Law Enforcement Mental Health and 

Wellness Programs

ELEVEN CASE STUDIES

Law Enforcement Mental Health and 

Wellness Programs

ELEVEN CASE STUDIES
This project was supported, in whole or in part, by cooperative agreement number 2016-CK-WX-K007 awarded to 21CP 

Solutions, LLC (an independent organization not affiliated with the Task Force on 21st Century Policing established in 

2014) by the U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Community Oriented Policing Services. The opinions contained herein 

are those of the author(s) or contributor(s) and do not necessarily represent the official position or policies of the U.S. 

Department of Justice. References to specific individuals, agencies, companies, products, or services should not be 

considered an endorsement by the author(s), the contributor(s), or the U.S. Department of Justice. Rather, the references 

are illustrations to supplement discussion of the issues. 

The Internet references cited in this publication were valid as of the date of publication. Given that URLs and websites are 

in constant flux, neither the author(s), the contributor(s), nor the COPS Office can vouch for their current validity.

This resource was developed under a federal award and may be subject to copyright. The U.S. Department of Justice 

reserves a royalty-free, nonexclusive, and irrevocable license to reproduce, publish, or otherwise use the work for 

Federal Government purposes and to authorize others to do so. This resource may be freely distributed and used for 

noncommercial and educational purposes only.

Recommended citation:

Copple, Colleen, James Copple, Jessica Drake, Nola Joyce, Mary-Jo Robinson, Sean Smoot, Darrel Stephens, and Roberto 

Villaseñor. 2019. Law Enforcement Mental Health and Wellness Programs: Eleven Case Studies. Washington, DC: Office of 

Community Oriented Policing Services.

Published 2019
Contents

Letter from the Director of the COPS Officev

Acknowledgments vii

Background ix

Overview 1

Insights from the case studies 1

How agencies get started 1

Location of the mental health and wellness unit, program, or services 3

Creating ownership and commitment to officer mental healthand wellness

3

Continuum of mental health and wellness programs 4

Related components of a mental health and wellness program 6

Need for additional research on impact of mental health and wellness programs

6

Unique aspects of each of the case studies 7

1. Bend Police Department 11

Overview of BPD mental health programs 11

Persistent challenges to mental health programming 15

Key learnings for replication 16

Conclusion 16

2. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department 17

Overview of CMPD mental health services 17

Persistent challenges to officer wellness programming

22

Key learnings for replication 22

Conclusion 22

3. Cop2Cop 23

Background 23

About the agency 24

Description of the mental health program and approach 25

Advantages and challenges of offering the program nationwide 27

4. Dallas Police Department 29

Overview of DPD mental health programs 29

Key learnings for replication

34

Conclusion 34

5. Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department 35

The Office of Professional Development and Wellness 35

Advantages and challenges of offering the program 38

Key learnings for replication 39

Conclusion 39

6. Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department 41

Origins of PEAP 41

About the program 42

Resources provided by PEAP 43

Key learnings for replication 45

Conclusion 45
iv LAW ENFORCEMENT MENTAL HEALTH AND WELLNESS A

7. Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department  .

 . 

47

Description of the unit 47

Advantages and challenges of offering the program . 

Key learnings for replication 51

Conclusion 52

8. Milwaukee Police Department

53

Overview of the mental wellness team 53

Program expansion 54

Current program components 54

Key learnings for replication 57

Conclusion 58

9. Metropolitan Nashville Police Department . . . . . . . 59

Origins of the Police Advocacy and Support Services

 

59

Description of the PASS program 60

MNPD keys to success 62

Key learnings for replication 62

Conclusion 63

10. San Antonio Police Department 65

Overview of SAPD mental health programs 65

Persistent challenges to officer wellness programming 70

Key learnings for replication 70

Conclusion 70

11. Tucson Police Department . . 71

Overview of the Behavioral Sciences Unit 71

Advantages and challenges . .

. .

76

Key learnings for replication 77

Conclusion 77

Abbreviations, Acronyms, and Initialisms .

About the Authors 81

About the COPS Office 83
Letter from the Director of the COPS Office

Colleagues:

The mental well-being of the men and women who serve and protect our communities is every bit as 

important as their physical health and safety. Our nation’s law enforcement officers—and their civilian 

colleagues—hear and see things every day that most of us are fortunate we never have to imagine. The 

current national climate of distrust in law enforcement and lack of sympathy or fairness for them before 

the facts are known makes an already difficult and dangerous job mentally and emotionally stressful as 

well. The continuous attacks without knowing the facts could be an underlying variable to one of the most 

compelling challenges in law enforcement—hiring and retention—and in general could contribute to low 

morale in many agencies.

The Law Enforcement Mental Health and Wellness Act of 2017 stands as a marker of the growth in 

understanding of the significance of keeping officers safe, healthy, and well on the job. In addition to 

tasking the U.S. Department of Justice with making recommendations to Congress on improving officer 

wellness, it requires the COPS Office to conduct “case studies of programs designed primarily to 

address officer psychological health and well-being.” This publication is a report on those case studies, 

including study of 10 departmental efforts and one national call-in hotline. These studies show a range 

of approaches to safeguarding the mental health of both sworn and nonsworn employees, current and 

retired, of police departments and sheriffs’ offices around the United States. Each program studied has 

elements that can be replicated elsewhere in our ongoing efforts to meet the mental and emotional 

health needs of even more officers and deputies and their families.

This report is an important measure and reflection in our ongoing commitment to protect those who 

protect us. We thank all of the participating agencies for their willingness to be engaged in this project 

and their invaluable contribution to assist agencies across the country in ways that better serve those 

who serve, protect, and make substantial heroic sacrifices in our communities.

Sincerely,

Phil Keith

Director

Office of Community Oriented Policing Services

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the leadership and 

staff from each of the case study sites that made 

their time available and gave us access to a wide 

range of perspectives within their agencies to get 

a comprehensive picture of their work on officer 

mental health and wellness. Each site provided 

feedback on the early drafts of the case studies. 

We appreciate the commitment and passion of 

these individuals for the work they do on behalf 

of their officers and for their insights and lessons 

learned. The following organizations are featured:

• Bend Police Department

Bend, Oregon

• Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department

City of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County, 

North Carolina

• Dallas Police Department

Dallas, Texas

• Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department

City of Indianapolis and Marion County, Indiana

• Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department

Las Vegas, Nevada

• Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department

Los Angeles County, California

• Milwaukee Police Department

Milwaukee, Wisconsin

• Metropolitan Nashville Police Department

City of Nashville and Davidson County, 

Tennessee

• San Antonio Police Department

San Antonio, Texas

• Tucson Police Department

Tucson, Arizona

• Cop2Cop

Piscataway, New Jersey

The team worked through a number of law 

enforcement associations to disseminate the 

survey gathering information about mental health 

and wellness programs around the country, 

including the International Association of Chiefs of 

Police, National Sheriff’s Association, Association 

of State Criminal Investigative Agencies, National 

Fraternal Order of Police, and Major Cities Chiefs 

Association. We are also grateful to the team of 

subject matter experts who provided insight and 

guidance in the selection of the case study sites. 

These experts included Dr. John Violanti, Dr. Sandra 

Ramey, and Dr. John Nicoletti.

The COPS Office was critical in helping to frame 

and advise throughout the process of developing 

and finalizing the case studies and the final 

document. Special thanks go to Gilbert Moore, 

Melissa Fox, and Deborah Spence.

Background

In January 2018, Congress enacted the Law 

Enforcement Mental Health and Wellness Act of 

2017, which directs the U.S. Department of Justice 

(DOJ), Office of Community Oriented Policing 

Services (COPS Office) to “(1) submit to Congress 

a report—that is similar to the report entitled 

‘Health, Safety, and Wellness Program Case 

Studies in Law Enforcement’ published by the 

[COPS Office] in 2015; and (2) that focuses on case 

studies of programs designed primarily to address 

officer psychological health and well-being.”1

The law references the research on occupational 

risks that affect the approximately 800,000 

sworn officers in the United States. Police officer 

stress results in “higher rates of heart disease, 

divorce, sick days taken, alcohol abuse, and major 

psychological illnesses such as acute stress 

disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), 

depression, and anxiety disorders.”2

This report addresses the charge from Congress 

to identify successful officer mental health and 

wellness programs using a case study format 

as directed by the legislation. The authors sent 

out a survey through national law enforcement 

organizations and professional associations 

asking for nominations of best practices in 

law enforcement mental health and wellness 

programs and received more than 30 nominations 

covering a range of different sizes of agencies, 

geographical locations, and types of programs. 

The team selected 11 programs for the case 

studies representing Bend, Oregon; CharlotteMecklenburg, North Carolina; Cop2Cop (a national 

hotline); Dallas, Texas; Indianapolis, Indiana; Las 

Vegas, Nevada; Los Angeles, California; 

Milwaukee, Wisconsin; Nashville, Tennessee; 

San Antonio, Texas; and Tucson, Arizona.

The team visited each site to conduct interviews, 

observe facilities and programs, and where 

possible talk to agency staff. These visits provided 

the opportunity for the team to understand the 

context and demographics of both a location and 

a law enforcement agency as well as the benefits 

provided to employees within an agency is a critical 

component to understanding a department’s 

approach to employee wellness and the established 

culture of wellness among officers. An agency’s 

diversity, salary provision, and benefits provision 

are pieces of the larger picture to be considered in 

partnership with an agency’s wellness programming. 

Some of the sites and programs selected have 

a historical commitment to officer mental health 

services, and some sites demonstrate how to build 

a deeper commitment to officer mental health 

programming with limited resources. 

Each case study layers a number of strategies from 

recruitment to retirement that cover a continuum of 

prevention, early intervention, crisis response, and 

follow up care. Interviewees at each site indicated 

during the case study site visits that there is no 

one single solution; rather, a holistic approach using 

multiple components gets the best results. And it 

also requires a strong commitment from the law 

enforcement agency at all levels—these programs 

may be successful because they have top-down and 

agency-wide support—to prioritize and support officer 

mental health and wellness in a way that overcomes 

stigma and builds confidence and trust in the privacy 

and sensitivity of the services available to officers, 

staff members, and their families. 

1. Law Enforcement Mental Health and Wellness Act (LEMHWA) of 2017, Pub. L. No. 115-113 (2018), https://www.congress.gov/115/plaws/

publ113/PLAW-115publ113.pdf. 

2. LEMHWA (see note 1).

Overview

This report is designed to provide an overview of 

multiple successful and promising law enforcement 

mental health and wellness strategies with the 

joint aims of informing Congress, state and local 

government officials, and the law enforcement field. 

The report includes 11 case studies from a diverse 

group of sites across the United States. Each case 

study shares basic information about the program 

or agency, a description of how and why they got 

engaged in officer mental health and wellness, the 

components of their programming, the challenges 

encountered, and key findings for replication. 

