Archive for the ‘Police Stress’ Category

Police Psych: Sex Crimes Cop Part 3: The Delusions

Posted: April 11, 2018 in Police Stress
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Police Psych: Sex Crimes Cop Part 3:  The Delusions

 

 

With Easter having just past, I thought I would show you how a Sex Crime Cop sees the holiday (sent to me on Easter Sunday by a sex crime cop with the statement “this is how I see Easter.  Everything’s has become so sick.”)  We all see the world as a threatening place when something bad happens.  For the sex crime cop, it frequently goes way too far.  Any situation that their child is involved in, or their grandchild, or a child they know casually, bring up images in their heads.  It morphs from Boy Scouts, to clergy, to teachers, even to mythical figures dressing up at a shopping mall.  The worst part, is they don’t even have to have experienced these kinds of things, the images can be within their own creative minds.

You see the cop that is doing these kinds of cases jumps into a world of fetishes and philias, and crimes that are outside the box.  They see such creative types of perversions within the first year of sex crime work that they didn’t know existed growing up or working the streets.  And it doesn’t come from a books or pictures, it comes from real life, real images.  Drinking blood, nah that’s the easy stuff, ‘having sex with animals while smeared with human blood and eating engorged organs that come from who knows where while you are screaming like a Japanese Water Buffalo in heat,’ that’s the crazy stuff they are exposed to (yes there are Japanese water buffalo).  That’s the stuff of real perversions.  The type of perversion they are  exposed to daily surpasses their imagination and is a terrific shock to their systems, and if there are children involved ii intensifies their involvement. (more…)

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Police Psych: Sex Crimes Cops Part 2: Nasty Recurrent Intrusive Images

Posted: February 19, 2018 in Police Stress
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Sex Crimes Cops Part 2:  Nasty Recurrent Intrusive Images

by Gary S. Aumiller, Ph.D.  ABPP

 

In Berkely, California there are researchers who are working on what happens to the brain in intrusive recurring images, in fact they are working hard on mapping what the brain does when it has the images.  They have gone as far as trying to replicate the images by stimulating those parts of the brain that light up when the image is shown.  They haven’t gotten quite that far yet as the stimulated images are mostly a blurry mess, but the basic shapes can be seen at times.

For the cop working crimes against children, and other sex crimes, the images are not blurry, in fact the recurrent images are like taking repeating concussive hits to brain.  It exhausts guys and girls in this work and makes like post-concussive syndrome affects on the brain.  They get punch-drunk with images that eat away their family life, their personal life, and of course, their ability to sleep.  Their world is a much more dangerous place for women and children.  And while they stay awake from the images, the lack of sleep doesn’t burn off the dopamine in their brains and it gets even harder to fight the involuntary slipping into images.  As psychologists, we work hard to try to suppress the nasty recurrent intrusive images, and we try to use a variety of techniques before the patient gets comatose with bad visions. (more…)

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Police Psychology: Historical Trauma and American Policing

Posted: January 30, 2018 in Police Stress
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Historical Trauma and American Policing

by Dr. Philip J. Swift

Historical or multigenerational trauma is the communal emotional and psychological injury of a group caused by traumatic experiences or abuses that transcends generations. When an individual or group is emotionally or psychologically injured by an event(s), the injury can be passed to non-traumatized individuals and across generations through unconscious cues, affective messages, storytelling, ceremonies or rituals, lessons, genetic damage, and exposure to symptoms of historical trauma.   Symptoms of historical trauma include anxiety, depression, low self-esteem, anger, guilt, substance abuse, loss of cultural and religious rituals, destruction of the family unit, and degrading economic/political/social capital. When these symptoms are addressed in a clinical setting, they are often treated without consideration for the complex and lengthy trauma history shared by the individual, their family, and their community. (more…)

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Police Psych: Sex Crimes Cop Part 1: It’s Not Just About Sex

Posted: January 25, 2018 in Police Stress
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Police Psych:  Sex Crimes Cops Part 1:  It’s Not Just About Sex

by Gary S. Aumiller, Ph.D.  ABPP

 

A soldier may have a few days in combat but they are interspersed with time back at their base.  The regular cop has what I like to call “burst stress” where they see a traumatizing situation, but in between are less stressful situations, or as Officer Friday put “Hour and hours of boredom surrounded by moments of sheer terror.”  There is a way to get away from the stress and the seeing awful things.  But, the cop working with sex crimes/offenses has a daily dose of images, one more awful than the next, each one more and more bizarre.  I read the story last week about a man who was released from a British jail who was talking to a fourteen-year old on the computer and telling her the sexual things he wanted to do to her before he ate her alive.  He had pictures on his computer of a child with an apple in her mouth sitting on a serving plate.  Sick!!  Or how about the detective who went to arrest an accused pedophile and while in the house found martini glasses with half eaten human feces in them and digital images/movies of pre-school children being subjected to anal rape.  Apparent the cocktail was used while watching the movies of children.  Life is a daily assault on these cop’s sensibilities, a diurnal attack of nausea from seeing a young life destroyed.  It is disgusting to even talk about these things, much less see them daily.  But we expect a portion of our police population to endure this attack so they can put the perpetrators in jail.  The problem is the criminals are not the only ones put in jail, as there are many types of mental jails. (more…)

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Police Psychology: Merry Stressmas

Posted: December 20, 2017 in Police Stress
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Police Psychology:  Merry Stressmas

by Gary S. Aumiller, PH.D.  ABPP

 

So I was riding on a train on Wednesday of last week, December 13, 2017, at 6 am in the morning going into New York City for a OASAS seminar.  OASAS is the certifying group that allows you to do evaluations on people who got a DWI  and recommend the type of treatment they need.  I sat down and noticed in the car I was riding on in the train every person, regardless of age, was looking at the phone.  I stood up to looked around and over the seats and every last person was looking at Facebook or YouTube or texting or for whatever reason was phone involved.  I had my phone packed away in my briefcase and wasn’t going to open it because I never really commuted into the city, so I wanted the experience of watching people on the phone.  Then I looked out the window and an absolutely gorgeous sunrise was starting.  It was one of those crisp cold clear winter days and the sunrise was there for all to see.  Dark shades of red and orange and it looked so absolutely beautiful contrasting some of the dark buildings of Queens New York.  It was a sunrise that perhaps you only get 15 of these gems in your whole life and it was there outside the window for all to admire.  At least if they’d lift their heads from the phone, which I was the only person on a crowded train that did.  I thanked God for giving me a stunning sunrise to watch all by myself, a show just for me apparently.  I hoped someone else saw it too, but in my car. (more…)

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