Stresses of Police Work
by Joseph E. Badger
On May 12, 2011, Bloomington, Indiana’s Northside Exchange Club had its 51st Annual Crime
Prevention Program, which featured its Police Officer of the Year dinner and award ceremony.
One nominee each came from the Bloomington (Ind.) PD, Monroe County Sheriff’s Department,
Indiana State Police, Ellettsville PD and Indiana University Police Department.
The Honorable Kenneth G. Todd, judge of Monroe Circuit Court asked me to give the keynote address
at the ceremony and suggested that I describe the stresses confronting police officers.
What follows are excerpts from that address:
Police officers risk their lives on a daily basis. They do things that no one else will. Many times, we
forget about them unless we need them for something. Other times, we get upset when they aren't right
there the second we do need them. If a police officer stops you for a traffic violation, remember, he
wasn't the one committing the offense. You were. It isn't his fault you were speeding or didn't stop at
the light. He is doing his job. You're just upset because you got caught.
As for stress, police are faced with all kinds – more than you imagine – and those stresses differ from
those of the average citizen.
The National Institute of Justice — the research, development and evaluation agency of the U.S.
Department of Justice — lists several factors that can cause stress and fatigue for law enforcement
officers.
They say included among work-related factors are these:
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Inadequate or broken equipment.
Excessive overtime.
Frequent rotating shifts.
Regular changes in duties — for example, spending one day filling out paperwork and the next
intervening in a violent domestic dispute.
In addition, there are individual factors such as:
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Family problems.
Financial problems.
Health problems.
Taking a second job to make extra income.
Let me dwell a moment on the “frequent rotating shifts.” When I became an Indiana State trooper [in
1968], you would not believe our shift changes. After a few days off, I would come back to work at 5
p.m. to 2 a.m. Yes, a 9-hour shift. The next night it is 4 to 1. Then a 3 to 12. Next a 1 to 10. Then a
couple of 6 a.m. to 3 p.m. shifts followed by two days off.
The problem with such irregular fluctuations is the officer does not have time to reset his or her
circadian rhythm. That’s the technical term for our internal body clock which regulates the 24-hour
daily cycle of all biological processes. In its simplest form, your brain wants to sleep when it’s dark out
and be awake when it’s light.
According to a study I heard about several years ago, your body needs 30 days or so to adjust to each
different shift. When your shift changes five times in six days, you are some 150 days out of sync
before the week is out. Multiple that by week after week and you can never catch up.
These continual changes in work hours not only cause body stress, but they also can cause personal
stress as well, as officers make adjustments in how they interact with their spouses, children, parents,
extended family members and friends. When I first came on the department and worked in the
northern part of the state, I had to put black contact paper over the bedroom windows in order to sleep
during the day. Half the time, I did not know what time it was let alone what day it was.
In an article titled “Police Stress” – which I found through the University of Minnesota while
researching this article – “The criminal justice system creates additional stress [for police]. Court
appearances interfere with police officers’ work assignments, personal time, and even sleeping
schedules.
“Turf battles among agencies [FBI – Sheriffs – City – State], perceived leniency of the courts, and
release of offenders on bail, probation, or parole also lead to stress.” The officer works and works to
arrest a bad guy, then the courts go easy on him or dismiss the case altogether. Sometimes the cop
wonders, “Why did I bother?” Believe it or not, inside the officer there can be aggravation,
exasperation and frustration at worst, and an annoyance at best.
Stress also stems from distorted and/or unfavorable news accounts of incidents involving police.
When the public watches videotaped situations of police being rough with a felon, what they don’t see
is what happened before the camera was turned on. Plus, the public more often than not cannot hear
what the violator is screaming at the police.
On appearances in court. Why is it we always seem to get a subpoena for our day off?
I had a one particular drunk-driving case in Hammond … this was when I lived in LaPorte. I lived
over 50 miles away and it took over an hour to make the trip. As you might know, I was scheduled to
appear in court on my day off. The defendant didn’t show, so his lawyer got him a continuance. I got
a second subpoena to court. Yes, on my day off. This time the defendant’s attorney didn’t show.
They got another continuance. But you see, if I didn’t show, they’d dismiss the case.
Third time. Yes, again my day off. I just knew the defense attorney managed to get my schedule.
When I showed up, I simply told him, “If I’m on vacation in Timbuktu and you subpoena me for court,
I’ll be here.” At that, he went in and pled his client guilty. No stress for the lawyer, though. He
probably bilked his client for each appearance.
