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Police Psychology | When a Child Dies

Posted: June 16, 2015 in Stories
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Police Psychology:  When A Child Dies

 

Anne Bisek, Psy.D. is our first guest blogger. She is a police psychologist in Freemont California. Her specialty is calls for service involving the death of a child. For more information on this topic visit www.whenachiddies.com.

It was obvious to the crowd of neighbors and in-laws that the young babysitter standing over the dead child was responsible for the toddler’s death. The woman was rambling incoherently about bugs, snakes, spiders and smoking a cigarette. Her thin face was covered in scabs and pockmarks; some were bleeding. The porch was littered with empty beer bottles and the front window had been smashed, leaving broken glass to cover the pack-n-play.

From his squad car Jake could see a muscular man in a white tee shirt approaching the house with a baseball bat. His stride was purposeful, his shoulders hunched.

“Oh here we go,” thought Jake as he exited the vehicle, “Let’s not make this any worse.”

 The man glared at the babysitter and skipped two stairs up the front porch toward her. From behind the man Jake grabbed the baseball bat just before it struck the bewildered babysitter. The small crowd of onlookers seemed to have the same idea as the man with the baseball bat. Jake was outnumbered. He grabbed the babysitter and whisked her away through the shouting, crying crowd to his squad car. He saw his back up arrive, followed by an irrelevant ambulance.

For days following the call, Jake had a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach; the kind of guilty sickness he hadn’t felt since he broke curfew as a kid the night his younger brother was badly beaten by some older boys. Jake reviewed his report over and over trying to remember any other detail he could add to it.

 Pedro the Peer Supporter noticed that Jake had not been joking around in the locker room as usual and was now quietly doodling during briefing. Pedro walked out of briefing behind Jake and asked him to meet up for lunch. “Yeah sure,” Jake replied as if he had not heard Pedro at all.

 At the end of the shift, Pedro sought out Jake in the locker room. “Up for a quick pick up game?” Pedro asked tapping his basketball.

 “It’s been a long day,” replied Jake.

“Come on man, I can tell you are off your game today, and I don’t mean basketball. What’s up?” Pedro sat down next to Jake who was changing his shoes.

“I’ve been thinking maybe I’m not right for this job.” Jake sighed.

 “Oh, one of those days. We all have them.” Pedro bounced the basketball twice.

Jake looked surprised but then told Pedro about the dead toddler and having to protect the suspect from a “mob of righteously angry family and friends.”

 “I get it Jake.” Pedro nodded. “In this job we are the sheep dogs. We feel good about protecting the sheep from the wolves. But we can’t always do that.”

 “No you don’t get it Pedro. It isn’t like that. Never mind.”

 “Give me another shot at it then.” Pedro tossed Jake the basketball.

Jake spun the ball in his hands. “If I was a good sheep dog, I would have protected the sheep not the wolf. I protected the suspect, not the victim, Pedro. I got it all wrong.”

 “So you think you are a bad cop because you put the suspect in the car instead of letting her be slaughtered out there?” Pedro asked.

 Jake tossed the ball back to Pedro and his shoulders slumped. “I was useless on that call. Didn’t even interview the R.P. I can’t shake this feeling in my stomach.”

“And that means you aren’t right for this job?” Pedro asked.

 “Maybe.”

 “Want my opinion?” Pedro asked, rolling the basketball toward Jake.

 “Sure coach.” Jake stopped the ball with his foot.

 “You are a good cop Jake. You are a good person. A good sheep dog usually protects the sheep from the wolves. But in this case you had to protect the wolf. Sometimes you have to do that and when the tables get turned it can feel pretty messed up. But it doesn’t mean you aren’t right for this job. It was the call that was messed up, not you.”    

 Cognitive dissonance is the feeling of uneasiness, which results from holding two conflicting beliefs. Leon Festinger proposed this theory in 1957. Everyone holds ideas about the world and themselves. When a belief and concept collide with reality, it is unpleasant so we want to make it consistent again, sometimes by adapting unhealthy or irrational beliefs.

Bisek 1

As a law enforcement officer, Jake wants to believe he is a good person. Jake’s concept of a good law enforcement officer is someone who protects the prey from the predators, not the other way around.

Bisek 2

Since Jake cannot change the reality of this call for service, he changes his belief, “I’m not a law enforcement officer, or I’m not right for this job.” Woulda coulda shoulda thinking enters the scenario as Jake goes over and over the report.

Bisek 3

 Jake may not realize it, but he is acting like he believes he is not a good law enforcement officer, or a good person. Pedro the Peer Supporter notices the change in his colleague and can help Jake by listening, and reflecting this belief back to him. Pedro points out that the healthier concept is “a law enforcement officer usually protects the sheep from the sheep dog,” and shows Jake that the call for service was messed up, not Jake.

