Police Psychology | Suicide By Criminal

Posted: October 11, 2016 in Motives and Opportunity
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Police Psychology | Suicide by Criminal

by Gary S. Aumiller, Ph.D.  ABPP

 

We have all heard of suicide by cop when a person takes a gun and points it toward a police officer hoping the officer shoots him.  Very clearly diagnosed in most situations and multiple cases seem to occur each year.  The suicidal person generally doesn’t have the ability to pull the trigger himself, but can put themselves in a position to die.   So, he brings a police officer into the situation as a method of suicide.

Well last week, I became aware of a new method of suicide that I had never seen before, and I am afraid of it for police officers.  You see there was this story about a female cop that told of an officer’s attempt to save her family by allowing herself to be killed, if necessary.  In psychologist circles, that is called an altruistic suicide, because they are killing themselves to let others live better.  But in this case, I call it “Suicide- By-Criminal.” Read the rest of this entry »

Police Psychology | Active School Shooter Drills: A Reflection; A Request

Posted: October 6, 2016 in Mastering Effort
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Police Psychology | Active School Shooter Drills:  A Reflection; A Request

By Paul Cech

 

When I first heard about active school shooter training from a colleague who had attended a training session, I quickly formed a cautious opinion.

In the year since then, I have been sorting through journal articles, books, and other resources to formulate an informed opinion with a plan to synthesize the information and write a literature review.

Active-shooter training is about practicing response mechanisms to remain calm and safe while following a protocol.  The mechanisms are to run away and bring nothing along with you.  Second, it is to hide in an area out of the shooter’s view.  Block the entry to your hiding place, block the doors and silence the cell phones.  Third, is to fight as a last resort and only when your life is in danger.  Attempt to incapacitate the shooter and throw items at the shooter.  The reasoning behind the protocol is that an active-shooter is running wild without any direction, only desiring to kill as many people in a short period of time that he can.  But is that all there is?
 Read the rest of this entry »

Police Psychology | Divorce in Cops and Corrections

Posted: October 4, 2016 in Public Information Bureau
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Police Psychology | Divorce in Cops and Corrections

by Gary S. Aumiller, Ph.D.  ABPP

I just spent the past week at the Society for Police and Criminal Psychology meeting.  I had been the first executive director of the group and was the president the year before that, so I (with two others) totally ran divorcethe organization from October 2002 until this year where I passed the leadership role.  This year I actually got to watch the presentations first hand since I wasn’t organizing a special meal or lost luggage or whatever “hissy fit” complaints come up at a conference.  It is a great conference of law enforcement officers and psychologists.  I suggest you schedule it next year.

I had also helped organize conferences at the FBI academy in the late 90’s to attack some of the myths of policing such as the high suicide rate and the high rate of domestic violence.  Hell, when I started this job, one was led to believe that the world took their most screwed up group of people and gave them a uniform, badge, and gun, then stressed them out to the max and said “protect the public.”   Problem was, I was seeing a lot of cops and they were pretty normal, in fact they were good friends, relatively smart and mostly family men.  I mean, I came across some “players,” but most were doing overtime, complaining about their wives and husbands like the rest of us, and had decent relationship with their kids.  Turns out from the FBI conferences, rates of domestic violence are not that high, in fact below the general population.  And suicide rates are below the general population.  We never got to finish the triad and look at divorces.  We never had a definitive study of divorce.  Until now!  And the real data is not that bad! Read the rest of this entry »

Police Psychology | Randomness in Life

Posted: September 29, 2016 in Mastering Resilience
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Police Psychology:  Randomness in Life

by Gary S. Aumiller, Ph.D.  ABPP

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We can use the idea behind a coin toss to help manage our mental health.

In police psychology, as well at other divisions within psychology, we are always looking for innovative ways to make a point to our therapy clients that is not only memorable, but can be applied to their lives across numerous situations.   One of my favorites uses the coin toss research that is probably as old as psychology itself, or perhaps as old as mathematical probability at least.  I remember reading it as an undergraduate, but didn’t think much of it at the time.  Since then, the simplicity of the research has amazed me.

The researchers tossed a coin in the air and record whether the outcome is head or tails.  The research team tossed the coins 100 times, 1000 times and even 10,000 times.  At the higher numbers, a strange phenomenon occurred. Read the rest of this entry »

Police Psychology: 5 Principles: Animated Post

Posted: September 26, 2016 in Mastering Resilience
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Police Psychology:

5 Principles:  Animated Post

by Gary S. Aumiller, Ph.D.  ABPP, Sara Gaertner, Skylar Aumiller

 

5 Principles to A Simpler Life as a Cop in animation.

 

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