Salt Lake Community College

Final Paper

Police Officers and Their Hardships of Life

Dillon Buchanan

Criminal Justice 1010

Minichino

April 29, 2017

 Police officers are around us everyday, whether we see them or not, protecting us,

fighting for us, even building personal relationships with us, but many people find this to be

unnerving, they find it to be a position of too much power for a single individual of the people to

hold-- especially when that person that can ruin anyones lives on a whim or thought. These

police officers have a direct duty to not only serve the people, but they also have a job-- a role

--to fulfill and when it comes to being on the job for justice, that job will always come first

before the people, every time. Though, police officers are people too, they are not cogs within a

machine doing a robots job, they have emotions and thinking about their actions too and,

sometimes, these actions can eat up the minds of these officers. Let us delve into the world of

police officers and really look into how it all works.

Let us start from a citizens point-of-view, though not from a patriotic one, but rather a

distrustful one. Many citizens find that police officers are out to get them, as if they are the Big

Bad Wolf just lurking around the corner ready to catch you in the very moment you mess up so

they can apprehend you and collect a paycheck. This is so much of a fear among common

citizens that there is even a common saying used when one gets upset about being pulled over,

this saying can be paraphrased as, Oh, I guess they were trying to fill this quarters quota, so

they just had to stop me. This phrase can really sum up the opinion on police officers that these

sort of individuals have. This way of thinking, this mentality, creates a back and forth between

police officers and those citizens that they have sworn to protect and serve, leading to difficulty

in trying to establish the personal community relationships mentioned previously.

 Though, what many of these citizens, sometimes but not always, forget is that the very

police officers that they are demonizing are just like them, a citizen in the community working

hard to earn a paycheck and work towards a better living environment and brighter tomorrow.

When it comes down to these sort of toxic and hurtful relationships between police officers and

their citizen neighbors, it can build such a toll on the police officers mind and emotions that they

sometimes can even break down on the job, or even go so far as to quit. Quitting is actually

common in the police subculture with most police officers only staying on the job for, at most, a

33-month time period (not including time spent in the academy or field training) (Heibutzki,

online).

Community opinion is not the only thing that can hurt a police officers mental state and

ambition, but the media, burnouts, the survival mentality, and even just fitting the job poorly

can factor into it. The media has a knack for putting police officers and what they do in the

limelight, though, not the good kind of limelight. As is ever-so evident in our society, the media

thrives off of misfortune and tragedy-- and are very good at showing it to everyone else. A very

popular topic for the media to cover is the police and their wrongdoings, they may even go out of

their way to lie or to write the stories before they even have all the facts, all the way to the point

of just simple speculation. As told by a recent officer who had been pushed by the media to quit

his job, I was violently assaulted while working and read about it the next day in the papers.

The worst written piece of shit I've ever read in my life. There were theories that the whole

assault was 'staged' by the police to justify use-of-force options. Kiss my ass. It wasn't a group of

cowardly masked coppers that assaulted me, it was useless morons who had the power to hide

and runaway with their tail in between their legs. (Reddit, online).
 For this police officer, he was not able to get his side of the story out other than on a

website called, Reddit, the public only heard one side of the story: the medias. The story that

media ran put in the minds of the citizens that read it the idea that police officers are looking for

any excuse to use excessive force on average citizens when said use of excessive force is not

required. This furthers the distrust within the community and even in the police officers home

life. A police officer that has his or her story chopped up or told in the wrong manner or even

half-heartedly may find themselves feeling alone in the situation, believing that everyone that

they serve and protect will not have a reason to believe them even if they did get the opportunity

to tell their side.

Another attribute that can affect a police officers want to work or can harm their mental

health is a thing known as burnout. Burnout occurs when a police officer has worked

themselves so much to meet either their own set morals and goals or societies

impossible-to-reach expectations that they encounter a drain of physical, mental, and emotional

energy. This exhaustion starts somewhat slowly with higher than average tension levels,

irritability, and job fatigue; these traits are very common in police officers. These traits, over

time, can build up so much that it leads the police officer down a path to apathy and cynicism

towards the citizens of their own community, which, in turn, affects their performance on the

job, the overall relationships with the citizens of said community, and it can even start to move in

on their personal lives with friends and family.

If the police officer with these mental and physical conditions is not treated or given

periods of rest, the repeated stress of these attributes can actually begin to effect the chemicals in

their brain to form mental health issues, such as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).
Though, according to Althea Olson and Mike Wasilewski from PoliceOne.com, the PTSD

found in many police officers is not caused by one, big traumatic event, rather it is caused by

overload of work and exhausting experiences that slowly break down the police officers mental

wall. These events can range from different places such as dealing with rude and uncontrollable

citizens on a daily basis or even from just normal bureaucratic duties, but what is most common

as one of these repeating events is a lack of control over their personal lives. Police work is very

hard and overbearing job that requires strange hours and being ready at any moments notice,

which means police officers do not get to choose their set hours or holidays. This varying shift of

hours can create situations where police officers might not even be able to see their own families

for days on end, they may not even get the luxury of spending holidays such as Christmas with

their families due to the expectations of the job (Olsen & Wasilewski, online).