Insights from the case studies

The case studies examine the range of strategies 

and services: where they are offered, keys to 

creating ownership and support for these programs 

and services, and what we know about what 

works and where we need more research. They 

also provide insights into what motivates law 

enforcement agencies to focus on officer and staff 

mental health and wellness.

There is clearly a continuum of mental health and 

wellness strategies, programs, and methodologies 

represented in the breadth of the 11 case studies 

presented. The continuum begins with recruitment 

and hiring and goes through retirement. It includes 

proactive prevention and resiliency building; early 

interventions; critical incident response; treatment, 

reintegration; and ongoing support for officers, staff 

members, and their families.

All of the case study sites take a holistic approach 

to officer, staff, and family mental health and 

wellness. They do not separate mental health from 

a broader continuum of care and services that 

are closely tied to and impacted by the following: 

fitness, nutrition, medical care, sleep, healthy 

relationships, financial stability, substance abuse, 

self-care, peer support, early warning systems, 

how disciplinary procedures are handled, and 

character and moral development.

In addition to the law enforcement agency case 

studies, a summary of the Cop2Cop 24-hour peer 

crisis response hotline details the key design 

elements of a hotline and the necessary follow-up 

care and support provided by well-trained officers 

communicating with other officers.

How agencies get started

The case studies identified a number of ways that 

law enforcement agencies focus on officer mental 

health and wellness. Most agencies provide basic 

health insurance that generally includes some level 

of mental health service. Many jurisdictions have 

employee assistance programs (EAP) sponsored 

by the local government unit funding the law 

enforcement agency, which provide access to 

additional support services. 

In addition to insurance coverage provided to 

employees, many law enforcement agencies are 

realizing the need to develop comprehensive and 

earlier prevention and intervention mental health 

and wellness strategies for officers, staff members, 

and their families. Examples include exposure to 

mental health issues through crisis intervention 

training (CIT), victim services, and early warning 

systems. As officers and their agencies become 

educated, experienced, and comfortable with 

mental health issues, they are more equipped to 

apply that knowledge to themselves, their families, 

and their peers. 

Crisis intervention training. Nationally, there is 

strong interest and emphasis on CIT—training and 

equipping officers to work across systems to meet 
2 LAW ENFORCEMENT M E N TA L H E A LT H A N D W E L L N E S S A C T

the needs of people with mental illnesses while 

also protecting public safety and officer safety. 

Many of the case study agencies are doing CIT. 

While CIT is not about officer mental health and 

wellness, a greater understanding about the nature 

of mental health issues does help to inform and 

change the culture of law enforcement agencies. 

When officers know and recognize the indicators or 

warning signs of an impending crisis and have the 

skills to talk to someone with mental illness, they are 

more likely to be comfortable confronting or breaking 

down the stigma about saying something to a peer 

or recognizing the warning signs for a self-referral. 

Victim services. Another way that law enforcement 

agencies are developing an understanding of 

mental health issues is through victim services. 

The Metropolitan Nashville (Tennessee) Police 

Department’s (MNPD) mental health services for 

officers developed out of a growing understanding 

of how important counseling is after traumatic 

events for survivors. In the 1980s and 1990s, when 

counselors were co-located in the department as 

part of their work with victims, officers developed 

a comfort level to talk about their own mental 

health and wellness questions or concerns. They 

found it easier to seek help than it had been in 

the past when counselors were not present. This 

led to a recognition that officers had unaddressed 

mental health needs and resulted in the creation of 

the Police Advocacy and Support Services (PASS) 

program in the MNPD.

Early warning systems. The Milwaukee (Wisconsin) 

Police Department (MPD) and Indianapolis (Indiana) 

Metropolitan Police Department (IMPD) each 

approached strengthening their officer 

mental health and wellness programs based on 

a recognition that the best way to prevent officer 

disciplinary actions is to have a strong prevention 

and early intervention system in place. The effort 

in Indianapolis was led by a highly respected and 

trusted captain who advocated for the creation 

of an Office of Professional Development and 

Wellness. In Milwaukee, staff assigned to the Early 

Intervention Program as part of the MPD’s early 

warning system recognized that more was needed 

to meet the needs of officers. Based on their 

research of other strong programs, they designed 

the mental wellness team to provide access to an 

in-house psychologist and strong chaplaincy and 

peer support staff in an intentional, focused, and 

integrated approach.

Response to officer hardship. Many agencies, 

including the Dallas (Texas) Police Department 

(DPD) and the Bend (Oregon) Police Department 

(BPD), began developing mental health wellness 

programming in response to witnessing a high 

level of need among the ranks. For example, in 

Dallas, mental health wellness programming came 

to the forefront following the tragic events of July 

7, 2016—in which an ambush resulted in the deaths 

of five officers and injuries to nine others. This 

incident prompted department leadership to shift 

resources and programming in order to support 

both sworn and nonsworn staff in the aftermath. 

Similarly, at the BPD, the idea for mental health 

wellness programming emerged from department 

leaders, both formal and informal, witnessing 

officers in need of support while experiencing 

personal hardships such as divorce in conjunction 

with the inherent stress of a career in law 

enforcement. 
Overview 3

Location of the mental health and 

wellness unit, program, or services

Where the mental health program is located in 

a department or agency varies between those 

providing direct services located off site to protect 

officer privacy and those located at headquarters as 

a resource and referral mechanism. 

Programs providing direct mental health support 

services are generally located away from 

headquarters so employees can feel secure that 

their use of the services is confidential. Often this 

means they are located in training academies, 

human resources, or their own off-site locations.

In-house staff psychologists’ locations can vary 

based on the goals of the department and the 

role defined for the psychologists. At some 

sites, the psychologist is intentionally located at 

headquarters, and his or her role is to become 

embedded into the department’s organizational 

culture and community. Upon building trust and 

establishing legitimacy, these psychologists act 

as navigators to appropriate resources and do not 

engage in any formal counseling. These navigators 

help officers and staff with insurance issues, 

identifying counseling services that are familiar 

with law enforcement clients, and getting access 

to the right kind of services or support systems. 

In agencies such as those in Los Angeles and Las 

Vegas where the in-house psychologist is located 

off site, one of the main roles of the psychologist is 

to provide counseling services, support groups, or 

both. The off-site location increases the likelihood that 

officers trust their privacy is protected and are more 

willing to use the free in-house counseling services. 

Whichever approach an organization takes, a key 

consideration is building confidence that officer 

and staff privacy is protected when they voluntarily 

access mental health and wellness services.

Creating ownership and commitment to 

officer mental healthand wellness

Several of the individuals interviewed at case 

study sites emphasized the importance of paying 

attention to how ownership is created for a 

mental health and wellness program. They said 

officers tend to be suspicious of the motives 

behind a mental health program. They encouraged 

departments looking to implement such programs 

to be clear about the motives of the program: how 

the program comes to be; who are the champions; 

where the impetus for the program comes from; 

and the level of ownership by the rank and file, 

union, and administration.

Success factors identified by the sites included the 

following:

• The initial champion(s) for improving or creating 

mental health programming should be trusted 

within the department.

• Unions are key stakeholders and should 

be active participants in helping to create 

or support the expansion of mental health 

services for officers and employees.

• Quiet but consistent and persistent 

support from senior executive leadership or 

administration is critical, and they must be seen 

to be protective of the confidentiality of the 

program to maintain trust. 

• Recognizing that it is acceptable to have 

some mandatory visits required for specific 

types of critical incidents (e.g., officer 

involved shootings), it is important that the 

administration not be seen to be pushing or 

forcing employees to use the services. The 

drive to use the services needs to come from 

peers, word of mouth, or recommendations 

from supervisors.
4 LAW ENFORCEMENT MENTA L H E A LT H A N D W E L L N E S S A C T

• Resources for these units, programs, or services 

need to be consistent and institutionalized in 

budgets rather than grants or outside funding.

• In some sites, collaboration between mental 

health professionals and officers was key to 

creating contextually appropriate programs that 

address the needs of officers while remaining 

grounded in science and research. 

• Provision of services particularly tailored for 

nonsworn staff, especially communications 

staff, can have an impact on the overall morale 

and culture of wellness in the department. 

Continuum of mental health and 

wellness programs 

The continuum of mental health and wellness 

programs span from “hiring to retiring,” according 

to an interviewee at one of the case study sites. 

Agencies begin by screening officer candidates for 

mental health during the hiring process.Some level 

of training on officer mental health and resiliency 

self-care and mental health resources is provided in 

the academy, and it is important that mental health 

and wellness programming begin there. In-service 

programming may cover suicide prevention, officer 

resiliency, and stress management techniques. 

Early warning systems identify officers who may 

be in need of early intervention services. Peer 

support programs provide both critical incident 

response support and ongoing support systems 

for officers throughout their service. Specific 

mental health services such as counseling, support 

groups, and linkages to ongoing treatment are 

provided by a combination of options from in-house 

psychologists or external referrals to services. 

Chaplains play a role in some agency mental 

wellness strategies. Additional support services 

include family and relationship counseling; financial 

and legal counseling; military deployment and 

reintegration support; family education about PTSD, 

suicide risks, and other dangers to officers’ mental 

health and wellness and how to support officers; 

and crisis care for families experiencing illness, 

death, or other trauma. Most agencies define their 

programs as available to officers, staff members, 

and their families.

There are common elements across the case study 

sites. For example, all case study sites provide 

access to some level of mental health counseling 

through either employee health insurance policies 

or EAPs or both. The depth and level of insurance 

may vary widely, but some level of support is 

provided. Peer support programs are another 

example of a common strategy present or being 

planned in all of the case study sites.

Table 1 on page 5 lays out the specific types of 

officer mental health and wellness programs 

identified in the case study sites. The degree to 

which each department does each service can also 

vary, but those differences are described in the 

case studies.

