With Major Stress, Major Peril Come Major Needs

A police officer is shot to death in a South Los Angeles apartment building.

LAPD officers pursue a suspect at high speeds into Santa Monica, eventually shooting and killing him as events unfold on live television.

A mentally ill man flourishing a kitchen knife allegedly charges a group of officers and is fatally shot.

By any measure, these deadly, high-profile encounters, which occurred in rapid-fire succession in late February, marked a frenetic time for Los Angeles Police Department investigators and top commanders trying to sort through the cold, hard facts.

But to another group of LAPD professionals dealing with the consequences of police work -- including shootings by officers and cops killed in the line of duty -- it was particularly intense. That’s because their job is to deal with events through the prism of human emotions.

“When we have an officer-involved shooting with a death, we deploy our psychologists immediately and where they are needed,” said Debra F. Glaser, the 23-year LAPD veteran who heads the department’s Behavioral Sciences Services unit. “And they are involved for as long as their work needs to be done.”

Formed in 1968 as the nation’s first in-house police psychological unit, Behavioral Sciences helps police address the full spectrum of psychological trauma, pain and frustration arising out of their work.

But the unit’s job isn’t limited to helping cops cope.

When Ricardo Lizarraga was shot to death after responding to a domestic violence call Feb. 20, the unit immediately dispatched psychologists to reach out to all those touched by the tragedy.

The vast police family includes police partners, responding officers, civilian employees, stationhouse colleagues and academy classmates as well as spouses, significant others, children and friends.

The unit’s 16 psychologists often appear at the scenes of tragedies, or at hospitals, accompanying officers who have the grim duty of notifying next of kin.

The unit includes an employee assistance team that helps make funeral arrangements, from selection of sites for services and burial to choosing seating and regulating traffic for funeral processions.

Part of the process includes helping the family cope with longer-term issues, such as obtaining insurance and pension money or helping select a financial planner.

Although the initial push is in the first two to three weeks after the shooting, LAPD psychologists are also involved in debriefings and post-event counseling in short and long terms.

After last month’s spate of shootings, for example, the unit debriefed more than 100 officers.

Andrew Ryan Jr., chairman of Police Psychological Services for the Alexandria, Va.-based International Assn. of Chiefs of Police, said such services are a crucial part of a big police department.

“Being as large as the LAPD is, not only officers but civilians and all of their families, it’s the equivalent of a small city,” he said. “You have all of the normal needs for mental health services that the small city would need. Then you have the conditions that create high stress.

“You have police out there dealing with everything from domestic issues, child abuse to earthquakes and other natural disasters,” Ryan said. “It takes a lot of specialties and a lot of specialized training to deal with the needs of the police population. It’s not the same as dealing with mental health issues of the general public.”

For the last two decades, LAPD Behavioral Sciences staff has been dispatched with SWAT teams to deal with hostage situations, barricaded suspects and “jumpers.”

Those responsibilities expanded in the mid-1980s when the department made it mandatory for cops in officer-involved shootings to be debriefed by Behavioral Sciences staff members.

The reasoning, Glaser said, was simple. “Sometimes officers don’t know when they are hurting,” even if they have nightmares or trouble concentrating at work.

It also removes the stigma from admitting that as an individual, he or she has psychological issues to deal with.

“When officers involved in incidents are ordered into debriefings after a traumatic event, they recognize the department cares about them,” Glaser said. “It also normalizes the event, in the sense that other officers are going through the same thing.”

The LAPD again expanded the role of the Behavioral Sciences unit to include all “critical incidents,” after a series of natural and man-made disasters in the early 1990s, including the Rodney G. King beating in 1991, the 1992 Los Angeles riots, the 1993 Malibu fire and the 1994 Northridge earthquake.

And in his efforts to reform the department, Chief William J. Bratton is using a team of doctors and command staff to make decisions on when and if officers should be returned to the field after use-of-force incidents.

Although officers may strike some as strong, silent types, Glaser said, they have accepted therapists as part of the LAPD culture, perhaps because the unit has been around so long.

In fact, Behavioral Sciences is more integrated into the department than ever, she said.

There are psychologists in each of the department’s 18 divisions and special units including the SWAT, Metropolitan and Scientific Investigation divisions. They are involved in training, from recruits at the Police Academy to captains.

They also help with management consultation issues, employee health and wellness, and the everyday pressures on officers and civilians.

Stresses include not just the threat of violence but normal working conditions, such as long hours, heavy paperwork and a demanding public.

“The old model is to wait for someone to call and treat them,” Glaser said. “We are proactive, preventing psychological injuries, rather than waiting for them to happen and treating them later.”