Arresting a fellow officer

Gene Sanders, Ph.D.
--------
The following was received via Email.  It has been edited to protect
the innocent. Ed.

I am involved in a very delicate and personally disturbing case and
I am wondering if those of you who deal professionally with police
stress issues have ever encountered anything quite like this.

About six months ago I had to investigate a complaint against a
fellow officer. I have known this officer for 10 yrs.
I took on this case (rather than IAD) because NOBODY believed that this
complaint would be [un-founded] and we wanted to string this loser (the
complainant) up by his you-know-what's.

Well, as it turns out, the investigation began to turn sour and the
other officer, my friend, confessed [and] several other cases came to
light. I had to arrest him and he plead guilty and is awaiting
sentencing on June 28th.

This is driving me crazy. I see his wife and kids around town and
they glare at me. I was fishing a few weeks ago and his young son
happened to be fishing next to me with his grandfather and started
crying when he saw me.

My question....Have you ever dealt with this situation before? I am
having a problem dealing with not only arresting a fellow officer, but
also of having this friend break down in front of me, confess his entire
"problem" to me and beg me for help, and then having to arrest him.
Although I participate in the jokes going around the Dept. about this
one-time highly-regarded officer,the truth is that it is really
bothering me. I am dreading the sentencing which is coming up and cannot
sleep. One issue that really bothers me is that, at several points in
the investigation, the complainant just wanted to drop the whole thing,
but I prodded him to carry through with it, thinking that I would have a
strong "False Reports" case against him.

Does anyone have experience with officers in similar situations?
Should I speak at the sentencing or remain silent? 

Again, it is not just the fact that I had to arrest him that
bothers me. More so, that he was having problems, then beg me to help
him. I know that there is no place on a police dept. for an officer who
abuses his authority, and I know he had to be arrested, but how do I
detach myself from the hardship that his wife and children must now
endure?

Sorry if I rambled. Any advise would be appreciated

Thanks for listening.

Response

You raise some very valid police stress questions.  Not only what the
job has done to your friend, but what it is currently doing to you. 

As a police psychologist I have, nearly every day, to make decisions
that drastically affect an officer's career and indirectly, therefore,
his or her family.  And often there is no gentle way to tell someone
that his or her law enforcement career is over.  Yet it is an
unfortunate fact that, if we care about the person, we are concerned
with doing what is best for them--in the world of police stress and
trauma, that often means the officer will be injured for life--not
pleasant, but a fact nevertheless.

For the sake of the many officers who haven't run into this problem
before, I'd like to out-line some of the general issues involved.  Then
I'll take some time to address both some of the issues you bring up for
your own stress, but also, some issues about police stress and
problematic behavior of police officers under stress.

As you indicated this is a very stressing time for you and your friend. 
What you may not be aware of is that (your issues and your friend's) are
two distinctly separate issues.

As you are finding out, merely to say it is your job is not enough. 
Further, there are many areas of this problem that touch you personally,
i.e., the trauma you think you caused your friends wife and family.  So
simply isolating yourself, ignoring the problem, is not going to help
either.

So what to do to reduce stress for yourself:

1) Understand that your friend was engaged in behavior he KNEW was going to cause problems.

2) Understand that somebody was, eventually, going to catch your friend, and have to deal with it in some manner. 

3) Understand that of all the people you can be arrested by, a friend is probably the best way to go. 

Those are the basic facts.

Next, you need to appreciate that your friend is an adult, and is
capable of making his own decisions (whether they were against the law
or not)--so only your friend is responsible for his arrest, not you. 
Adults are going to do what adults are going to do, that's just how it
is.

Lastly, on your own stress issues.  You need to consider two things: a)
You probably did your friend a favor (even if nobody can see that).  He
obviously needs help and you probably did the only thing that could get
him the help he needs;  b) things really could have been much worse--you
may not be aware that for every officer that gets killed in the line of
duty two or three times as many officeršs commit suicide--so, things
definitely could have been worse for your friend.

Now with regard to your friend.

Job-related injury and trauma.

Even in our corner of the universe, 2 plus 2 still equals 4, i.e., if
your friend was o.k. at the time he was hired on as a police officer,
but is not o.k. now, he probably suffered some sort of on-the-job trauma
that caused the symptoms he eventually got arrested for (symptoms NEVER
come out of nowhere).  And, he probably has a good worker's comp case if
he is willing to push it.

Given the number of these kinds of cases I've seen, it is likely
that the only way your friend was going to get help for his problems,
was if something serious happened to him.  And as I said, he may have
been lucky he ONLY  got arrested--as Išve mentioned, quite a few police
officeršs do not leave the job standing up.

General summary.

If you've read "Good Cops Gone Bad: PTSD?" on this website, you may
appreciate that job-related stress in law enforcement is a very
dangerous thing.  All the more dangerous because it can cause problems
in wholly unexpected areas of an officeršs life as both you and your
friend are finding out.  And, therefore, it behooves all of us to
appreciate the fact that these dangers exist, and be ready to educate
ourselves about what we can do to minimize stress and trauma in police
work.  The very stress and trauma that can lead to the kinds of problems
we see here.

As always I suggest:

1. Find a therapist you can trust and talk things over with them.
2. Educate yourself on stress interventions, i.e., diet, exercise, sleep
and the like.
3. If chronic-stress symptoms develop and last more than six months you
may need a professional diagnosis to rule out PTSD, and the advise of an
attorney may be needed.

Gene Sanders, Ph.D.