Some case study sites may actually do some of the 

programs but did not identify them as part of their 

mental health and wellness programming.
Overview 5

Table 1. Continuum of law enforcement mental health and wellness programs

Components BPD CMPD DPD IMPD LVMPD LASD MNPD MPD SAPD TPD Cop2Cop

Recruitment, hiring, and screening for 

mental wellness X X X X X X

Training academy resiliency and selfcare

X X X X X X X X

In-service training on mental wellness 

topics X X X X X X X X X X X

•	 Suicide prevention X X X X X X X X X X X

•	 Resilience and self-care X X X X X X X X X X

•	 Supervisor training as front-line 

mental health first aid X X X X

Mentorship programs X

Early warning systems X X X X X

Critical incident response teams X X X X X X X X X X X

•	 Debriefing protocol X X X X X X X X X X

Peer support programs X X X X X X X X X X

Behavioral health and wellness units X X X X X X X

•	 Counseling (finances, family, career) X X X X X X X X X X X

•	 Referrals for services X X X X X X X X X X X

•	 Domestic violence X X X X X X X

•	 Substance abuse X X X X X X X X X X X

Chaplaincy role X X X X X X X X

Psychological counseling (internal) X X X X X X X X X

Psychological counseling (external) X X X X X X X X

•	 Employee assistance program X X X X X X X

•	 Treatment (residential and 

nonresidential) X X X X X X X X X

•	 Recurring mental health checks X X X X X

•	 Mandatory counseling following 

critical incident X X X X X X X X X X X

•	 Eye movement desensitization and 

reprocessing therapy X X X X

•	 Officer crisis care and support (injury, 

illness, line-of-duty deaths, etc.) X X X X X X X X X X X

•	 Military support—deployment and 

reintegration X X X X X

•	 Retired officers X X X X X X X X

•	 Spousal support, healthy families, or 

Family Day X X X X X X X X X

•	 Therapy animals (dogs, cats, horses, 

goats) X
6 L AW E N F O R C E M E N T M E N TA L H E A LT H A N D W E L L N E S S A C T

Related components of a mental health 

and wellness program

The interviewees at the case study sites see 

mental health as closely linked to other wellness 

programming that complements and contributes to 

well-grounded and highly functioning officers. This 

recognition includes an awareness that physical 

well-being impacts officer mental health and 

wellness. Placing emphasis on physical fitness, 

nutrition, sleep patterns, sufficient amounts of 

sleep, and medical condition (via annual physical 

exams) are all components of physical well-being 

that contribute to mental wellness. 

Personal relationships (between spouses, parents 

and children, and other family members) are the 

most commonly seen voluntary counseling requests 

for service by officers and family members. 

Financial and legal issues are also common areas 

of vulnerability for which departments are providing 

counseling and resources to help officers address 

areas of conflict, stress, or anxiety in their lives. 

Other topics that fall into less traditional wellness 

programming include communication skills, 

emotional intelligence, and ethics.

Need for additional research on impact 

of mental health and wellness programs

During the site visits, the case study team 

asked representatives of the law enforcement 

organizations about how they measure the impact 

of their mental health and wellness programs. 

Most of the interviewees said their agencies do 

not track numbers of cases or specifics of cases 

because of concerns about legal discovery during 

potential law suits and officers’ concerns about 

confidentiality. While Certificates of Confidentiality 

may alleviate some of these concerns, the privacy 

protection was strengthened only recently—in 

2016—by the enactment of the 21st Century 

Cures Act.3

 Lacking evidence of the impact and 

effectiveness of law enforcement mental health 

programs is a challenge that may require attention 

from both agency leadership and the DOJ. At the 

local level, these data can help preserve or expand 

budgetary support for programming, and at the 

national level, they can help the field understand 

what works for officer wellness.

3. 21st Century Cures Act, Pub.L. 114–255, https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/house-bill/34. 

While a few sites collect some data on use 

of programs, the majority still do not have

comprehensive data collection protocols in place 

across their internal spectrum of services. For 

example, the BPD is collecting important data around 

its yoga program but is lacking data around the 

number of additional services provided. Therefore, 

even sites such as Dallas, Los Angeles, and Bend, 

who are participating in important data collection 

for at least part of their mental health wellness 

programming, are still lacking the data necessary to 

truly understand program impact at a broader level. 

One of the research questions that came up during 

the site visits was related to the efficacy of critical 

incident stress debriefing (CISD). Widely used in 

the aftermath of traumatic incidents, there are 

different models and protocols for conducting 

debriefings and some have been studied more than 

others. In 2001, the U.S. Department of Health 

and Human Services, U.S. Department of Defense 

(DoD), U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), 

DOJ, and American Red Cross gathered 58 

disaster mental health experts from six countries 

to investigate and assess the impact of early 

psychological interventions. That conference 

concluded, among other things, that there is 

evidence that early intervention in the form of a 

single recital of events and expression of emotions 

evoked by a traumatic event does not consistently 

reduce risks of later developing PTSD—and some 

participants may event be put at heightened risk 

for adverse outcomes because of such early 
Overview 7

intervention.4 Further, the experts agreed that the 

term “debriefing” should not be used to describe 

interventions meant to reduce distress or to prevent 

or treat mental health problems but should be used 

only to refer to operational debriefings. Some of the 

case study agencies have experience with Critical 

Incident Stress Management, also known as the 

Mitchell Model; others focus on different styles of 

CISD. And some of the case study sites are now 

using Psychological First Aid—an approach that 

places the initial focus post-critical incident on the 

immediate needs of an officer (safety, water, new 

clothes, contact with family, food). 

Some of the case study sites, such as the Tucson 

(Arizona) Police Department (TPD) and the Los 

Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, are moving 

away from CISD to eye movement desensitization 

and reprocessing (EMDR) therapy—a psychotherapy that enables people to heal from the symptoms 

and emotional distress that are the result of disturbing life experiences.5

 Agencies using EMDR 

have adopted it as an evidence-based therapy to 

address single and cumulative traumatic events. 

EMDR has more than 30 studies validating its 

use in multiple settings. According to the EMDR 

Institute, research studies have shown that 84 to 

90 percent of single-trauma victims no longer have 

PTSD after only three 90-minute sessions The VA 

and the DoD have given EMDR the highest level of 

approval for use to treat PTSD.6

 It should be noted 

that there are other evidence-based interventions 

for PTSD and traumatic stress reactions beyond 

EMDR, such as Prolonged Exposure and Cognitive 

Processing Therapy. These interventions are listed 

by the National Center for PTSD as among the 

therapies with the strongest evidence.7

As the agencies examined in these case studies 

seek to implement programs and practices to 

assist officers in the wake of critical incidents, they 

all seek better guidance on which protocols are 

the most effective at helping officers recover and 

return to duty.

4. National Institute of Mental Health, Mental Health and Mass Violence: Evidence-Based Early Psychological Intervention for Victims/

Survivors of Mass Violence: A Workshop to Reach Consensus on Best Practices (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 2002), 

https://asprtracie.hhs.gov/technical-resources/resource/4066/mental-health-and-mass-violence-evidence-based-early-psychological-intervention-forvictims-survivors-of-mass-violence-a-workshop-to-reach-consensus-on-best-practices.

5. American Psychological Association, “Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) Therapy,” accessed November 19, 2018, 

https://www.apa.org/ptsd-guideline/treatments/eye-movement-reprocessing.aspx. 

6. U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, VA/DoD Clinical Practice Guidelines: Management of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and Acute Stress 

Reaction 2017, (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, 2017), https://www.healthquality.va.gov/guidelines/MH/ptsd/. 

7. “PTSD: National Center for PTSD,” U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, last modified February 1, 2019, 

https://www.ptsd.va.gov/understand_tx/tx_basics.asp.

Unique aspects of each of the case 

studies

There are a number of commonalities across the 

case studies, but there are also unique aspects that 

stand out at each of the sites. The following short 

summaries provide a snapshot of each case study 

with an emphasis on the distinct features at each site.

Bend Police Department (BPD), serving the city of 

Bend, Oregon, has strong leadership support 

and buy-in for its officer health and wellness 

program. The officer resilience program includes 

a combination of physical fitness and wellness 

programming using yoga and mindfulness. The 

program is available to all officers on a weekly 

basis while on-shift, thanks to a shift schedule that 

allows enough overlap between shifts for officers 

to devote time to wellness on the job. The BPD 

reports that the program is positively correlated to 

reductions of on-the-job injuries and improvements 

in job performance and attitude.
8 L AW E N F O R C E M E N T M E N TA L H E A LT H A N D W E L L N E S S A C T 

The BPD has a spousal support program that 

hosts family events and trainings, which have 

strengthened the BPD community and created 

a space for learning strategies to support 

both the officer and the entire family. And the 

BPD’s in-house psychologist acts as navigator 

and culture changer to direct officers to the 

appropriate resources and to shift the culture of the 

department to one that is open to mental health 

support. The psychologist assists with in-house 

wellness programming and training. 

Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department (CMPD), 

covering the city of Charlotte and unincorporated 

Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, has a strong 

peer support team using the Psychological First 

Aid model that integrates with their chaplaincy 

program and in-house psychologist. Feedback from 

the case study interviews indicates that the close 

collaboration between chaplains, peer support, 

staff psychologist, and department leadership has 

proven effective in providing holistic support to 

officers. The CMPD psychologist acts as a navigator 

to direct officers to resources and offers wellness 

programming, training, and education. 

The City of Charlotte offers 24/7 health clinics 

for CMPD officers that have drastically increased 

accessibility and affordability of health care for 

officers and their families. While these clinics 

are not focused on mental health support, such 

access to health care decreases stress for officers 

and increases the likelihood officers will receive 

health care when they need it. Strategically located 

throughout the city, these clinics offer same-day 

appointments and are accessible to officers even 

during off hours. 

Dallas Police Department (DPD), serving Dallas, 

Texas, has developed an extensive leadership 

training available to officers that focuses on holistic 

wellness including stress management, financial 

management, and health and wellness. The DPD 

has a partnership with the Center for Brain Health, 

running two programs with law enforcement 

with the goal of gathering evidence on the impact 

of mindfulness practices and cognitive function 

practices in a law enforcement context. Preliminary 

results show reductions in mind wandering, 

alcohol use, negative mood, and organizational 

police stress as well as increases in positive mood, 

nonjudgement, and observation skills. 

The DPD has also expanded wellness programing 

and training to nonsworn communications staff, not 

simply sworn officers. Two veteran communication 

staff members have been trained to provide training 

on emotional wellness, stress management, 

anxiety, and burnout as well as information on 

available resources for mental health concerns. 

Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department (IMPD), 

serving the city of Indianapolis and most of 

Marion County, Indiana, used a holistic approach 

to launch a mentoring program that begins in 

the training academy and continues through the 

first year or two of service, using 144 trained and 

experienced officers as mentors. The mentoring 

program offers early exposure to mental health 

services. The program normalizes and incorporates 

into department culture the importance of officer 

resiliency and mental health. It gives new officers 

a trusted resource and gives the department an 

informal avenue toward intervention for officers 

that may be struggling (during training in the 

academy, with the work during the post-academy 

transition, or with mental health issues). It is a way 

for the department to protect its investment and to 

demonstrate its commitment to the success and 

well-being of its officers. 

Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department (LVMPD), 

serving Las Vegas, Nevada, found its tactical 

training for active shooter incidents tested as 

it responded jointly with the fire department 

to the mass casualty event8

 at the Route 91 

Country Music Festival on October 1, 2017. 

8. Blake Apgar and Mike Shoro, “Las Vegas First Responders Trained Extensively for Mass Casualty Event,” Las Vegas Review-Journal, October 5, 

2017, https://www.reviewjournal.com/local/the-strip/las-vegas-first-responders-trained-extensively-for-mass-casualty-event/. 