 

 

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Police Psychology | The Police Candidate Interpretive Report

Posted: June 5, 2015 in Tests
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The Police Candidate Interpretive Report

 

I had one of the first cell phones for public consumption.  It fit in a bag.  The battery lasted minutes not hours, and it was essentially a car phone that could be moved around.  But visions of Dick Tracy’s watch and Agent 86’s shoe danced in my head, and I walked around feeling real important when I pulled out my bag phone and made a call.  How sweet those youthful delusions were!

While I was running around looking for my Agent 99, Steven Jobs was getting fired from Apple.  But Jobs had vision and timing.  He knew when something was needed and he saw sort of saw into the future.  When he was rehired, he was going to hire a Pepsi Executive for Apple and asked him “do you want to make sugared water the rest of your life or change the world.”  Jobs then designed a new operating system that became the basis for IPhone, IPods and yes, an IWatch that you could talk into, straight from the old Dick Tracy cartoons.  My old fantasies are sort of dumb given they now exist.

I sat with the Steven Jobs of Police Psychology in Orlando Florida at an IACP Police Psychologists happy hour.  He wanted to get the American Psychological Association to recognize police psychology and tie police psychology practice into research.  In my best “Pinky and the Brain” imitation, I wanted to rule the world, or at least globalize the profession.  Through the Society for Police and Criminal Psychology I started trying to define exactly what tasks were in the profession, what did police psychologists actually do?  Across the country, my friend was starting the same task, so we combined efforts.  He later spearheaded the work making police psychology recognized by the American Psychological Association.  But his recent activity may be the most poignant for the practice of police psychology.

He took an old standard test in police evaluations that was recently reconstructed, and took tons of data and put it into a computer-generated report on how police officers can be selected for police departments.  Then he made it so the computer would generate not only statistical properties for the test, but also a list of references in the back tying the research to the employee behavior.   Literally, you could say I got this result and here are the references that support the denial of a job, or the calling of this person unfit for duty.  Forensic evaluations are always supposed to be referenced but seldom are.  Imagine going into the court and having all the references at your fingertips.  And it is an entirely transparent process.

Gone are the days when a psychologist looks at the scale and gets a feel for them being a good cop or not.  Now we can directly tie scores on the MMPI-2 RF to police officer behavior.  I remember Dr. Mike Aamodt’s book with all the meta-analyses saying basically none of the tests, except at the far reaches of the spectrum lead statistically to any decision.  There is really a new world out there and someone has seen how to make it more viable.

I don’t do testing as a matter of course, so probably I have some things wrong, but the intent is correct.  Dr. Dave Corey with excellent researcher Dr. Yossef Ben-Porath has really achieved his goal.  He gave police psychology the recognition by the APA that it deserves and he is making the field which he works in, employee screening and assessment, highly attached to research.  Kudos to him and to Pearson for publishing the Police Candidate Interpretive Report (PCIR).  It’s the IWatch of our profession.

As for me, I am still trying to rule the world.  Maybe if I write a blog….

 Gary S. Aumiller, Ph.D. ABPP

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Police Psychology | Know Your Hero

Posted: April 8, 2015 in Stories
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Know Your Hero

 

superman-logo-012a

Meet Suzie Sawyer–an unsung hero.

Heroes and heroism is important in police psychology. Let me tell you about one of my heroes. Over 30 years ago, Suzie Sawyer served as National Secretary for the Fraternal Order of Police Auxiliary and she proposed holding an annual National Memorial Service for police officers killed in the line of duty.  The first service had only 125 attendees.  To increase attendance, the National FOP planned a Board Meeting in Washington, DC, in 1983, and an evening get-together was planned on the eve of Peace Officers’ Memorial Day.    There were others, though, who found out about the party.  They were the people who came to Washington, DC, to hear their husband’s name read aloud at the Memorial Service…..the police widows.

So they are at this big police party and some of these widows began to cry.  The party mood was changing.  Suzie decided to take them elsewhere to preserve the festivity.  Little did she know she was doing something else as well.

Suzie loaded ten women in a couple of cars and they went to the DC FOP Lodge to talk.    Each widow told the story of their husband’s deaths, how the funeral was planned by the agency without their input, how difficult it was to go on with their lives, and how they had even had voices in their heads, and thoughts of suicide.  When they finished their discussion hours later, the ten women felt better and asked Suzie if they could continue having meetings.    Suzie was a little unsure of that request because, in those days, nobody in law enforcement ever talked about police death.  They buried their officers with pomp and circumstance, but once it was over, the families had to fend for themselves, trying to explain what happened to them and deal with the grief on their own.

Over the next several months, Suzie kept in touch with the widows who now wanted a national support group.  On May 14, 1984, Suzie started C.O.P.S. (Concerns of Police Survivors) to serve the surviving families of officers killed in the line of duty.   On May 14 ,1984, Suzie started a heroic journey.

