There is a saying in law enforcement that nobody hates a bad cop more than good cops.
It expresses a sense of betrayal that police officers feel when one of their own disgraces the profession. That feeling was widespread in the weeks following the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. A psychologically demanding job in the best of times, being a police officer in the six weeks since May 25 has presented immense mental health challenges.
“It’s not just the chronic and acute stress we face,” said Capt. Andy Carrier, a 31-year veteran of the Georgia State Patrol. “Those things are colliding in a perfect storm kind of way with something called ‘moral injury.’ Moral injury is where officers feel that their moral values have been compromised, and that translates into emotional guilt, shame, anger, betrayal — the whole nine yards.”
Carrier called the George Floyd tragedy “appalling.” He helped out other officers in Atlanta for four nights when some protests turned violent. “You didn’t even want to let people know you worked in law enforcement,” he said.
The resulting protests often expressed considerable hostility toward law enforcement, occasionally erupting into riots. In both Minneapolis and Seattle, rioters set police precincts ablaze. That takes an emotional toll.
“Officers often feel helpless,” said Randy Sutton, a retired police lieutenant and founder of the Wounded Blue, a national support organization for injured and disabled police officers. “They often feel as though they have worked honorably for many years … and through no fault of their own, they are being called a racist and a murderer. That’s debilitating.”
Studies have shown that the rate of depression among police officers is almost double that of the general population. Police also suffer from PTSD at rates similar to military veterans. Events of the last six weeks appear to have increased those problems.
“I’ve had literally hundreds of conversations with cops from around the nation dealing with these issues,” said Sutton. “The reality is that when one police officer screws up, all officers are painted with the same brush. And that is very frustrating for cops.”
“They are frightened, depressed, [and] discouraged,” added Ellen Kirschman, a clinical psychologist who counsels police officers. “It can make daily life more difficult. For example, you pull somebody over for running a stop sign, and the first thing you get from that person is a lot of anger and resistance.”
Kirschman, who is also a co-author of the book Counseling Cops, also said, “It’s demoralizing. You may have spent years working in a police department serving your community, and then in a flash, the community turns on you. And until recently, cops were considered heroes in terms of what they were doing, that they were going to work during the pandemic.”
The mental health problems related to policing can lead to suicide. The rate of suicide among police officers is about 50% higher than the general population. More officers die from suicide than in the line of duty. A Ruderman Family Foundation study found that suicide among officers was about 9% higher than deaths in the line of duty. An analysis by Blue HELP found a much greater disparity, with 229 suicides among police in 2019 compared to 132 deaths in the line of duty.
Sutton warns that the disparity may be even larger.
“Suicides may be 4 to 5 times the number of deaths in the line of duty,” he said. “Many of the deaths that may be suicides are not recorded that way. They are often recorded as an accidental overdose or accidental death.”
Kirschman also pointed out another effect.
“Cops question their choice about working in law enforcement,” she said.
An officer working in the Minneapolis area who spoke on condition of anonymity concurred.
“I have seen lots of officers in recent weeks, especially younger ones, say to themselves, ‘My God, why am I doing this job? Did I make the wrong career decision?’” he said.
Many officers are resigning. In Minneapolis, more than a dozen officers have left or are in the process of doing so. Eight officers resigned from the Atlanta Police Department in June, and 10 officers resigned from the SWAT unit in Hallandale Beach, Florida, citing safety concerns. In Buffalo, New York, 57 officers resigned in protest when the department suspended two police officers who were caught on video pushing an elderly protester to the ground.
Finally, mental health effects that officers experience can also impact their communities directly, a phenomenon known as “compassion fatigue.”
“In compassion fatigue … an officer can become more apathetic toward the community, toward the people who need help,” said Thomas Coghlan, a clinical psychologist and retired New York Police Department detective. “If police officers perceive that the citizens have turned against them and that the people they are supposed to help hate them, then they can become apathetic toward those people. When you lose empathy for the people who need you the most, that’s the real problem.”
Compassion fatigue can incapacitate police officers’ decision-making abilities and overall job performance.
“Compassion fatigue is a very real thing,” said Carrier. “And if I had to guess, it’s happening all over the place right now.”