But 

that event also tested the department’s mental 
Overview 9 

health programming and critical incident response 

systems as they apply to officers, staff members, 

and their families. Interviewees from the LVMPD 

said the trauma response training and onboarding 

for the Police Employee Assistance Program at the 

academy prepared their agency to respond to the 

event’s impact. The LVMPD has a long-established 

peer-to-peer program, making it an integral part 

of the department’s culture. The Critical Incident 

Response Team (CIRT) serves as a liaison and 

guide to officers following a critical incident. 

Police Employee Assistance Program (PEAP) 

engagement in CIRT reviews and leadership 

debriefings support the fuller department and also 

offer leadership guidance on how to both serve 

their employees and offer resources following a 

crisis event. 

Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, serving Los 

Angeles County, California, has a large in-house 

psychological services bureau with psychologists 

who specialize in law enforcement psychology 

including working with correctional officers. 

Psychologists are assigned to each precinct to 

be present and ready for critical incidents and 

the day-to-day needs of the team. Seeing staff 

psychologists not as outside entities but rather 

as peers who are available to them and know 

them prior to their need for engagement has 

established a great deal of trust among officers 

and the Psychological Services Bureau. It also 

demonstrates to both sworn and nonsworn staff 

that their mental health and wellness is a leadership 

priority and something valued as a resource and 

tool inside the department. 

Early response to trauma with EMDR treatments 

is becoming a regular part of the required 

psychologist visits following a critical incident, 

giving officers immediate access to a trauma 

response mechanism that can likely decrease the 

lasting effects of the traumatic incident. 

Milwaukee Police Department (MPD), serving 

Milwaukee, Wisconsin, revamped its mental 

health and wellness programming to create a 

mental wellness team (MWT) and move its early 

intervention program (EIP) out of Internal Affairs 

to the Training Division. The MWT is made up of a 

captain, an in-house psychologist (a new position), a 

chaplain, and a peer support liaison and has 

three main components. These include (1) the EIP, 

(2) the chaplaincy program, and (3) an internal peer 

support program. This three-pronged approach is 

highly integrated and coordinated. The chaplain is 

a respected and trusted retired MPD officer and is 

used to provide internal support for officers, staff 

members, and families as a major component of the 

MWT. This integration is especially helpful following 

an officer-involved shooting, because the chaplain 

can be with the officer throughout the event and 

immediate follow-up without concerns that the 

officer’s confidentiality will be compromised— 

because state statute protects clergy privilege. 

The MPD is an example of a department making 

the transition to a more intentional focus on officer 

mental health and wellness driven by committed 

staff and supported by executive leadership. 

Metropolitan Nashville Police Department (MNPD), 

serving the city of Nashville and Davidson County, 

Tennessee, initiated its officer mental health and 

wellness services through its experience with 

juvenile and victim services as early as the 1970s. 

As officers and the department came to understand 

mental health issues and the impact of trauma, 

they created the Police Advocacy and Support 

Services (PASS) program to provide mental health 

services for officers, staff members, and their 

families. The broader MNPD wellness philosophy 

encompasses PASS (mental wellness) and 

additional components as part of a holistic focus on 

biological (physical, medical), social (relationships, 

friends, family), spiritual (moral, philosophical, 

existential), and psychological (mental, emotional) 

areas that contribute to overall health. 
1 0 LAW ENFORCEMENT M E N TA L H E A LT H A N D W E L L N E S S A C T

San Antonio Police Department (SAPD), serving the city 

of San Antonio, Texas, developed the Performance 

and Recovery Optimization (PRO) program which 

is designed to reframe what is typically referred to 

as “stress management” to help offices reach and 

maintain optimal performance. PRO teaches officers 

how to self-identify the stress response (heart rate, 

breathing, visual and auditory impairments) and 

then strategies for coping with stress during critical 

incidents to improve decision-making and after 

critical incidents to ensure optimal recovery. PRO 

techniques and practice were integrated into the 

academy. While PRO is new in the law enforcement 

context, PRO is evidence-based, with observed 

impact in a military context and with elite athletes.

“Cop and Doc” is an approach to designing and 

implementing programming that brings together 

the contextual and experiential expertise of 

law enforcement officers with the theoretical 

and scientific expertise of psychologists. This 

strengthens programs and increases officer buy-in 

and legitimacy. 

Tucson Police Department (TPD), serving the city of 

Tucson, Arizona, has a long-standing Behavioral 

Sciences Unit that manages both mandated 

referrals and disciplinary cases as well as providing 

a wide range of services and support for the 

voluntary outreach from officers, staff members, 

and their families. The TPD takes a holistic approach 

beginning with hiring and recruitment through 

training in the academy to field training, active 

duty service, and retirement. The TPD has many 

common elements with other case study sites. Two 

areas of particular interest are (1) its revisions to the 

field training officer manual to focus on teaching 

new officers strategies for coping with anxiety and 

uncertainty during the field training experience and 

(2) the department’s participation in a study currently 

underway on sleep given the impact that shift work 

tends to have on sleep disruption and the related 

health consequences for officers.
1. Bend Police Department

Bend, Oregon, is described by members of the 

Bend Police Department (BPD) as a mountain town 

with a good quality of life. The city covers a total 

of 33.27 square miles.9

 The population of Bend is 

approximately 94,000 and is racially nondiverse 

with a 93 percent White population.10 According to 

Lieutenant Brian Beekman, the most commonly 

reported crimes in Bend are property crimes 

and drug-related incidents. Interview subjects 

told the case study team that mental health calls 

are a trend that is significantly increasing in the 

community, with an average of 5 calls per day 

for mental health and suicide–related issues as 

of October 2018. To address this, a unit of three 

officers trained to respond to mental health issues 

in the community was created with the intention 

of embedding a mental health professional into the 

unit, when budget allows. While this unit serves 

the community only, training in handling mental 

health crises has been helpful for broadening the 

understanding of mental health needs and wellness 

for the department internally, leading to a deeper 

acknowledgement of BPD employees’ mental 

health needs. 

Currently, the BPD is made up of 100 sworn 

officers and 30 civilian staff. According to 

department leadership, the department has a 

significant number of lateral hires both from in 

state and from out of state, reflecting the positive 

work environment at the BPD. The department is 

described internally as having a culture of support 

and openness with a focus on meeting the needs 

of both officers and community. This is reflected 

in the BPD’s strategic plan. “Engagement of 

organization” is a main goal of the strategic plan, 

with an objective of “continued enhancement 

of wellness programming.” This section of the 

strategic plan is reflective of the culture of wellness 

established in the BPD:

“Our people are our number one asset and 

our number one priority. With this in mind we 

realize public safety is physically, mentally, and 

emotionally draining. We value the health and 

well-being of our employees. We will develop a 

healthy culture by the implementation of a wellrounded wellness program. The ultimate goal 

is to reduce injuries and improve the overall 

health and well-being of our employees.”

9. “Bend, Oregon Population 2018,” World Population Review, accessed November 1, 2018, http://worldpopulationreview.com/us-cities/bend-orpopulation/.

10. “Bend, Oregon Population” (see note 6).

Overview of BPD mental health programs

The BPD began to focus intentionally on officer 

health and wellness programming in the early 

2000s. Beginning with on-duty physical fitness 

programming, the initial program allowed for one 

hour of physical fitness training per week while on 

duty. By 2012, the on-duty program had expanded 

to include team fitness for entire patrol teams. 

This program allows officers to participate in team 

exercise activities such as hiking or running on two 

working days each week. The increased attention 

to the importance of physical wellness set the 

stage for holistic wellness programming, including 

mental health support. The BPD established 

progressive mental health programming with yoga 

and mindfulness practices as standout models. 

In collaboration with a peer support program, a 

spousal support program, an on-site psychologist, 

and exceptional support on the part of department 

leadership, these programs make the BPD 

exemplary in its holistic wellness efforts for officers.
1 2 LAW ENFORCEMENT M E N TA L H E A LT H A N D W E L L N E S S A C T

Critical to establishing on-duty wellness 

programming, and one of Chief Jim Porter’s 

first initiatives as chief, was a change in the shift 

schedule in the BPD to improve officer health and 

wellness. Patrol teams work 11.25 hour days, with 

four days off each week. This schedule allows for 

substantial shift overlap, providing officers time 

to participate in on-duty wellness programming 

without leaving gaps in service coverage. BPD 

patrol consists of three teams covering three 

shifts. Therefore, a full complement of patrol 

officers is always on duty while another patrol 

team participates in wellness programming. 

Patrol teams rotate their shift every two months. 

This rotation is critical for two reasons: First, this 

rotation is less disruptive to the natural sleep cycle 

than other more common shift rotation schedules, 

and second, this rotation allows for every officer 

to have access to the myriad wellness programs 

offered by the BPD. A department survey found 

that 75 percent of officers participate in at least 

one wellness program on a regular basis.

Mindfulness and yoga programming

Voluntary mindfulness sessions and yoga classes 

are available to all officers in the BPD. Mindfulness 

programming is offered on a daily basis, and yoga 

classes are offered on a weekly basis. Mindfulness 

sessions are hosted by sergeants and are 

facilitated with the mindfulness app Headspace, a 

free app accessible by all department members. 

The Headspace app provides timed guided 

meditations that are easily followed in a group 

or individually. Having leaders in the department 

participate and facilitate the mindfulness program 

was one identified key to encouraging officer 

buy-in and participation. Leadership estimates that 

approximately 75 percent of officers participate in 

these on-duty sessions. 

Mindfulness programming was born out of one 

officer’s desire to support another who was going 

through a difficult divorce. Lt. Beekman, a leader 

in the department, suggested that interested 

officers in the department attend a locally hosted, 

six-week mindfulness seminar to learn about 

mindfulness as a possible method for mitigating 

stress. Two officers attended the seminar, and both 

reported feeling uncomfortable and disconnected 

from the larger group and having trouble relating 

to the other participants. However, the officers 

found the concepts and techniques of mindfulness 

to be practical and helpful, particularly in a law 

enforcement environment. Corporal Erick Supplee, 

one of the mindfulness training participants, said, 

“As an officer you feel like you never have time 

to shut off. The training helped me learn how 

to do that, even if it’s just during the ride home 

from work.” Based on this positive feedback of 

mindfulness practices in the law enforcement 

context, the BPD began collaborating with nearby 

Hillsboro Police Department to conduct shared 

mindfulness trainings specifically tailored for 

law enforcement officers. These trainings have 

continued and are hosted in collaboration with 

Hillsboro Police Lieutenants Richard Goerling 

and Brian Shiers, who are Certified Mindfulness 

Facilitators through the University of California Los 

Angeles’ Mindful Awareness Research Center. 

