Police Stress Book Review

New for 2000, Web Site: Police Families

Ellen Kischman's twenty years as a police therapist based in Oakland, California provides rich fodder for this no-holds-barred analysis of police stress. She has tremendous empathy for the police spouse and isn't afraid to risk alienating those officers who read her book. Yet she also has an obvious deep feeling for police officers themselves and is never malicious in her critique of their self-destructive behaviors.

Using examples from her clinical practice, she shows how police officers and their families need to overcome many problems, not the least of which is the officer's own denial, to survive and thrive. Every topic she covers (and she doesn't miss any I could spot) is illustrated with real life human, sometimes humdrum ( at least when compared to television cop shows), drama. I mean this as a compliment. Even television shows like Homicide and NYPD Blue which try to depict police stress and try to make cops look human, always succumb and go over-the-top occasionally. The true stories Kirshman tells are ones you can relate to.

This important contribution to police stress literature covers everything from organizational stress to critical incidents, with helpful hints throughout. She has a description of a make believe police department from hell that is too long to quote here (pages 52-53), but it is a classic which starts with "labor and management are at odds over working conditions and benefits," and concludes with "the chief is angry at being misquoted by the media, and everyone is angry with the chief." She makes the points I've often described as losing years of hard-earned savings in a supposedly secure bank account in her section on departmental disciplinary action aptly titled "One sin is worth a thousand good deeds".

In a comprehensive and compassionate look at critical incidents and police stress, she includes the often ignored family, noting that "behind the primary trauma victim are the nearly invisible family members, friends, and co-workers whose lives are also deeply affected by the trauma - but for whom few services exist." She rightly emphasizes that the depth and severity of one's reaction is really individual ("in the eyes of the beholder"), an observation that must be heeded lest we minimize the impact a trauma has on our friends and loved ones. Clinically Kirschman states unequivicably throughout what I have been writing about here: what you resist, persists. And she isn't afraid to nail the police subculture which emphasizes macho silence over human self-disclosure. Any police counselor and most police spouses know how destructive this is psychologically. Writing about a client:

"I encouraged Chris to go home and tell his wife what happened. When he returned the next week, he felt much better for having talked to her. We both could see a pattern: What he resisted, persisted. The more he talked, the better he felt. Sharing this incident with his wife helped him to feel less guilty about loving a dangerous profession that entailed risk and potential loss for his family and his children. His wife was able to tell him that she was more upset by the emotional distance he created by keeping things to himself than by the less likely probability that he would be killed in the line of duty."

Kirschman on the blood and guts aspect of the job and how family members need to understand what it's like to come home to a family "crisis":

"Don't be surprised if your cop cannot relate to family life because everything seems minor or trivial in comparrison with what he or she was just been though or witnessed. An officer who has just seen a child cut in half by a train may have little sympathy for a scraped knee. This is temporary and not intentionally done to hurt anyone. Gently bring it to his or her attention."

A much needed candid chapter on police domestic abuse "pulls no punches" while explaining clearly how the macho subculture, the daily authoritarian role expected and needed on the job, can develop into a need to control the family. Add a lack of understanding how what rates a 1 on a 10 scale of escalating force on the street will be a 7 at home, and an officer can end up as a domestic abuser. I have had a number of police clients arrested for leaving bruises on their wives arms when they were restraining their wives from hitting them. These cases were eventually dismissed, but the point is that the officer thought he was using minimal force based on what he would do on the street.

It is a shame that I feel the need to characterize the chapter called "Swimming Upstream", which is about the "special challenges facing women, minorities, lesbians and gay men in law enforcement" as daring. But given that law enforcement in the United State was primarily a white Anglo-Saxon male bastion up until not that long ago, it isn't surprising that there are still white male heterosexual officers who will will dismiss everything else Kirschman says when they get to this at page 197 because of old prejudices. Too bad. Male police officers need to hear things like this:

"As with women, gay men are presumed to lack such manly attributes as courage, bravery, and loyalty. And like women, when they demonstrate courage and competence, they threaten the notion that only "manly" men can do police work."

The book is an important contribution not only to the literature on police stress and the police marriage and family, but to police stress in general. Police officers, male in particular, should not shy away from it because of the title. Unfortunately the book is most likely to be brought home by spouses, and most of these will be police wives. And it will be strategically placed so husbands will see it. And some wives will even hint that perhaps hubbies should read it. For those of you reading this now: don't be put off because this book is called "I Love a Cop". This is one of the best books on police stress out there and reading it will give you insight into how police stress effects both you and your loved ones.

Kirschman, Ellen; I Love a Cop: What Police Families Need to Know, Guilford Press, New York, 1997, 292 pages.,