Job Stress Takes Toll On Badge Of Courage Workshop Points Out Health, Emotional Hazards Faced By Police Officers In The Daily Line Of Duty

Tires squeal, sirens scream and radios crackle as police officers respond to a call.

But it may be long afterward that the real danger begins.

The adrenaline that courses through an officer’s body each day prepares that body for decisive physical action.

But over time, that heightened response occurs even when there is no emergency, raising the officers’ heart rates, circulation and respiration, slowing digestion, depressing the immune systems and tightening the muscles in their necks, backs and shoulders. It makes them edgy and irritable with family members. They have stomachaches and headaches. They’re tired no matter how much they sleep.

Eventually, says a leading police psychologist, the stress can be deadly.

In a daylong workshop in Spokane on Friday, Lawrence Blum told 150 area officers that the effects of repeated adrenaline rushes and post-traumatic stress can shorten their lives and interfere with job performance.

“As a society, we’re killing off the protectors,” he said.

Blum has been commissioned to study disease and death rates among firefighters and police officers in Washington by the state councils of officers and firefighters.

Nationally, Blum said, police officers die about 18 years earlier than civilian municipal employees - at an average age of 57.

One study cited showed that police officers had higher rates of cancer, suicide and heart disease than civilian municipal workers. The longer the officer served, the higher the rates - especially with heart disease.

A Spokesman-Review check of Washington state death records Friday showed that of the 1,311 officer deaths from 1986 through 1995, the average age at time of death was 69.1. Records showed their rates of suicide were the same as the general population.

In Spokane County, the average age at death was even higher - over 70. But, the percentage of officers who suffered acute heart problems was almost twice that of the rest of the population.

Spokane mayoral candidate Duane Somers and state Rep. Mark Sterk, who plans to run for county sheriff next year, attended Friday’s workshop.

Organizers hope to see the state lower the retirement age for police officers from 55 to 50 years or 25 years of service. They want to educate the public.

But it was also a chance to educate themselves.

When organizer Sgt. Chuck Reisenauer heard Blum speak last year in Denver, he went out and called his wife, Patrol Officer Julie Reisenauer, and apologized for years of “a double life.”

“Everything he was saying was like yes, that’s why I’m that way.”

Emotionally, officers struggle with the outer cop who shows no emotion and never asks for help and the inner cop who desperately needs it.

Many times, the family suffers.

“All of you who tell me you’re not taking work home are full of it,” Blum told the officers. “It’s inescapable.”

Blum said officers can feel stress from repeated encounters with difficult circumstances or a single traumatic event. Even the stress surrounding a shooting may have little to do with the criminal act itself and everything to do with the innocent people hurt, the sense of helplessness.

“What kills cops is the dead child they cannot save,” Blum said.

He said obvious signs that stress is affecting an officer are changes in habits or moods, worrying about work long after a shift ends, withdrawing from activities or friends, stopping workouts and experiencing flashbacks.

He doesn’t believe in simply offering group therapy or debriefing after a particularly traumatic event, but a more pro-active approach that also includes teaching deep breathing and visualization techniques and personal exercise programs to stabilize moods and emotions beforehand.

Officers also can help themselves by talking to someone they respect and trust and finding a hobby that can help them maintain perspective.

Blum, who is in private practice in Orange County, Calif., and has worked as psychologist for 15 different departments, sees cops as “the good guys” that society treats as expendable. He urges departments to aggressively plan and prepare officers for stress.

To ignore the symptoms is to invite divorce, illness and problems on the job. In studies of officers killed in the line of duty, a shocking number had seemed distracted by other problems shortly beforehand and were in a poor frame of mind, he said.

“A positive mental attitude is critical.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo

The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Julie Sullivan Staff writer Staff writer Kim Barker contributed to this report.