The BPD has hosted four of these trainings, and 

officers and families from numerous other agencies 

throughout Oregon are welcomed. According to 

internal departmental data, on average, 20 people 

participate in each of these trainings. Spousal 

participation in these mindfulness trainings 

provides a space for spouses to learn not only 

more about the support that officers need but also 

ways to develop support for themselves. 

The idea of yoga for the department was a difficult 

sell initially. However, now many of its original 

critics participate regularly and have seen true 
health benefits both physically and mentally. Chief 

Porter reports that according to internal findings, 

since beginning yoga programming for officers 

the BPD has seen a 40 percent decrease in onthe-job injuries. Data from the State of Oregon’s 

workers’ compensation insurance provider, State 

Accident Insurance Fund (SAIF), support Porter’s 

claims. According to the most recent SAIF data, 

in the first half of 2018 overall claims were down 

27 percent from 2017, time loss days were down 

77 percent from 2017, and paid and incurred 

costs are at their lowest in more than five years. 

Department leadership has also noticed improved 

attitudes and performance. 

Finding the right yoga instructor and allowing 

relationships to build between officers and the 

instructor(s) has been critical for program success 

and should be a priority for other agencies looking 

to replicate the program. The lead yoga instructor 

for the BPD committed to understanding the 

culture of law enforcement and more specifically 

the culture of the BPD. For the pilot yoga program, 

officers were not informed that they would be 

attending a yoga class. Rather, the officers were 

brought to the yoga class at the end of a tactical 

training, expecting to participate in another tactical 

exercise, only to find two yoga instructors waiting 

for them. Keeping participation in yoga completely 

voluntary was the BPD’s best way to get officers 

to—at a minimum—see and hear the idea, even 

if they chose not to participate. The initial classes 

focused mainly on breathing and stretching, and 

officer feedback was positive. Following these 

initial classes, many participants indicated that 

the classes had allowed them to recognize their 

many misconceptions of what yoga is and who 

it is meant for. The pilot program lasted for five 

months and targeted back, hips, and shoulders 

based on the expressed needs of the officers. 

In addition, the pilot program incorporated deep 

breathing techniques as a stress management 

tool to navigate through the stress response. The 

goal of the pilot program was to demonstrate the 

value of a yoga program. Beyond self-reported 

positive feedback, the instructors took flexibility 

measurements that demonstrated undeniable 

positive impact from participation in yoga. An 

internal August 2018 report indicates that in 29 

sessions in July and August, participants increased 

quadriceps, hip, and spine flexibility by an 

average of 1.75 inches, hamstring and lower back 

flexibility by an average of 3 inches, and shoulder 

flexibility by an average of 2 inches. In addition, a 

questionnaire was used to measure self-reported 

changes in sleep, stress, anxiety, and diet. 

According to the lead yoga instructor, the findings 

of the survey showed tremendous improvement 

in these areas. These evidence-based changes 

were key to increasing officer and leadership buyin. Incorporating mechanisms for evidence-based 

reporting will be a critical component for successful 

replication of a yoga program in other agencies.

After the success of the pilot program, yoga 

classes were implemented in the department. Four 

classes specifically for the BPD are hosted each 

week, allowing all interested officers a chance to 

participate two days per week. The official contract 

for this program is between the yoga instructors 

and the city of Bend. In 2018, this contract was 

renewed for another three years. 

Leadership support

Chief Porter said, “We expect officers to perform 

like athletes physically, we expect their minds to 

be sharp like doctors in stressful situations, and 

we work them ridiculous hours. If we want officers 

to be effective and efficient in their jobs, we must 

support their wellness holistically.” In an attempt 

to create a supportive, encouraging environment, 

the first issue Porter tackled as a new leader was 

shift work. While buy-in was difficult, he managed 

to establish a shift cycle based on the natural 

sleep cycle. He also stood strong against allowing 

shift bidding—which most often leaves rookie 

cops working overnight shifts and takes away 

Bend Police Department 1 3
1 4 LAW ENFORCEMENT MENTA L H E A LT H A N D W E L L N E S S A C T

from time with family—as Chief Porter believes 

that “a healthy family is critically important to a 

healthy cop.” Recognizing that buy-in would require 

taking small steps toward the larger goal, after 

accomplishing the new shift policies, Porter moved 

to changing uniforms—an effort that was largely 

supported by his line officers. Under his leadership, 

uniforms were modified to accommodate external 

armored vests that are easier on officers’ backs and 

hips than vests worn under the uniform shirt. 

Chief Porter acknowledged that for other 

departments to replicate programs incorporating 

mindfulness and yoga, “it is critical to have a 

chief who is willing to listen to out-of-the-box 

ideas.” With his focus on improving health and 

morale in the department, he meets officers like 

Lt. Beekman who approach him with innovative 

wellness ideas with an open mind and a 

willingness to give viable ideas a chance. Porter 

reflected, “if they took officers off the road for 15 

to 20 hours a week in order to focus on wellness, 

there wouldn’t be an actual loss of hours but rather 

more productive and effective officers during their 

hours on the street.” Porter argues that investing 

in officers on the front end is a good business 

model financially for departments. With this in 

mind, he supported officers establishing yoga 

and mindfulness programming. According to the 

chief, “the success of the program belongs to the 

lieutenants, captains, and sergeants who sold the 

program and kept it going until it caught traction.” 

This statement reflects his commitment to give 

his officers trust, autonomy, and ownership—a key 

reason for the high morale in the department. 

While Chief Porter has a primary focus on the 

wellness of his officers and department, he 

understands that the community always comes 

first. He said that “there is not a single wellness 

program that overrides community safety and 

wellness.” From Bend’s experience, it appears 

that community relations and officer wellness are 

positively correlated. According to Porter, since 2015 

Bend experienced a 14.5 percent increase in 911 

calls but saw a 40 percent reduction in use of force 

during that same period. Porter also reported that 

officer-initiated community activity has increased 

by 24 percent in that time. He attributes these 

statistics in no small part to the internal focus on 

holistic wellness. Corporal James Kinsella related 

that support from inside the department translates 

to better engagement with the community. Feeling 

supported and having a space to release stress in a 

healthy manner reduces the likelihood of unhealthy, 

negative interactions with the community. Porter 

has put extensive effort into community relations. 

Through his community enhancement program, 

officers set goals that are not about enforcement 

but about engagement. If they meet all of their 

goals and intentionally engage with the community 

for 22 hours per year, the officers receive a bonus. 

The chief reflected that this program, going into 

its third year, has not only improved community 

relations but has also improved morale and 

wellness within the department as appreciation 

from the community increases.

When asked what he would share with other 

departments across the nation that are considering 

officer wellness programming, Chief Porter 

said that such programs are “the way to reduce 

conflict and build stronger relationships within 

your department and with the community.” He 

encourages departments to engage officers, start 

small, and take one idea and build from there to 

achieve a contextually appropriate and holistic 

wellness program.

Spousal support program

The spousal support program, established by 

Lt. Beekman’s wife and several other spouses, 

is a registered nonprofit organization. Officers 

voluntarily contribute financially so that the 

organization can host family events and trainings. 
Bend Police Department 1 5

The organization hosts family picnics; monthly 

dinners; and Range Day, in which spouses go to 

the shooting range to learn about firearms and 

firearm safety, especially in the home. In addition, 

the organization sets up meal trains and child 

care for families following critical incidents while 

carefully honoring the wishes of the family. The 

organization also supports families after the arrival 

of a new baby. The Bend Fire Department is invited 

to engage in all of the activities hosted by the 

program. The organization also provides education 

for spouses on stress management, supporting 

officers through stressful situations, and handling 

the aftermath of a critical incident in which a spouse 

was involved. The main objective of the program is 

to support officer safety, health, and wellness by 

supporting families—particularly spouses who often 

feel isolated and experience tertiary stress from the 

law enforcement experience.

Peer support team

In a small department such as Bend’s, peer support 

is embedded in the culture as a result of close 

relationships with coworkers. However, Bend 

does have an official peer support team with 15 

to 20 peer support officers. The peer support team 

focuses on providing support mainly for traumatic 

incidents, officer involved shootings, divorce, and 

children’s issues. To become a peer support team 

member, officers must complete a three-day 

CISD training. In addition to the BPD’s peer 

support team, a countywide peer support team 

meets four times per year to attend refresher 

trainings together. All BPD peer support officers 

are required to attend two of these trainings per 

year. The on-site psychologist and department 

chaplains participate on, as well as co-lead, the 

peer support team to maintain a collaborative 

approach and to provide an officer with a selection 

of resources during a difficult time.

Contracted psychologist on site

The BPD has had an on-site contracted 

psychologist since 2015. Dr. Andy Barram sees 

his role in the department as a “culture changer 

and attitude changer” toward mental wellness. 

Barram is embedded in the department but does 

not provide direct counseling services, which 

allows him to avoid any barriers that might arise 

from having a counseling relationship with officers. 

He participates in ride-alongs and makes himself 

regularly available for officers in order to increase 

dialogue and trust. Based on officers’ needs, he is 

equipped with a strong referral network of mental 

health professionals to provide therapy when 

appropriate. In addition, Barram provides in-service 

trainings on suicide prevention, depression, and 

stress management.

Persistent challenges to mental health 

programming

While anecdotal evidence suggests that these 

programs are a success, a lack of research-based 

evidence makes it impossible to truly understand 

the impact of these programs. The BPD’s data on 

its yoga program are a start, but data collection for 

additional wellness programming is still lacking.

While the BPD has made huge strides in officer 

buy-in, it is an ongoing process. Only three free 

counseling sessions are available to officers 

through their insurance program. After these 

sessions, copays and other fees apply. This cost 

continues to be a barrier to officers receiving 

appropriate mental health support and is a 

downside to refraining from providing in-house 

therapy with the on-staff psychologist.
1 6 L AW E N F O R C E M E N T M E N TA L H E A LT H A N D W E L L N E S S A C T

Key learnings for replication

The key learnings for replication provided here are 

framed with the goal of providing insight to other 

agencies looking to implement similar wellness 

programs. They are overarching themes identified 

throughout the case study that will provide 

guidance for agencies as they begin the work of 

designing their own, contextually relevant mental 

health wellness programming. 

• Hosting wellness programs while on duty is 

a key factor for increasing accessibility and 

participation in programming.

• External partnerships, academic and local—

such as BPD’s partnership with local yoga 

instructors—are excellent methods for 

beginning progressive, theoretically sound 

programming in a law enforcement context.

• Leadership support for progressive wellness 

programming is not only critical for officer buyin but also has the power to drive the entire 

morale and culture of the department in a 

positive direction. 

• Yoga programs require a deep trust and 

confidence in the instructor(s). It is critical 

for individual departments to find the right 

instructor(s) for the context and culture of their 

agency.

• Supporting the wellness of families is 

critical to supporting the wellness of officers. 

