Officer Safety and Wellness

Beat Intro
Voiceover
00:00	This is the Beat—a podcast series that keeps you in the know about the latest 
community policing topics facing our nation.

Interview
Barry Bratburd
00:08	Hello and welcome! My name is Barry Bratburd and, on behalf of the COPS 
Office, I’d like to introduce you to David Klinger. David is an associate professor 
at the University of Missouri—St. Louis and he’s here to talk with us today about 
officer safety and wellness. Officers have to make split-second decisions about life 
and death. Can you discuss how this impacts officers and what details need to be 
examined more closely?

David Klinger
00:31	Sure. I think there’s really two things that people have to understand. The first 
one is that these life-and-death split-second decisions, fortunately, are few and 
far between. Most officers have to make this choice very infrequently. However, 
the anticipation of that choice being something they have to deal with is 
something that does weigh on officers in terms of concerns about how their 
family might react, how their partner might react, how the community might 
react. Then when officers are in the moment—I’ve interviewed several hundred 
officers both formally for U.S. DOJ-funded studies as well as informally in other 
settings—they always talk about the difficulty involved in the anticipatory 
period. It is something they don’t want to get involved in but, if it happens, 
they’re willing to do it.

	For example, I was riding with a police officer in St. Louis just last week and she 
said that, while she certainly doesn’t have any desire to shoot a kid, she’s going 
to go home to her own kids. That’s the basic leitmotif, as it were, for most 
officers.

	Then for those officers that are confronted with that choice, most of the time 
they decide against pulling the trigger. Most of the time when officers are 
confronted with a circumstance where they have lawful warrant to shoot, they 
hold their fire, which I think is quite interesting. Then for those officers that do, 
in fact, go ahead and pull the trigger, there’s all sorts of potential difficulties. 
Fortunately, for most officers they get through it OK in the long term, but in the 
short term most officers experience some disruption. And, I think that’s basically 
it.
	
Barry
02:00	The threat of being shot or having to shoot someone is obviously a major stressor 
for law enforcement. What do officers experience during shootings? What do they 
experience after incidents in which they shoot, especially in terms of officer health 
and wellness?

David
02:15	I think, fortunately once again, officer-involved shootings are rare and those 
circumstances where officers themselves are shot are even rarer. However, 
because officers have to train for the possibility they may be shot, this is a 
concern. Everything from how to deal with a partner who’s shot to how to 
engage in first aid for yourself if you’re shot, also what you need to do to prevail 
in a gunfight, the will to survive, those sorts of things that we all have been 
steeped in over the years. 

	I think that, in terms of what officers experience during the shooting, the most 
important stuff for people to understand is that officers in the moment 
oftentimes don’t recall certain aspects of the event. They don’t recall how many 
rounds they fired, for example. They might not be aware of how many people 
were present, for example. Tunnel vision can set in. Auditory occlusion can set in. 
Tunnel vision is so extreme in some cases that officers literally don’t see anything 
except the gun that is pointed at them. Some officers have reported that. Other 
officers see nothing but the suspect that they’re confronting. They don’t hear 
their own gunshots oftentimes, or if they do hear them they sound muted and 
they’re wondering what’s going on so there can be confusion that sets in. Also, 
officers can have mis-recollection about real important things beyond how many 
rounds they fired. Such things as how far away the suspect was, how close they 
were to the suspect when they pulled the trigger, so on and so forth. So those are 
some of the things that officers can experience in the moment. 

	Afterwards, as I mentioned in response to your previous question—I jumped the 
gun a little bit, pardon the pun—there is this notion out there that having been 
involved in a shooting is devastating for officers. Fortunately, that’s not the case. 
Most officers, as I indicated, do OK. What we have to think about in terms of 
wellness is that we have to understand that in the wake of a shooting we have to 
attend to officers, understanding that for some officers they are going to 
experience some difficulties but at the same time not preach to officers that they 
are going to have problems. Then what happens is you get a self-fulfilling 
prophecy that can set in. 

	I’ve spoken with, as I said, hundreds of officers and a good chunk of them said, 
“Dave, there must be something wrong with me,” during an interview. And I’ll 
say, “What do you mean?” And they’ll say, “Well, I haven’t experienced any of 
these negative reactions that you have on your checklist and that they told me I 
was going to experience. There must be something wrong with me.” And I said, 
“No, you’re just one of the fortunate ones that were able to integrate the event 
into your life.” 

