webb, they often have to relate with officers at cop level. They have to know officers’ language, their lifestyle, and know that years on the job can profoundly change a cop’s outlook.

“It’s all about trust,” says Kris Mohandie, an LAPD police psychologist. “If they don’t trust you, why should they talk to you?”

Mohandie’s approach is easygoing but candid. He leans forward with his elbows on his knees and his face cradled in his hands as he focuses on what you say. Cops who trust him spill their guts. For Mohandie, it’s simple. “Cops who can talk about their problems tend to have less bullshit to deal with in the future.”

LAPD psychologists go on ride-alongs with patrol officers, attend station roll calls and chat up cops in the coffee rooms. They listen as supervisors complain that society’s criminals are more heavily armed, more desperate and more willing to shoot it out with police than years ago. And they sympathize with detectives who talk about crime victims being younger and more defenseless than ever.

“Cops see more despair and awful behavior in their first three years than most of us see in a lifetime,” says Oakland-based psychologist Ellen Kirschman, author of a book on police culture and relationships. “It’s a greedy profession and can take a lot out of a person.”

The strains of the job have turned good cops into bad, bad into worse. Many troubled cops shut out anyone who’s not part of their world, especially shrinks. They develop us-versus-them attitudes, complaining that even law-abiding citizens seem eager to file complaints against officers who look at them the wrong way. In shrink-speak, police disengage from society.

“What makes a good cop doesn’t necessarily make a good spouse or colleague,” Kirschman adds “They’re good at the Joe Friday, monosyllabic responses. They’ve been trained not to show much emotion. . . . But the ‘just the facts’ demeanor doesn’t always translate well off the job.”

*

In 1968, the LAPD became the first such agency in the nation to have its own staff psychologist. Martin Reiser’s colleagues thought he was crazy for taking the job.

“There was some mutual distrust at the beginning,” recalls Reiser, now retired. “Both sides brought their own stereotypes with them. The officers thought I was an ivory-tower academic who didn’t know a thing about police work, and I thought they were a bunch of heavy-handed cops who pushed people around.”

For the first eight months, Reiser mostly “mingled” with police throughout the city. As he did, his impression changed. He started to respect cops and the work they did. Likewise, officers started realizing that Reiser wasn’t just an egghead.

When he wasn’t counseling officers, Reiser conducted research. He studied the trauma associated with shootings, the soaring incidence of police suicide and the high rates of divorce and problem drinkers in the force. He debunked the use of psychics--which had gained acceptance in some law enforcement circles--finding them no more clairvoyant than regular detectives. He championed the practice of hypnotizing witnesses and victims to retrieve vital details about a murder or suspect. He initiated having psychologists work with the SWAT team on hostage negotiations and suicide calls.

He also started a peer-counseling group so cops could talk about their problems with some of their own. Currently, the department has about 220 peer counselors in addition to staff psychologists.

Reiser is considered the father of police psychology. Departments nationwide emulate what he started at the LAPD, and some agencies, such as the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department, have programs similar to the LAPD’s. The county force, with 1,700 fewer officers, has more psychologists (10), although only six see patients.

Today, the LAPD’s nine psychologists work out of a bank building in Chinatown, a little more than a mile from the department’s downtown headquarters at Parker Center. It’s designed to give officers as much anonymity as possible, but the sheer number of clients sometimes make it difficult to keep their visits a secret. Cops chat anxiously among themselves and thumb through old magazines as they wait for their sessions. The psychologists try to make their offices inviting and serene, conducive for mental healing. Some have little babbling-brook-like fountains, soothing music or greenhouse plants. And, of course, the traditional couch. Their shelves, however, are lined with books probing such ominous subjects as police suicides, depression and abuse.

It’s a dicey matter treating stressed-out officers. No other therapists have fully armed patients walking into their offices. “We don’t have them check their guns at the door,” says Debra Glaser, who heads the LAPD’s Behavioral Science Services. Even worse, many officers are less than pleased about being there--a full 20% show up only because they were ordered to by a supervisor.

For their own safety, LAPD shrinks have secret buzzers hidden in their offices so they can summon help from officers if a patient becomes unhinged. Bulletproof glass protects the receptionist, and electronically locked doors prevent free access to the psychologists’ offices. In the past several years, two therapists have been threatened by patients and had to be placed briefly under protective custody.

Though he’s never actually pushed the panic button, psychologist Gerald Sweet says he’s had his share of tense encounters with troubled cops. “The bottom line is, we do work that has risks attached to it,” he says. “We can’t predict an officer’s every action.” Like the time one cop, with a marriage on the rocks, took his pistol from its holster and handed the gun to Sweet; he was fearful whom he might hurt with it.

Regina Chace, the unit’s newest staff psychologist, says she’s had some officers so outraged over being ordered to get counseling that they’ve shouted obscenities at her and bolted from the office. “I don’t try to stop them. I have to let them go. But once they’re out the door, I notify their supervisors.”