Think of the stresses that confront you in your job. Bankers are afraid someone is going to default on a
loan. A teller might be worried her cash drawer will be $50 short at the end of the day. Plumbers may
wonder if that dang repair job they did on the old lady’s water heater is going to hold until he can
install a new one. Insurance sales people are under stress to get x-number of new clients before their
next evaluation. Roofers have in mind that they could fall off the roof with one misstep. Politicians.
Who knows, they probably build up stress wondering if they hit “Reply” or “Reply to All.”
I know, you all have some degree of stress in your work, but I guarantee you that your stress is not
anything like that of a police officer.
It isn’t every day that a policeman – or woman – has to have their gun drawn as they approach a house
where there’s a bad guy holed up. It isn’t every day when the officer pulls up to a crash scene where
an infant has been thrown from a car that crossed the median strip of a highway and hit a semi coming
the other way.
It isn’t every day that the officer is dispatched to some particularly squalid section of town because of a
report that shots were fired. It isn’t every day that you’re called to some seedy saloon to break up a bar
fight.
It isn’t every day that an officer gets a radio call from his supervisor to “discuss that little incident you
were in the other day.” All the way into the station the officer is trying to remember what incident
could he be talking about.
However, if you have one of those occasions on Monday, another on Tuesday and so on it’s like
Senator Dirkson is quoted as saying about a billion dollars. “A billion here, a billion there. Pretty
soon it adds up to real money.” (Although he never really said that, it is a good line.) My point being
is that a little pressure here, a little tension there, pretty soon it adds up to some real stress.
Thankfully, it isn’t every day that an officer shoots and kills someone. However, when he does he is
not given time to deal with his trauma until later. He must protect the crime scene, interview
witnesses, make arrests, notify the proper people and tell officials what happened.
He must maintain the image of being in complete control. Usually he has to tell the story several times
to his supervisors, internal affairs, the news media and who knows who all else.
There is always the stress of having to make a split-second decision that you just KNOW will be
second-guessed. First by your sergeant, then the post commander or police chief or superintendent,
then the mayor or the governor – maybe even the Honorable Kenneth G. Todd, Monroe County
Circuit. That is followed by a raft of appellate judges and Supreme Court Justices, each of whom will
take days, months, or YEARS to decide whether you made the correct decision in under a second.
What police officer hasn’t thought he would rather be tried for shooting some dillweed more than he
would want his wife attending the trial of the dillweed who shot her husband?
In his 1991 paper “Not So Obvious Police Stress,” Terry Constant reminds readers: “Police officers
have one of the highest suicide rates in the nation, possibly the highest and they have a [very] high
divorce rate.” According to psychologist Dr. Daniel Goldfarb, a member of The Society for Police and
Criminal Psychology: “The national divorce rate is approximately fifty percent. The divorce rate for
police officers is sixty to seventy-five percent.” Moreover, I have heard even higher percentages.
Former police chief Chuck Pratt, author of a piece titled “Police Headquarters” wrote: “In a 20-25 year
career span it is not particularly unusual for an officer to go thru 6-8 marriages.”
Police seem also to be problem drinkers about twice as often as the general population.
The late Dr. Hans Selye, once the world’s foremost researcher in stress, said that police work is “the
most stressful occupation in America even surpassing the formidable stresses of air traffic control.”
And that was before the controllers were all falling asleep.
As Terry Constant points out, “Debilitation from this daily stress accumulation makes officers more
vulnerable to traumatic and normal pressures of life. The weakening process is often too slow to see;
even his friends aren’t aware of the damage being done.”
You might not know it, but more police are killed during traffic stops than any other police activity.
I was one of the highest activity officers in whichever district I was assigned. And no, I didn’t have a
quota. I could arrest as many violators that I wanted. But that meant I was doing something where I
could be killed more often than most others. And I do not mean just being hit by some drunk who
didn’t move over when I had a violator stopped alongside the road.
We stop cars for various reasons. We hear excuses to gain our sympathy or we have to listen to
demeaning indignities. A small percentage of the people we stop may want to kill or injure the officers
– maybe he just robbed a bank or drove away from a gas station without paying, yet we are expected to
be friendly at best – or neutral at worst. Even in a traffic stop, a police officer is expected to be
pleasant, agreeable, and friendly. After all, isn't the motorist a good person who has merely made a
small, temporary mistake?