Spouse and family engagement should 

be viewed as an integral part of wellness 

programming in departments.

• If a psychologist is on site, refraining from 

provision of therapy and instead providing 

referrals may increase dialogue and trust, which 

may lead to officers more openly and readily 

seeking help for mental health needs.

• Replication may be difficult in agencies where 

staffing remains a significant challenge. Bend 

does not face an understaffing challenge and 

therefore has more flexibility in implementing 

wellness programs and allowing officers the 

time to participate.

• Wellness programs can act as a recruitment 

tool, as has been successful in the BPD; 

many applicants indicate wellness 

programming as a key reason for why 

they are applying to the BPD.

Conclusion

Openness to new ideas and a willingness to carry 

on until broad buy-in is achieved have been key 

qualities for the success of the BPD’s holistic 

wellness programming. Leadership support from 

the very top has allowed the underlying values of 

such programming to become embedded into the 

larger culture of the agency. The support provided 

by top leadership of the BPD has been recognized 

as an essential element of Total Worker Health.11

In addition, engaging informal leaders among the 

rank and file has helped to spread acceptance of 

these innovative approaches to wellness. With 

this combined support from formal and informal 

leadership, the BPD reports improvements in 

morale and productivity. Because new programs 

are framed in culturally and contextually relevant 

ways, BPD officers have been willing to step into 

unknown experiences, leading to improved quality 

of life both professionally and personally. 

11. Hope Tiesman et al., “National Police Week and NIOSH’s Work in Officer Safety,” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, May 16, 2017, 

https://blogs.cdc.gov/niosh-science-blog/2017/05/16/officer-safety-research/.
2. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department

The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department 

(CMPD) serves both the city of Charlotte and 

unincorporated Mecklenburg County, North 

Carolina. This jurisdiction totals 438 square miles 

and is divided into 13 patrol divisions.12 The 

total population living in CMPD’s jurisdiction is 

869,495.13 This is a racially diverse population, 

made up of approximately 45 percent White 

residents, 35 percent Black, and 13 percent 

Hispanic.14 The most commonly reported crime 

in 2017 was larceny, with 25,610 larceny crimes 

reported, followed by burglary and aggravated 

assault at 6,417 and 3,965 reported respectively.15

Internal documents show that as of 2018, the 

CMPD employs 1,972 sworn officers and 520 

civilian staff in addition to 367 volunteers who 

support the work of the department. Approximately 

85 percent of sworn employees are men and 15 

percent are women. In addition, approximately 74 

percent of sworn employees are White, 17 percent 

are Black, five percent are Hispanic, and two 

percent are Asian. The average number of years on 

the job as of 2018 is 13.5. Currently, 55 percent of 

sworn employees have a Bachelor’s or graduate 

degree, 19 percent have a high school diploma, and 

12 percent attended two years of college. At the 

entry level, officers receive an annual base salary 

of $44,362; however, with a four-year degree, 

entry-level officers receive a 10 percent education 

incentive at the time of hire. As the CMPD views 

access to holistic benefits as critical to officer 

wellness, a variety of benefits are available to 

officers including the following:

•	 Medical insurance 

•	 Dental and vision plans

•	 Accident insurance

•	 Critical illness insurance

•	 Life insurance

•	 Retirement plans

•	 Employee housing support services

•	 Paid parental leave

•	 Reduced rates for transit passes and 

wellness centers 

•	 Shared sick leave program

•	 Employee assistance program

12. “Our Response Areas,” City of Charlotte, accessed November 1, 2018, https://charlottenc.gov/CMPD/ResponseAreas/Pages/default.aspx.

13. “Our Response Areas” (see note 8).

14. “Charlotte, North Carolina, Population 2018,” World Population Review, accessed June 20, 2018, http://worldpopulationreview.com/us-cities/

charlotte-population/.

15. Index Offense Statistics January–December Current Year Compared to Previous Year: Report Compiled January 8, 2018 (Charlotte, NC: 

Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department, 2018), http://charlottenc.gov/CMPD/Safety/Documents/CrimeStats/CS17YrEnd-sum.pdf.

Overview of CMPD mental health 

services

The CMPD has taken a holistic approach to health 

and wellness, including mental health support 

programs that offer myriad services to officers. 
1 8 LAW ENFORCEMENT M E N TA L H E A LT H A N D W E L L N E S S A C T

CMPD has focused heavily on working with 

the City of Charlotte to establish a multifaceted 

benefits package for CMPD employees. This focus 

reflects the agency’s view that providing access to 

physical health, mental health, financial support, 

career support, and personal support is critical to 

establishing a culture of wellness in the agency. 

According to site interview participants, CMPD’s 

programming and partnerships continue to evolve, 

resulting in improved officer morale and anecdotally 

reported mental and physical health improvements. 

The CMPD currently has a strong peer support 

program, an on-staff psychologist, a City-based 

EAP, a chaplaincy program, a retired officers 

program, and a variety of wellness programs 

provided by the City of Charlotte. These programs 

work collaboratively to pursue optimal wellness 

throughout the agency.

Peer support program

The peer support program was designed to offer 

voluntary and confidential support to employees 

dealing with stress, emotional difficulties, or other 

personal and job-related circumstances. The goal 

of the program is to mitigate potential danger to 

oneself, one’s family, the agency, and the public. 

The peer support team is currently made up 

of 39 members, including officers, sergeants, 

lieutenants, and nonsworn personnel. The diverse 

make-up allows officers in need to access a 

relatable source of support. In addition to the core 

team, a team of four peer support officers serve in 

the officer-involved shooting (OIS) response group 

and are specifically trained to support and assist 

officers during the vulnerable time following an 

OIS. All members of the OIS response group have 

experienced an OIS themselves, increasing their 

capacity to relate to the experience. 

Peer support officers complete a two-day training 

prior to joining the team, and members of the OIS 

response group complete a third day of training. 

In addition, all peer support officers attend a 

quarterly training covering a variety of relevant 

topics. During these quarterly trainings, the officers 

participate in a mental health debriefing of their 

own to mitigate any psychological distress that 

the role of a peer support officer may cause. 

Although the members of the peer support team 

are thoroughly trained, they are knowledgeable of 

the boundaries of their role and are equipped with 

referral skills and resources. Peer support officers 

use the Psychological First Aid model, which 

prioritizes taking care of an officer’s immediate 

needs—safety, water, family contact, food, and 

fresh clothes—prior to debriefing on the critical 

incident. In an OIS situation, peer support officers 

also reach out to officers who were on the scene 

but did not shoot, as those officers often also 

experience psychological distress. The peer support 

officers maintain contact for an indefinite period of 

time, typically reaching out twice in the week after 

the incident and then periodically in the weeks and 

months that follow. The peer support team works 

to eliminate the common feeling of abandonment 

and isolation experienced by officers after critical 

incidents. To assist with this work, an agency 

leadership member will also reach out to the officer 

at least once after a critical incident. 

According to the peer support program policy, 

the promotion of trust and confidentiality is of 

utmost importance for the success of the program. 

According to members of the peer support team, 

the number of CMPD officers accessing peersupport services increased in 2017, and informal 

contacts with members of the peer-support team 

by officers in crisis also increased. This increase 

indicates the success of the team and program and 

is seen as a reflection of a culture in which officers 

feel safe reaching out and seeking assistance. 

On-staff psychologist

An on-staff psychologist, Dr. David Englert, joined 

the CMPD in 2016. Englert’s salary is paid by 

Mecklenburg County although he is embedded 
in the department, and his office is at CMPD 

headquarters. His open-door policy establishes a 

sense of accessibility and encourages relationship 

building with the CMPD community. Englert 

deliberately does not conduct therapy at CMPD. 

His main role in the department is to create and 

conduct officer wellness programming and to 

direct employees to appropriate resources both 

internally and externally. By not providing therapy 

himself he is able to inform and create broader 

programs. To guide employees, Englert conducts 

interviews with officers who have been involved in 

critical incidents—once immediately following the 

incident, and once again three months later. 

Englert does conduct yearly check-ins with 

individuals working in crimes against children, 

cybercrime, homicide, and other units with 

high exposure to trauma. These interviews and 

check-ins allow him to assess individual officers’ 

needs and ensure that he is guiding them to 

the appropriate available resources. Englert 

also provides training to officers on self-care 

practices and how to identify post-traumatic stress 

symptoms. A post-academy officer wellness 

training day is also in development as of 2018 

to inform new officers about stress and stressmitigation techniques. 

Employee assistance program

According to the CMPD, the intent of the EAP 

is to identify problems at the earliest possible 

moment, to motivate employees to seek help, and 

to direct employees to the most appropriate source 

of assistance in resolving personal difficulties 

and restoring acceptable job performance. The 

program guarantees privacy and confidentiality to 

all participants. Employees are encouraged to use 

the EAP voluntarily when they need professional 

help or guidance. In other cases, a supervisor may 

refer an employee to the EAP if job performance 

is being affected by personal issues. While the 

employee must still provide verbal consent, the 

referring supervisor will be notified as to whether 

the employee is cooperating with EAP staff. EAP 

staff members suggest either short-term or longterm counseling based on the needs and situation 

of the officer.

Through the EAP, officers can receive six free, 

voluntary counseling sessions. After those initial 

six sessions, a $70 copay is required for each 

additional session. Because the necessary number 

of sessions to complete treatment typically 

exceeds six, this copay remains a barrier for 

officers who cannot or do not wish to pay $70 

per session. A partnership established with a 

local mental health organization works to diminish 

this barrier by providing services to any CMPD 

employee for $20 per session. While this is not 

a total solution for the problem, it reduces the 

financial burden that can hinder access to essential 

care for officers in need. As one officer said, 

“People often don’t understand that officers are 

not going to spend their emergency fund money 

on mental health wellness when it’s possible that 

their children might get sick.” To further address 

this problem, the department is currently working 

with city wellness officials to create a program 

that would allow officers 22 free counseling 

sessions—a number that often allows treatment to 

reach completion. 

In addition to counseling services, the EAP 

provides legal support, financial counseling, and 

referrals for child and elder care. Legal support 

is limited to 30 minutes per issue and does not 

provide direct services but rather consultation and 

referral to external resources. 

Chaplaincy program

The CMPD chaplaincy program is made up of 14 

chaplains from three faiths—Christianity, Islam, and 

Judaism. The chaplains serve officers, nonsworn 

employees, and families. Each chaplain is assigned 

to a specific CMPD division to become embedded 

Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department 1 9
2 0 LAW ENFORCEMENT MENTA L H E A LT H A N D W E L L N E S S A C T

in the community. They are required to volunteer 

for a minimum of 16 hours per month. Chaplains 

hold office hours, eat lunch with officers, and 

go on ride-alongs (both random and targeted) to 

build presence and develop relationships with 

the officers in their division. In addition, chaplains 

are frequently deployed to the scene of a critical 

incident and are a major component in postincident care for the agency. After assistance at 

critical incidents, chaplains complete an after-action 

report to provide transparency, consistency, and 

feedback to the agency. Chaplains also engage 

with retired officers when requested.