There are ways of coping and treating burnout, however, and all it takes to get started is

to pay attention and recognize when it begins to happen:

1. Finding activities that are pleasurable rather than monotonous police work at the same

excitement level can help reduce anxiety as it gives the police officer an escape from

their work and identity as an officer.

2. A police officer who surrounds themselves with positive people who live outside of the

world of police officers can find solace in the positive energy these people can provide.

3. Identifying where the stress is coming from can help a police officer recognize the

sources and come up with a plan to deal and cope with said stress, even if it means

removing the source from their lives rather than simply coping with it.
 4. Living a healthy lifestyle can actually improve a police officers ability to deal with

stressful situations better than those that do not live such a lifestyle.

5. Taking up hobbies that have nothing to do with the life of a police officer can help

distract from the stress of the job and provide balance in the police officers life.

There is also something in the police subculture called the survival mentality. This

mentality is taught to all police officers in the academy and is then reminded to them all

throughout their careers. What it entails is the simple idea of doing the job at the best peak of

performance you can possibly reach while also always having the goal of getting home at the end

of the shift. Through all of the hardships police officers face, their mental state can break apart to

the point of contemplating the use of their authority in reckless action against those that have

wronged them or even to the point of taking their own life. Many police departments fail to

recognize that this mentality can be very harmful, and because of this failure of recognition,

these police officers on the brink of self-destruction go unnoticed or untreated (Heibutzki,

online).

In a reverse effect, the survival mentality can actually cause police officers to value their

own lives and their own survival in the world of policing so highly that they will go out of their

way to perform the duties of a police officer at the bare minimum, just to avoid any situation that

may cause the injury or death of themselves. Although, neither side of the survival mentality

spectrum is beneficial when it comes to a police officers physical and mental health. The side of

the spectrum mentioned above firstly can bring on an overwhelming depressional state and
renders the police officer emotionally numb to all situations they find themselves in, almost

apathetic entirely in a way.

Then, on the other side of the spectrum, with valuing ones life over those that the police

officer is sworn to protect and serve, you can find that those police officers have very high levels

of post traumatic stress disorder and anxiety. These issues can sometimes turn the police officer

into a useless shell when it comes to situations that require them to think on their feet and take

action within fractions of a second. The anxiety can get so high that some police officers can fall

into panic attacks on the scene, leaving other officers to both care for the citizen being

apprehended and their fallen comrade.

Police officers and the citizens they serve and live with in the their own respective

communities are one and the same. They both deal with stressful situations and personal issues

that can eat up their lives. Police officers deal with many hardships, the same hardships that

many citizens can face as well and, sometimes, all it can take to push the final block of an

officers mental wall is awful treatment from those same citizens that the police officer considers

to be their caring neighbors. On the other hand though, all it can take to boost a police officers

moral, to help him out of the brink, to lift his spirits, is to, as a citizen, simply say that you

appreciate their work and what they do for yourself and their community; police officers are

people too, they deserve a little kindness and appreciation from time to time as well.
 Works Cited

Heibutzki, Ralph. "Quitting Being a Cop." Chron.com. N.p., 09 Nov. 2016. Web. 30 Apr. 2017.

<http://work.chron.com/quitting-being-cop-14952.html>.

Good-Guy-Cop. "I'm a Police Officer who's on the verge of quitting the job, ask me anything." Reddit.

N.p., n.d. Web. 30 Apr. 2017.

<https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/15ip96/im_a_police_officer_whos_on_the_verge_of_quittin

g/>.

Murgado, Amaury. "Developing a Warrior Mindset." Police Magazine. N.p., 24 May 2012. Web. 30 Apr.

2017. <http://www.policemag.com/channel/patrol/articles/2012/05/warrior-mindset.aspx>.

Olsen, Althea, and Mike Wasilewski. "6 ways to beat burnout in a police officer." PoliceOne. N.p., 30

Apr. 2014. Web. 30 Apr. 2017.

<https://www.policeone.com/health-fitness/articles/7119431-6-ways-to-beat-burnout-in-a-police-officer/>

Roufa, Timothy. "The 10 Worst Things About Being a Cop." The Balance. N.p., 04 Feb. 2017. Web. 30

Apr. 2017. <https://www.thebalance.com/the-10-worst-things-about-being-a-police-officer-974911>.