Officer McMindful
“Over 50% of you will develop some form of PTSD if you stay on this job,” my homeroom instructor told our academy class. “The only reason why that percentage isn’t even higher, is cuz cops are more resilient than your average person.”
Almost three years later, I’m noticing that the word “resilient” is being thrown around more frequently nowadays in cop circles, especially in a training environment. As I was instructed during my recent mandatory Officer Wellness training (more on that soon), the word refers to our ability to “bounce back to homeostasis — being and feeling normal — after trauma or danger.”
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But how do you “bounce back” after some of the things we go through and witness? How do you return to what our civilian instructors refer to as “normal,” when nowadays you’re normally paranoid, stressed, and angry?
Maybe those are questions that plague the command staff of the Chicago Police Department. Maybe our politically appointed, Gold Star “leaders” are smart enough to observe that this job is unhealthy and departmental morale is nonexistent, and maybe some of them genuinely care about those issues and are trying to help us lowly “blue shirts” with the only tool the department’s higher ups seem to have in their toolbox — mandatory training.
Giving the department and city a benefit of the doubt which they probably don’t deserve, Officer Wellness training is the equivalent of having a car with four flat tires, and the driver’s solution is to change the oil: CPD’s command staff observe a problem and try to address that problem, but they’re just incompetent. To members of CPD, I don’t need to cite examples of their incompetence — it’s in plain view for all of us to see, and endure. For other readers, I’ll point to the useless creation and deployment of “teams” which do as little work as possible at the cost of safe manpower levels in the neighborhoods and police districts, and the pointless extended tours and cancelling of days off for months following the riots in May, and for days leading up to and following the presidential election. Also, everything related to Eddie Johnson.
Without the benefit of the doubt, “Officer Wellness” is a bit more sinister and cynical. This type of classroom instruction, dubbed by some as “McMindfulness” due to its cheap and ultimately detrimental nature, tries to teach participants how to breathe, relax, and change the way they perceive stress. In short, it shifts the culpability for mental distress from an abusive organization to its individual employees. It frames our mental illness, compassion fatigue, and stress, not as problems brought about by the difficulties of the job — difficulties an incompetent command staff compound in many ways — but as problems brought about by our own mental fragility. It’s gaslighting. “But hey,” thinks a cynical Commander, vying to become Deputy Chief of something, “it chips away at the 40 hours of training each officer must annually complete under the consent decree.” And just like the writers of our consent decree, we all know that it’s the quantity of police training, not the quality, that improves policing.
Maybe Officer Wellness has parcels of information some cops will find useful. After all, I can’t criticize the course’s individual instructors or call into question their devotion to work they believe to be beneficial for us. But speaking for myself, the department can make this officer feel well when it honors my days off, restores manpower back to a safe level, and begins treating its officers like they’re CPD’s most valuable asset.