If an officer approaches a car with a friendly attitude, his guard is down. He can't keep his defenses up
and view a person as his friend at the same time. If an officer continually approaches cars with a
friendly attitude, the chief may just happen to get a call that one of his officers is lying in a pool of
blood along the highway.
If an officer approaches a driver thinking, “This might be the one who attacks me,” he may come
across as rude, gruff and uncaring. It is hard to be on guard for your life and appear friendly at the
same time. When an officer approaches a car with a guarded attitude, the post commander may get a
call that he has a cynical, brutal cop on the force who has no business serving the community.
When someone calls the police, they expect the officer to make decisions to handle the situation.
When the officer arrives he decides what he can and should do, but way in the back of his mind are his
agency’s orders, rules and regulations.
Consider the high-speed chase. To chase or not to chase, that is the question. Ah, I remember several
such chases with fondness. In all my high-speed chases only one got away. Well, no, he didn’t get
away… I let him go… to save for another day. The case was one in Gibson County. It had not rained
for weeks and the gravel county roads were nothing but dust. The bad guy took off down one of those
gravel roads and I could barely see as far as the hood ornament on my squad car, so I broke off the
chase and knew that one day I’d peel his hide off some oak tree when he failed to negotiate a turn on
that gravel road.
As for stress during such a run, you wonder: “What if the speeder hits someone?” “What if someone
pulls out in front of ME?” If officers measured their stress levels with a thermometer, the mercury
would pop out the top.
One particular “It-isn’t-every-day-that-an-officer…” that I did not include was: It isn’t every day that
an officer gets into a high-speed chase of a stolen vehicle for 25 minutes only to have the driver bail
and take off on foot.
One of the “Policeman of the Year” nominees was Officer Brian Oliger of the Indiana University
Police Department. He, in fact, was involved in just such a situation.
As it so happens, a man had had his rental car towed earlier in the night while he was out visiting bars
so at 0530 hours on February 18, 2011, so he decided to steal a pickup truck. He was in the Army at
the time and had been attending a weapons school and he had to be back for class in the morning. His
vehicle of choice was a white 2009 Dodge Ram truck with an attached trailer carrying carpet cleaning
equipment, not quite the sort of thing you would want to outrun the police.
In his attempt to evade capture, he jumped into a 30-40-feet-deep frigid quarry pool forgetting, I
suppose, that he did not know how to swim very well.
According to Indiana University officer Brian Oliger, the poor guy “swam about three-quarters of the
way across the quarry before he started to get into trouble. He turned in the water and shouted ‘Help,
I'm drowning’ before going under a couple times and then resurfacing.”
The good news is that Oliger had been a lifeguard in high school and had water survival training in the
military. (His Army MOS was Airborne Infantry and his unit was a Long Range Surveillance
Company.) Oliger disregarded the bitter cold temperature, swam out to the violator and brought him
back safely. How cold was it? According to Oliger, “I believe the temperature was in the mid- to
upper-30’s around the time of the incident. Ice had been on the water in area lakes the day before the
chase but had melted … it was extremely cold but no ice.”
In Oliger’s own words, he said, “The stress level rose for me when we began running through the
woods. We had no clue who this person was and whether or not they had a weapon. As I chased [him]
through the woods, I thought to myself, he could have a gun and be setting me up for an ambush. …
When he jumped into the water [and] began shouting that he was drowning, I didn't really take the time
to think about how terrible of an idea this was to jump in the water. When I jumped in and hit that cold
water, that's when the stress really hit me. What if he tried to drown me?”
The good news is, Oliger saved the man from drowning. After they treated the vehicle thief for
hypothermia, he is to stand trial for vehicle theft, resisting law enforcement, operating a vehicle while
intoxicated and leaving the scene of an accident.
Officer Oliger was the one named Police Officer of the Year at the award ceremony.
Hopefully, this will be read by those other than law enforcement personnel and this will offer a
better understanding of the stresses occurring to officers on a daily basis. When you see a cop
on the street or even in a donut shop, extend your hand and say, “Thank you for all you do.” You
could even say that AFTER they give you a ticket.
The interesting part of police work, though, is that the hours are long, the pay could be better, but the
nice part is, the customer is always wrong.
(About the author: Joseph E. Badger is an internationally known accident reconstructionist who has
had over 100 articles published in such periodicals as Law and Order magazine, Accident
Reconstruction Journal, Accident Investigation Quarterly, and others. Having retired after 20 years
with the Indiana State Police, Mr. Badger resides in Bloomington, Indiana.)