“Get your butt up that tower,” barks Suzie Sawyer to the young widow at the C.O.P.S. Spouses’ Retreat.

“But I am afraid, Suzie.”

“What are you afraid of…making it to the top?   Put one foot above the other and get up that tower, now!”  A crowd of widows and staff cheer her on as the woman climbs.

The woman stops halfway up and shivers.  “You’re halfway there.  Think of how much you have accomplished already.  Keep going.”  The cheers rise; the woman continues to climb.  “See, there is nothing you can’t do if you put your mind to it.”

The tower is 50-feet tall and, yes, succeeding and getting to the top helps people realize how strong they are and that they can get through the grieving process.  Part drill sergeant, part psychologist, Suzie is always a sympathetic soul, determined, focused.  She is the ultimate positive person when you meet her, also.  Her personality is strong and infectious.  If she tells you that you can do something – you can and will do it. She helps you put in the effort and increase your self-esteem.

UnsungHero

Seek out the unsung heroes in your life and let them know how much they mean to you.

She got the grant money to make her organization bigger and financially sound.  You can’t turn Suzie down.  They own the building they reside in.  She has 13 employees budgeted, and, yet, it all started in the Sawyer basement.   She remembers people she only met once.  And people remember her.  I met her 20 plus years ago and I remembered her, even her name.  I had not seen her since, but her name came to mind when I started writing a blog.  She is a remarkable person.

With Suzie’s guidance, they run programs for the spouses of police officers killed in the line of duty.  They run programs for the kids of officers killed in the line of duty, and an Outward Bound Experience for teens and young adults.  They have programs for fellow officers, for parents, siblings, significant others, and adult children of the officers.  They give scholarships to surviving children and spouses wanting to study beyond high school; and they run a trauma education program for police officers across the country. If there is a need, C.O.P.S. will meet it. In all, they service over 30,000 families of officers killed in the line of duty.  And they do it with the same compassion as in the first forced meeting in the FOP Lodge in Washington, D.C.

And I am telling you, if you met Suzie you would not be surprised by any of this.  Her personality is that positive and that strong.  She is a true hero.  And so is her husband Buzz who puts up with Suzie having a passion, almost like another child, that takes a lot of Suzie’s time — the C.O.P.S. organization.

The Unsung Heroes in Your Life

You need to relish the heroes in your life.  You should seek out someone that has been a hero to you, and tell them.  If they are not alive, tell their son or daughter.  It changes you for the better when you do.  It will make you feel good, and it honors the memory.  People don’t do this enough.  I don’t know why.  Let me start with this article.

Thank you, Suzie, for making so many women climb that tower!

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Gary S. Aumiller, Ph.D. ABPP

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Book Review: Research in Law Enforcement Selection

Posted: February 27, 2015 in Books
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aamodt

Book review of “Research in Law Enforcement Selection” by Michael G. Aamodt.

I don’t do Meta Analysis and don’t do pre-employment evaluations.  Most of my life I have had little interest in either.  The mixing of the two for me should be somewhat like eating overdone beef liver cooked in castor oil and chasing it down with Campari (the Italian liquor that looks and tastes like transmission fluid).  So, when Mike Aamodt gave me a book looking at law enforcement pre-employment evaluations using meta analysis, I wasn’t sure I would have the stomach to read it.  But then again, Dr. Aamodt has always impressed me in his presentations with his humor and dry charm, and I always walk away with pieces of really valuable information, so maybe I could shove reading this new book of Aamodt’s between the 13th and 14th annual Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader. Who knows maybe I’ll learn something.

The first two chapters are about what a meta-analysis is and how it is done in this study.  Okay I have to admit, I am a closet Discovery/History Channel watcher and fought off those un-cool nerd tendencies throughout high school and college.  And I actually like research and stats, but please do not tell the other kids.  Dr. Aamodt’s two chapters on the meta-analysis are progressive and in simple enough terms that even a non-nerd can understand his concepts, but you have to have a little of that nerd thing to find it fascinating like I did.  The meta-analysis statistically combines all well-done published studies, regardless of statistics and methods, and weighs and balances them for an overall statistical analysis of effect.  It seems like a tremendous amount of work, but what a great idea to look at data this way rather than argue one study over another.  In the following chapters he looks at variables like cognitive ability, educational background, previous military experience, background problems, individual sub-test scores on personality tests, vocational interest inventories and a host of other constructs measured in pre-employment evaluations to see if they can predict job performance, academy performance and likelihood of problems on the job.  Without giving you any of the findings (buy the book for that), I found myself constantly saying, now that is interesting (ex., criminal justice majors don’t do better as cops or in the academy, or measure “x” really has tremendous adverse impact, or this subtest doesn’t discriminate at all, etc).  Dr. Aamodt has managed somehow in this book to answer a ton of questions, raise a number of issues and keep you saying, “Wow, I never would have thought that.”