	So from a wellness perspective I think we have to, on the one hand, really attend 
to officers, make sure that they’re not going through anything rough. If they are, 
give them the appropriate support. Don’t train them that they’re going to have a 
problem in the wake of a shooting.

Barry
04:47	What are some ways community policing can play a role in promoting officer 
safety, health, and wellness? Are there ways the community and officers can work 
together to address both community concerns and officer wellness?

David
04:59	I think so. I think that it occurs on two levels. The number one level is going to 
be the department level or the administrative level or the management level. The 
chief and his or her underlings in the command staff need to be out and about in 
the community. They need to be talking to members of the community, 
explaining the difficulties of police work, explaining to people what the lawful 
basis for a detention is, what the lawful basis for using force is, what the lawful 
basis of making an arrest is, what the lawful basis for using deadly force is. So 
that if and when a shooting occurs, the community understands what the basic 
parameters are.

	They also need to explain to members of the community what the investigative 
procedures are. How it is that an officer-involved shooting is investigated. How 
it is that all uses of force are investigated. So that the community can have a 
sense of belief that the law enforcement agency is going to go ahead, take a look, 
take an honest look, and then report back to the community so we have 
transparency. By having that going on from management to members of the 
community, what can happen, at least theoretically, is a social medium is created 
in which there is a higher degree of trust, and I think that’s very, very important.

	The second thing is at the line officer level. For whatever reason, many officers 
don’t understand that when they arrest somebody, when they detain somebody, 
when they use force against somebody, this could be an opportunity to enhance 
community relations. What I mean by that is this: Typically, but not always, 
when something goes down in the community, there are citizens around, there’s 
an audience around. One of the things that officers can do is they can, once 
everything has calmed down, the individual is taken into custody or individuals 
that need to be arrested are taken into custody, take a moment and address the 
audience. Say, “Here’s what we did. Here’s why we did it. Here’s the gun that 
we took off him. Here’s the knife that the suspect had. He threw a punch at me, 
see I got this shiner, that’s why I did this. The reason I tased him was because…”

	Even though that might, in some people’s minds, might not be the best thing in 
terms of keeping the integrity of the investigation, it does give officers the 
opportunity to explain to people at that moment why it is what they did and calm 
those immediate fears. Now there’s one caveat to this: If there’s an officer-
involved shooting, if a police officer uses deadly force, you can’t engage in that 
type of a discussion with members of the community. I’m talking about lower 
levels of uses of force. 

	I recall one time, about 30 years ago, I was working South Central Los Angeles 
with an officer by the name of Pete Hunter. Pete and I were called to deal with a 
woman who was going crazy in the middle of the street. When we got there, she 
was trying to stop traffic and so on and so forth. A crowd had gathered, and 
Pete and I walked up to her and tried to calm her down. She was very angry—
she threw a punch at Pete. We ended up using an upper-body control hold, in the 
parlance of the day, used a choke hold. It put her unconscious very quickly and 
we went ahead and cuffed her up. There were some people in the community, in 
the crowd who were members of the community that were upset, “Why did you 
have to do this to this poor woman?” And Pete just got up and said, “Hey look, 
this is what happened, she tried to punch me.” And then someone in the 
community said, “Yeah, I saw her throw a punch.” That ended it right there. 
There was no complaint filed, no community unrest. The thing that’s really 
fascinating about this is that this was literally right on the street corner of 
Florence and Normandy where 10 years later or so everybody saw that horrible 
video where Reggie Denny got pulled out of the cab of his truck and got beaten 
by Damian Williams.

	If you think about it from the perspective of using opportunities to explain to 
people why we do what we do, we can enhance community relations and 
enhance officer safety. 

	One last thing having to do—not with using force—but just detaining someone. 
Oftentimes, police officers detain people who are completely innocent because 
they only need to have reasonable suspicion to detain. What officers need to do 
is they need to explain to people, “Here’s why I detained you. You met the 
description of a suspect that.…Your vehicle matches the description of one that 
was just taken in a carjacking.…” Whatever the case might be. So, use these 
opportunities to engage the community, to enhance relations with the community, 
and I think that’s something that line officers can do.

Barry 
09:07	Great! Well, we certainly appreciate you being with us today and we very much 
appreciate you providing us with your expertise and time.

David
09:14	Thanks so much for having me.

Beat Exit
Voiceover: 	
09:16	The Beat was brought to you by the United States Department of Justice COPS 
Office. The COPS Office helps to keep our nation’s communities safe by giving 
grants to law enforcement agencies, developing community policing publications, 
developing partnerships, and solving problems.


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