To join the program, a chaplain must complete a 

thorough application including a background check, 

interview, and references. Chaplains are trained 

on how to establish boundaries when dealing with 

officers and how and where to provide referrals 

when appropriate. Chaplains are also required 

to attend quarterly trainings to ensure continued 

adherence to best practice and policy.

With the goal of providing a “ministry of presence,” 

the chaplains aim to meet officers in the officers’ 

own spiritual comfort zone—to provide support 

that is adaptable to the officers’ spiritual lifestyle, 

if any, in ways that align with the expressed needs 

of the officers. The program works to maintain 

an interfaith approach and strong collaborations 

with the peer support team and the broader 

department. The chaplaincy program is considered 

a critical tool for building community-police 

relations in Charlotte and Mecklenburg County.

Retired officers program

In an effort to improve outreach to retired officers, 

the CMPD maintains a program for them. The 

program’s goals are to support officers during 

what can be the difficult transition from active duty 

to retirement and to use willing retired officers 

for continued support of the department. For 

example, retired officers can be a great source 

of support to active sworn officers during critical 

incidents, assisting with logistics, preparation of 

food and water, and providing care packages to 

affected officers and families. Participation in the 

program also may provide retired officers with a 

returned sense of purpose and identity. Currently, 

retired officers in the program participate in 

graduation ceremonies for new recruits, host 

and participate in information sessions on 

common financial issues for retired officers, 

and host and participate in a retired-officers 

class twice a year targeting new retirees that 

averages 50 to 60 participants. 

Currently there are 300 retirees in the program, 

but participation in specific events remains low. 

The program is led by retired officers; they aim 

to increase collaboration with the department, 

increase outreach (currently the main form of 

outreach is Facebook), and host more social events 

to strengthen the retired officer community. As 

one of the group leaders noted, “Part of the officer 

safety and wellness responsibility involves taking 

care of retired officers.” 

Personal and financial wellness programming

“When you are less stressed, you’re more likely 

to engage in positive behaviors both personally 

and on the job.” This is a foundational belief of the 

CMPD. As such, the agency recognizes that stress 
Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department 2 1

does not result only from on-the-job incidents 

but also personal and financial situations. In 

a survey administered by Dr. Englert, officers 

reported that financial challenges are a consistent 

and significant stressor, so the department has 

hosted a number of peer-led small groups covering 

financial wellness and additional personal wellness 

topics. The department has also brought in an 

out-of-state consultant on four occasions to date. 

This consultant provides one-on-one financial 

consultations to officers. After the first visit, the 32 

available spots for the second visit filled within one 

hour of announcing the availability to officers. The 

department continues to receive positive feedback 

regarding these consultations and plans to host 

more in the future. 

City wellness program

The City of Charlotte offers a voluntary incentivebased wellness program in which police 

department personnel are eligible for participation. 

Program members must participate in annual 

health screenings. If they meet certain standards, 

participants pay less for insurance premiums. This 

program engages and motivates officers to work 

toward maintaining healthy lifestyles. According 

to City of Charlotte staff, 92 percent of city 

employees, including law enforcement, participated 

in the wellness program in 2018.

In addition, through the City of Charlotte, officers 

have free access to aerobic and strength training 

equipment at 17 department facilities to support 

their physical health, which in turn supports holistic 

wellness. Physical fitness and nutrition counseling 

services are offered to all employees through a 

combination of a full-time staff physiologist and 

registered dietitians through the city wellness 

program. Officers can also access a personal 

health coach through the city wellness program to 

assist with creating a personalized action plan for 

behavior change, chronic disease management, 

healthy lifestyle establishment, and fitness. 

Currently, the city employs six health coaches, 

strategically placed at worksites throughout 

the city to increase accessibility. The six health 

coaches are specialized in a variety of relevant 

areas, such as diabetes management, exercise 

physiology, and dietetics. 

Most notably, the City of Charlotte is continuing 

to expand its vision for improving access to health 

care by creating “one-stop shops” throughout 

the city for its employees. To date, the city has 

implemented five city health clinics, each with a lab 

on site. These clinics are strategically located based 

on city employees’ home and work ZIP codes to 

increase convenience to quality health care for 

city employees and their families. The clinics offer 

same-day appointments, including during work 

hours; easy, online scheduling; access to more 

than 100 free generic prescriptions; and referrals 

to specialists. Clinics are accessible to all officers 

and their families. In addition to physical health 

care, each of the clinics conducts depression 

screenings with patients as necessary. According 

to department leadership, these clinics have 

decreased the financial stressors related to health 

care and have increased the likelihood of officers 

seeking medical assistance when necessary. 

While these City of Charlotte wellness program 

components focus primarily on physical health, 

physical health care factors influence the mental 

and emotional wellness for officers. Therefore, 

these programs have been critical for improving 

mental wellness in the department and for 

establishing a culture of holistic wellness. 
2 2 LAW ENFORCEMENT MENTAL H E A LT H A N D W E L L N E S S A C T

Persistent challenges to officer 

wellness programming

Anecdotal evidence and some minimal tracking 

of program engagement suggests that these 

programs are having a significant positive impact 

on officers and their agency. But a lack of evidencebased methodology limits the ability to truly 

understand program impact. 

Achieving officer buy-in is an ongoing process. 

Though the CMPD has made huge strides in 

shifting the culture of wellness to encourage officer 

buy-in, it acknowledges that there is still more work 

to be done. Similarly, outreach to retired officers by 

the CMPD remains limited, though the department 

is actively addressing this shortfall. And compared 

to some of the sites visited in other case studies, 

engagement in wellness topics at the academy 

level remains limited.

Key learnings for replication

• Collaboration both internally and externally 

is critical for establishing holistic wellness 

programming.

• Open feedback loops for employees allow gaps 

and unmet needs to be identified and increase 

trust and legitimacy within the department.

• Creating and investing in programming that 

addresses officers’ personal challenges will 

benefit agencies in the form of increased job 

efficiency and effectiveness.

• Officer wellness programming, particularly 

mental health programs, should include retired 

officers.

• Viewing wellness holistically—physical, 

emotional, financial, social, personal, career—

is critical for creating a culture of wellness 

within departments.

• Making physical health care accessible and 

affordable for officers and their families can 

improve mental wellness by decreasing 

significant stressors related to health care.

Conclusion

The CMPD’s services to support holistic, mental, 

and physical wellness for its employees make it an 

exemplary agency and a model of how agencies 

can work with local government and private 

organizations to create whole-health systems that 

are accessible. Built into its policies and procedures 

is language and behavior that encourages a 

culture of openness and support, mitigating the 

negative stigma around mental health issues. 

The CMPD recognizes that the key to both public 

safety and agency success is officer wellness. 

While there are developments to be made and 

challenges to overcome, the CMPD’s approach to 

mental wellness may be helpful to those agencies 

across the nation that are in the earlier stages of 

establishing holistic wellness programming. 
3. Cop2Cop

Cop2Cop (C2C) is the only legislated peer crisis 

response hotline in the United States. C2C offers 

peer support, clinical assessments, provider 

networks, crisis intervention, and other critical 

mental health services to law enforcement 

professionals and their families 24 hours a 

day, seven days a week. New Jersey state law 

established the program in 1999, and since that 

time, C2C has had 80,000 contacts with law 

enforcement officers and their families to assist 

them with mental health needs. C2C’s peer support 

staff members have dealt with more than 200 crisis 

calls involving suicidal risk since the program began. 

Staffed by retired officers, many of whom are 

also licensed professionals and trained mental 

health specialists, C2C uses Reciprocal Peer 

Support (RPS), a model that draws on shared living 

experiences. The model has staff perform four 

tasks: (1) connection, (2) information gathering 

and risk assessment, (3) case management, and 

(4) resilience building. These tasks allow staff 

members to offer immediate support, identify 

presenting problems, and finally offer referrals 

as necessary. C2C uses its C2C Police Clinical 

Network to address the needs of law enforcement 

professionals and their families. 

C2C expanded beyond peer support calls to crisis 

intervention response following the terrorist attacks 

of September 11, 2001. Using International Critical 

Incident Stress Foundation (ICISF) training, C2C 

deploys its specialized crisis response team when 

called for critical incidents in the New Jersey law 

enforcement community. They offer on-scene 

Psychological First Aid, CISD, and response 

strategies to assist broader agencies and units in 

the midst of crisis situations.

16. Michael G. Aamodt and Nicole A. Stalnaker, “Police Officer Suicide: Frequency and Officer Profiles,” PoliceOne.com, last modified June 20, 2006, 

https://www.policeone.com/health-fitness/articles/137133-Police-Officer-Suicide-Frequency-and-officer-profiles/.

17. Law Enforcement Officer Crisis Intervention Services Act, N.J. Rev. Stat. § 40A:14-195–14:198 (1998), https://www.njleg.state.nj.us/9899/Bills/

PL98/148_.HTM.

Funded by the State of New Jersey’s Division of 

Mental Health Services in their Department of 

Human Services and developed by the Rutgers 

University Behavioral Health Care Center, C2C is a 

vital operation used by the State of New Jersey to 

address officer safety and wellness. 

Background

In the early 1990s, Cherie Castellano, a licensed 

behavioral health clinician at the Rutgers University 

School of Medicine and Dentistry, sought new 

ways to offer emotional support to police officers 

in Newark, New Jersey. She saw that many police 

officers were not using the behavioral health 

system tools that were available to them at the 

time. Doubtful that many officers—with their 

stereotypical bravado and prideful demeanors—

would engage in peer-to-peer support, Castellano 

was surprised to find the opposite was true. She 

led a small program with a seed grant that created 

access to peer chaplains and resources such as 

peer-to-peer services. According to Castellano, in 

the early 1990s Newark was considered one of the 

most violent cities in the country, leading to high 

levels of officer stress and experiences of vicarious 

trauma. After several law enforcement officers 

committed suicide in an 18-month period from 

1996 to 1998,16 New Jersey lawmakers passed 

the Law Enforcement Officer Crisis Intervention 

Services Act,17 which secured sustainable funding 

through asset forfeiture funds for crisis support for 

officers under the guidance of the Department of 

Human Services and in partnership with Rutgers. 

As a direct result, the C2C hotline, with Castellano 

at the helm, was established in 1999 as a creative 

solution to what had become a troubling byproduct 

of policing in their state. 
2 4 L AW E N F O R C E M E N T M E N TA L H E A LT H A N D W E L L N E S S A C T

At first, C2C started small as it established itself 

as a tool for law enforcement officers statewide. 