In the final chapter, Dr. Aamodt lists the things we know, the things we don’t know, and what we need to find out about pre-employment evaluations.  For example, he tells you the one subtest that is the single best predictor of performance on the job (not what I expected).  He tells you the correlations between positive citations and civilian complaints.  He tells you the best predictors of academy performance, and talks about the end of a honeymoon period where some predictors start to really come through.  Every police psychologist, every police chief, everyone working in employment law, and every graduate student studying anything about industrial organizational psychology should read this chapter.  It is worth 100 times the cost of the book and it sets a way of thinking that should be a structure for all employment testing.

I testify on a lot on police cases and work with lawyers on how to cross examine psychologists.  I have already integrated some of Dr. Aamodt’s analysis into my work.  It is just that kind of book – filled with facts that should guide the practice of a profession.  He states in the preface he wanted it to be a resource book for the profession.  He has succeeded in a big way.  If you are in any way responsible for pre-employment assessment in law enforcement, you’d better read what he says in this simple paperback book.  You definitely don’t want to face some lawyer who has read it, or has been prepared by a psychologist who has read it.  This book is a resource book that should be required reading in the profession.

Maybe I should try that Campari again.  —- Nah!!

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Gary S. Aumiller, Ph.D. ABPP

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Book Review: Counseling Crime Victims

Posted: February 20, 2015 in Books
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“Here is the gold standard.”  If I read that pathetic claim on the back of one more book cover, I fear going on an armed rampage through the publishing houses of New York.  Has the hysteria of the world gotten so bad that we won’t give consideration to anything new unless we claim on the back cover that it is the best, most outstanding, or “the new gold standard?”  It makes you want to puke.  And damn if when I start to open Laurence Miller’s Counseling Crime Victims:  Practical Strategies for Mental Health Professionals (Springer, New York, NY, 2008) right on the back cover it claims to set the new gold standard.  I know this guy, digitally at least.  How could he allow the publisher to make such a disgusting claim?  I expect more from you Dr. Miller, except no way around it, this book is so good that it does set a new gold standard.
COunceling Crime Victims

Book review of “Counseling Crime Victims: Practical Strategies for Mental Health Professionals” by Laurence Miller.

I started on an easy saunter through this book figuring I’d skim most of it, but frankly I started finding I was making a paralinguistic cue every two or three minutes, mostly nasal hums and head shaking, as I read many phrases that explained some interesting material about crime victims.  I knew most of the stuff, but frankly I had gotten a little lazy as my familiarity was reduced by the lack of incidence in my practice.  I don’t treat that many victims except after terrorist acts.  There were sections like “PTSD in the Elderly” where I just didn’t have that many elderly clients so it was pretty new stuff, and research that explained what I practiced but never knew the science behind.  Dr. Miller is thorough as hell and after the first half hour I had figured this was a book I was going to keep permanently as a reference for speeches I give, programs I was developing, or court cases that I was hired on.  I felt like I had found a nice shiny piece of jewelry – okay, I’ll admit, a gold standard.

Dr. Miller has done all the work for you.  There are tons of research studies, tons of useful information, tons of practical advice on how to organize you approach to crime victims in crimes from sexual assault, to domestic violence, to homicides, even to terrorist acts.  He talks about what the people go through when they are a victim of a criminal act and what types of approaches work for each of the victims, at least in theory.  The section on school violence and bullying was particularly useful to me as I was busy preparing for a civil trial where the parent’s frustration with the school in not handling a bullying incident was central to the trials actions.  This was a profoundly useful book and the research really makes you stand up and shout “so that’s why we do it that way.”

If there is a criticism of this extremely thorough treatise it would have to do with style more than material.  It is the same criticism I have for most academic material that speak about therapy.  To make therapy material fully accessible to the largest number of readers, you must tell people what to say when they sit across from a patient, not just how to think about the treatment.  Actually tell them what to say.  Essential, more anecdotal stories intermixed with the research gets the obsessive minds of most therapists fantasizing about what they would say in that situation and then they start the rehearsal process for a patient in their future.  Adler, Meichenbaum, Erikson, and especially Albert Ellis integrated the narrative with research to an art form.  Dr. Miller’s book was not that type of book and Springer is not that type of publisher, but that would make it the most accessible to everyone.

Take this criticism with a grain of salt because Dr. Miller’s Counseling Crime Victimsis extremely effective just as it is, and it will occupy a central spot on my bookshelf as I expect to be referring to it a lot to remind me of what I know, what I have forgotten, and highlight some new ways to think about a doing therapy with a crime victim.  You really might want to check this book out if you have a therapy practice.  It is really a golden find, so to speak.

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Gary S. Aumiller, Ph.D. ABPP

For books by Dr. Gary S. Aumiller got to www.myherodad.com or www.myheromom.com

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