Among the most important determinations therapists must make is whether a cop is a danger to himself or others. If they make a wrong call, it might cost a life. But if a psychologist overreacts, an officer might lose his job.

Susan Saxe-Clifford, a former LAPD psychologist who now privately consults for about 50 police agencies throughout the state, recommended to city officials in 1981 that a troubled officer she evaluated have his weapon taken away and his police powers revoked. He was placed on temporary leave, but his request for a stress-disability pension was later denied by city officials who, relying on the opinions of outside psychiatrists, concluded he was exaggerating his racist and violent feelings. In a short time he was back on the streets. Years later, Mark Fuhrman’s history of bigotry and violent fantasies surfaced again, helping to derail the O.J. Simpson murder prosecution.

“Sometimes there’s only so much you can do,” she says. “We don’t have a crystal ball.”

*

You’re going to rub elbows with all the elite. Pimps, addicts, thieves, bums, winos, girls who can’t keep an address and men who don’t care. Liars, cheats, con men, the class of skid row. . . . Oh it’s going to be a thrill a minute when you get an unknown trouble call and hit a backyard at 2 in the morning, never knowing who you’ll meet: a kid with a knife, a pill-head with a gun or two ex-cons with nothing to lose.

--Sgt. Joe Friday

*

For 33 years, Chief Bernard C. Parks has witnessed up close the pressures of police work at the LAPD. Many problems cops get into, both in the community and within the department, are related to job stress, he says. Conversely, mentally healthier cops, he contends, will take fewer sick days, have a better outlook on the job and generate fewer citizen complaints.

Among Parks’ first orders of business upon his swearing in last summer was declaring “the mental well-being of officers” a top priority. (Ironically, some psychologists and department brass say, Parks’ tendency to micro-manage and his focus on accountability will likely drive more cops into counseling. “His style causes a lot of anxiety,” says one psychologist. Recently, Parks reorganized the Behavioral Science Services and reshuffled some top jobs in the unit, proving that even psychologists aren’t immune to the new chief’s stress-inducing management.)

Under his mental wellness program, Parks is pushing to expand the unit, initially to 15 staff psychologists and possibly more in the future. He wants to send them into police stations, hoping that police who get to know psychologists better will be more willing to seek counseling from them. So far, however, those positions haven’t been funded.

“What we’re doing here is psychological triage,” says department head Glaser. “We’re hoping to become more proactive.”

The workload will only grow, officials predict. Last year, the number of clients logged was 753.

Currently, LAPD psychologists juggle dozens of patients, conduct training seminars and help with hostage negotiations or with those threatening suicide. Some also help compile psychological profiles of serial murderers, rapists or prolific burglars. Others, such as psychologist Kevin J. Jablonski, coordinate research on how cops cope with being named in civil lawsuits, possible on-the-job exposure to HIV or just plain anger.

*

“They call it eating their gun,” says Scott Watson, who specializes in the darkest element of police psychology: suicide. “And it’s disturbing how often it occurs.”

An average of two active-duty LAPD cops kill themselves each year. In the last eight years, more LAPD officers have committed suicide (17) than have been killed in the line of duty (14). Compared to the general population, LAPD cops are nearly three times more likely to commit suicide.

Part of the problem, Watson says, is that a police officer can turn suicidal thoughts into reality as fast as it takes to draw the gun from its holster and put it to his head. (Most cops who kill themselves do so with their own service handguns.) Watson says most who take their lives generally have marital or relationship problems, abuse alcohol to deal with stress, face disciplinary problems or experience serious health problems, including depression. Sweet, who also specializes in suicide, teaches officers and their superiors what to look for in themselves and others when it comes to identifying life-threatening stress.

“Police don’t talk about [suicide],” he says. “They view it as shameful.” Police may kill themselves for reasons not directly associated with the job, he says, but their exposure to society’s worst elements creates “cumulative stress,” which affects their day-to-day outlook.

That can eat at the shrinks as well.

Watson had to be “professionally debriefed” after treating officers who investigated the murders of two young children shot to death by their father as they played at the beach. “I was vicariously traumatized,” he recalls. “I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t sleep.”

More recently, he counseled the friends, family and colleagues of an officer killed on New Year’s Eve, shot in the head by a teenage murder suspect.

“Every incident has its own special ingredients that get you upset or get you agitated,” Watson says. “You can’t help it.”

While more police take their lives than nearly all other professions, Watson knows there is another line of work that historically ranks just below them: psychologists. “We all try to look out for each other in this office,” he says.

In just one year, Regina Chace has gone through the North Hollywood shootout, seen a man take his life by jumping off a building and consoled the friends and family of two dead officers--one who committed suicide, the other murdered. “A lot of this stuff keeps you up at night,” she says. “We deal with a unique clientele. We never know what we’re going to see.”

Chief Parks puts it another way: “[Law enforcement] is one of the few professions where you have to put on a bulletproof vest just to go to work. Most people run away from danger. We run to it.”