Police Stressline Book Review
CopShock: Surviving Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) by Allen R. Kates

Allen Kates has been researching this important contribution to the literature on police stress, and police PTSD in particular, for six years. He's traveled the country and talked to numerous police officers and heard their horror stories first hand. He's interviewed therapists and stress counselors. He's no doubt become bleary-eyed searching the web for resource sites. In fact, he's been so thorough that he even tracked me down only a few months after this web site went online.

The following excerpt illustrates not only a novelist's way with words that Kates possesses, but the complexity of police PTSD, and how policies in New York City and elsewhere which make police unwilling to shoot can have long term consequences.

As the man pressed his attack, Christine felt a sticky wetness down her uniform. Light-headed, losing blood, she grabbed at the concrete wall. Her hand fell on a rusted metal handrail. What drew her attention, and what remains a recurring memory today, was the image of her own blood blackening the painted, yellow, rotted steel.

With unexpected strength, she wrenched the handrail from the wall and thrust it at him. Now she was on the attack. Still trying to retrieve the spare gun with her right hand, she swung the four foot pole from side to side to keep him at bay.

She struck the wall, then the side of the train, missing the man yet driving him back, The next blow made contact, bludgeoning him on the neck and shoulder. She clubbed him again in the neck. Jerking the pole back to gain momentum, she struck the train car, snapping the shaft in half.

Taking advantage of the sudden shift in the struggle, her assailant scooped up the broken half of the handrail and hammered her in the shoulder and hands.

As long as he isn't cutting me, she thought, I can try again for the gun.

Using both hands as he pummeled her, she finally freed her service revolver from the holster. But then he turned around and walked away towards the rear of the train.

"Police, don't move!" she shouted, pointing the gun at his back. But he didn't stop.

New York City Police Department policy does not permit shooting a fleeing felon unless he poses an immediate threat. The policy does not take into account situations where a perpetrator has just attempted to murder a police office (or anybody for that matter) and very likely could do the same thing again. Thinking back, Christine told Kates that she regretted her decision not to shoot. Clinically, shooting might well have spared her the sense of utter helplessness that would plague her long after the incident when she developed PTSD. However, shooting might have led to another type of trauma as her own actions would have been investigated by Internal Affairs who might have decided the shooting was unjustified. She might have lost her job or even been charged herself.

CopShock is really three books in one. First, it is a series of compelling, often riveting true stories of officers who experienced trauma and its after effects (pages 7-214). Each account reads like a short story. Fair warning: so realistic is the writing that those who have lived through similar experiences may well experience flashbacks as they read.

The second part of the book (pages 217-241) is about what to do about "copshock".  While it is more clinical than the first part, it is written in an easily accessible, conversational style..

The third part (pages 245-347), Issues and Support Sources is an invaluable resource for all of those who are reading this right now on the Web. Kates has scoured the web for resources and has outdone me tenfold in locating helpful web sites. He briefly describes each web site (Stressline is on page 262) in an amazing thirty-two categories. This research alone makes it an invaluable reference book for police stress therapists and counselors, as well as for those suffering from "copshock".  

Police and corrections officers, and others who work in emergency services or had traumatic experiences in the military - and their families - will find this book exceedingly helpful. My only words of caution is to those who haven't worked through their own PTSD or aren't currently in therapy. They may find this book triggers emotions they are not prepared to handle. Hopefully if that happens, they will skip to the part of the book that emphasizes how treatable police PTSD is, and offers excellent advice of how to find appropriate resources.

CopShock is  published by Holbrook Street Press, Tuscon, Arizona, 1999.
472 pages. holbrookstpress@theriver.com