Stress

Police officers encounter work-related stressors unknown to most other professionals. Street-level police work often places the officer in imminent risk of physical injury or death. Even when their own personal safety is not at risk, officers are often witness to others who have been brutalized or killed, and are suffering. Coupled with this often-unpredictable work environment, many officers also experience stress as a result of their exposure to the bureaucratic structure of the police department itself. Officers experience both acute and chronic stressors that, over time, [Page 444]can affect job performance, personal relationships, and long-term psychological adjustment and physical health. At their most severe, the effects of stress may manifest in posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), substance abuse, divorce, or suicide. Law enforcement agencies, recognizing the impact stress can have on officers and their families, are implementing prevention and reduction strategies.

Police routinely interact with the most antisocial elements of society. They face unusual and disturbing events, such as child victims and violent death. Frequent encounters with habitual rule breakers, capable of great manipulation and violence, begin to distort the officer's perception of human character. The job is often reactive, not proactive, and split-second decisions are required. Responsibility for the safety of self and others is paramount, and officers are expected to counter these highly emotional circumstances with restraint and calm.

The stress of physical danger is often secondary to the stress inherent in the bureaucratic nature of most police organizations. When officers enter the academy, they are instructed on the hazards they may face in the community, but they are often unprepared for the hierarchy of internal departmental organization. Like the military, the police institution often requires sacrifice of the individual for the good of the police fraternity and the community. Because it is a public entity, officers often are under great public scrutiny and are discouraged by the sometimes-adverse publicity.

The paramilitary nature of police organizations requires line officers to exercise considerable discretion under the watchful eye of often-rigid management. Managers themselves experience stress from a perceived lack of support from the department and the strain of having to discipline subordinates. In many instances, leadership remains predominantly white and male, and opportunities for advancement are limited. Emphasis on organizational efficiency and tight control of standards and procedures causes stress, because officers must adhere to inflexible, impersonal administrative policies, as well as strict chains of command and rules for paperwork. Line officers seldom have a say in the management decisions that directly affect their work environment. In particular, mandatory, rotating shift work is very arduous on an officer's life, both at work and at home. An officer doing shift work rarely gets a chance to establish normal patterns for eating, sleeping, and time with family.

Stress can be acute or chronic. Officers experience a different kind of stress called burst stress; they transition from low arousal to high activity and pressure in a burst. This acute kind of stress is usually the result of a critical incident, a sudden and unexpected event that officers may encounter on the front line of police work. Death or serious injury to another officer, responsibility for wounding or killing a suspect or bystander, mass disaster casualties, and being wounded or in extreme danger themselves are all events that may overwhelm officers’ ability to cope. The critical incident is an event experienced outside the realm of normal human experience, and it disrupts an officer's sense of control. Developing PTSD is a resulting concern in these types of encounters. PTSD is experienced as a cluster of symptoms that includes persistent reexperiencing of the event in flashbacks or nightmares; avoidance or numbing to the event; detachment from normal life; and extreme arousal and agitation manifesting in sleep disruption, an inability to concentrate, and/or overreaction and hypervigilance.

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