Understanding that it takes time for officers 

to trust mental health and wellness programs, 

C2C used its cadre of retired officers and cop 

clinicians—retired officers who are now licensed 

counselors or clinical social workers—to spread 

the word about the services they offered. In 

addition, Castellano began reaching out to police 

departments throughout the state and offered C2C 

support teams to address officer needs following 

critical incidents. After September 11, which had 

a significant impact on the whole New Jersey 

law enforcement community, Castellano began 

working with her peers in the field to develop the 

RPS model to create genuine support for officers in 

crisis and to protect those engaging as counselors 

or peer support providers from being retraumatized. 

This model, in conjunction with Dr. John Violanti’s 

exhaustive research on the impact of officer stress 

on their mental and physical health,18 became 

the foundation upon which C2C has continued 

to evolve. Violanti’s research uncovered troubling 

findings around the impact of stress on the holistic 

health of law enforcement officers. Officers older 

than 40 had a higher risk of a coronary event within 

10 years than the same segment of the broader 

national population, and more officers report suicidal 

thoughts than the general population.19 His research 

has also found that alcohol abuse among police 

officers in the United States is approximately double 

that of the general population.20 Such findings 

reinforced Castellano’s belief in the need for new 

and progressive mental health interventions for law 

enforcement officers, such as C2C.

18. John M. Violanti and Fred Aron, “Ranking Police Stressors,” Psychological Reports 75, no. 2 (1994), 824–826, https://journals.sagepub.com/

doi/10.2466/pr0.1994.75.2.824; John M. Violanti and Fred Aron, “Police Stressors: Variations in Perception among Police Personnel,” Journal of 

Criminal Justice 23, no. 3 (1995), 287–294, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/004723529500012F?via%3Dihub; John M. Violanti, 

“Predictors of Police Suicide Ideation,” Suicide and Life-Threatening Behavior 34, no. 3 (2004), 277–283, https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1521/

suli.34.3.277.42775.

19. Lois Baker, “Researchers Investigate Impact of Stress on Police Officers’ Physical and Mental Health,” State University of New York University at 

Buffalo News Center, last modified September 25, 2008, http://www.buffalo.edu/news/releases/2008/09/9660.html.

20. John M. Violanti, “Alcohol Abuse in Policing: Prevention Strategies,” FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin 68, no. 1 (1999), 16–18.

About the agency

Today, C2C continues to serve New Jersey’s law 

enforcement officers and their families. Located in 

Piscataway on the Rutgers University Behavioral 

Health Management Campus, C2C is a part of the 

Rutgers Behavioral Health Management System, 

which is the second largest of its kind in the 

country. C2C employs 15 law enforcement peer 

counselors, two cop clinicians, one administrative 

professional, and one executive director.

All of the peer counselors and cop clinicians are 

retired officers who served with honor. The average 

C2C employee has been on staff for five years, 

and C2C maintains a diverse team that represents 

many ethnic backgrounds, ranks, and years of 

experience in the field. Per diem and flexible hours 

are offered to employees, with an average salary 

of $25 an hour. Despite the wages and benefits, 

many employees see their role as an honor as well 

as a job. As one employee told us, “Working at 

Cop2Cop is the answer to a prayer for my future. 

Retirement is lonely and full of the scars from the 

past but when I am here, serving my brotherhood 

by helping them heal, I have a purpose again, and I 

am also healed.”

When an officer in need calls the hotline, they 

immediately undergo a psychosocial triage process. 

In an approach that may differ from that of a 

traditional hotline, C2C’s peer call takers are trained 

to use the four tasks of the RPS model to cultivate 

a comfortable conversation while the counselor 

uses specialized software to establish a baseline for 

the caller’s provisional history. C2C peers use the 
Cop2Cop 2 5

four tasks of RPS during a call to normalize callers’ 

experience, engaging them in dialogue about 

experiences, needs, and on-the-job trauma. Peer 

counselors will often share their story and invite 

callers to share their own to build mutual trust and 

establish legitimacy with the caller. At the end of 

the call, the clients are given a referral for additional 

services and offered ongoing telephone support 

by the C2C staff. More than 70 percent of callers 

select this option and are assigned a peer counselor 

who calls them for additional RPS counseling. 

C2C then continues this sustained peer support 

with the goal of at least 7 to 10 calls over the next 

six months—a point of pride for the staff. One 

caller who was interviewed about their experience 

said, “The days following my call to Cop2Cop 

were tough, and I went through a lot, but they 

never stopped reaching out. Every couple of days I 

could count on a voicemail and even once a happy 

birthday message that meant the world to me and 

kept me knowing someone cared about my future, 

even when I didn’t.”

Description of the mental health 

program and approach

Castellano and her colleagues developed the RPS 

method, and its steps are informed by extensive 

research and years on the hotline:

• Connection and peer presence

• Information gathering and risk assessment

• Case management and goal setting

• Resilience, affirmation, and praise 

What is critical about the RPS method is that 

it requires that the client be treated from a 

perspective that only their peers could provide. A 

fellow officer is in the best position to understand 

an officer’s plight, and RPS makes that connection; 

first in the interaction and understanding of 

commonality in experience and second in the 

sharing of experiences by the C2C counselors. 

A standardized process across peer helplines, 

information gathering and risk assessment are 

essential to the RPS methodology. C2C staff 

members undergo training over several days to 

understand how to relate to the caller and how 

to constructively share their personal experience 

without opening themselves up to harm. Staff 

members are also trained on software that 

identifies common risk factors for suicide and other 

behavioral health disorders. Staff members are 

taught to identify reoccurring themes, problems, 

and reactions in the story of their client. They 

listen for historical factors, from either an incident 

or family history, and ask direct questions while 

prompted by the software through a number of 

mandatory fields. The effectiveness of the RPS 

model and of C2C’s practices lies in the personal 

nature of the process of engagement with clinical 

supervision to ensure things such as medical 

history and needs assessments are performed 

over a series of calls. As the staffers gather 

further information from callers through regular 

dialogue, the file on each client expands, offering 

opportunities for C2C staff to better match them 

with appropriate counseling services, methods, 

and resources.

The average relationship between a caller and the 

C2C hotline is approximately six months with 15 

documented encounters. This period of engagement 

necessitates consistent case management and 

oversight from the clinical supervisors and C2C staff 

to evaluate whether the staff member assigned 

to the case is the best match or if another peer 

counselor would be better suited to the client’s 

story. Items that are assessed during the peer 

pairing process under the RPS model include career 
2 6 L AW E N F O R C E M E N T M E N TA L H E A LT H A N D W E L L N E S S A C T

advancement, the field of service, behavioral health 

issues, relationship with C2C to date, and the staff’s 

comfort in their ability to serve the client. After a 

connection has been established, the RPS model 

encourages the staff member to direct the client 

toward referral services. 

For C2C, this referral is a unique step in the case 

management task of the RPS process as they have 

developed an extensive catalog of practitioners 

and behavioral health support services that are 

best equipped to handle a law enforcement 

professional’s needs. Part of the C2C staff’s work 

between calls is to expand this catalog of services 

and populate their growing online database. This 

database enables peer counselors, who are ready 

to refer a client to other services, access to a large 

cadre of family therapy centers, medical health 

professionals, and other providers that are easily 

coordinated to ensure the best match for each 

client. The goal in every case is to transfer callers 

to the next step in their healing and care process 

and to do it with intention and careful follow-up. 

For some clients, the peer support functions as 

a holding place for them as they decide about 

treatment options that make the most sense for 

them. Peer support alone is not a treatment, but it 

is a critical support that enhances treatment on the 

journey to healing. 

The final phase of the RPS methodology focuses 

on the resilience of both the client and the staff. 

As the relationship develops, C2C staff members 

are taught to praise any success the client has had, 

even if it is as simple as calling back when they find 

themselves in crisis again or just making it through 

another day. In addition, in what Castellano feels to 

be the most rewarding part of C2C, peer counselors 

are taught to identify their abilities and resiliency 

through their work so they might feel uplifted rather 

than traumatized by their experiences. 

Resiliency is also shown through advocacy and 

action. Yearly, the C2C staffers participate in the 

American Foundation for Suicide Prevention 

Survivors of Suicide Day in honor of their brothers 

and sisters in blue who have fallen to suicide. 

This day to memorialize others allows the staff 

to grieve while advocating for law enforcement 

in this community space. In addition, providing 

community training is a cathartic activity for the 

C2C team as they share their best practices, reflect 

on their success, and encourage others in the 

space of officer safety and wellness. The integrated 

model of care is designed to lead to a state of 

functional well-being for all involved. 

In 2009, there was a surge in suicide in New 

Jersey that caused a critical eye to fall on C2C.21

As it is the only program of its kind, New Jersey 

Police Union officials demanded that the state 

legislature assess whether the investment had 

paid the dividends they were expecting. For 18 

months, a governor-appointed task force evaluated 

the RPS model, C2C, and best practices in the 

field of officer safety and wellness related to 

suicide. Castellano and her team approached the 

challenge to their work with the resolve to continue 

serving the officers of New Jersey as best they 

could and to stand behind whatever information 

was discovered. For the C2C staff, the lives of the 

officers of New Jersey mattered more than the life 

of the program. After an intense investigation, the 

task force report found that the RPS model was 

the best possible method for law enforcement 

and a model of success in both its design and 

implementation.22

21. Chris Megerian, “Rate of Suicide among Corrections Officers Higher than Police,” New Jersey.com, last modified October 26, 2009, 

https://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2009/08/rate_of_suicide_among_correcti.html.

22. Governor’s Task Force on Police Suicide, New Jersey Police Suicide Task Force Report (Trenton, NJ: Governor’s Task Force on Police Suicide, 2009), 

https://www.nj.gov/oag/library/NJPoliceSuicideTaskForceReport-January-30-2009-Final(r2.3.09).pdf.

The conclusion was that the 

state had done too little to market the program, 
Cop2Cop 2 7

leaving it relatively unknown to the bulk of New 

Jersey law enforcement officers and thereby 

creating a lethal gap in its frequency of use. The 

solution at C2C was to address the task force’s 

findings with an exhaustive marketing campaign to 

better inform those in need and make C2C a brand 

that is recognized among New Jersey officers as a 

compatriot and a lifesaver.

In the findings of the Governor’s Task Force on 

Police Suicide,23 the C2C model was deemed so 

effective that C2C was able to expand its services 

beyond the call-in center to include hosting QPR 

(question, persuade, refer) suicide prevention 

and resilience training in the New Jersey Police 

Academies and many local precincts. 

Today the program includes C2C Peer Phone 

Support, C2C Police Clinical Assessment, C2C 

Police Clinical Network, C2C Critical Incident 

Stress Unit Services, and C2C Training Unit. C2C 

also collaborates with the New Jersey State 

Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) and the New 

Jersey State Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association 

(PBA) to train officers, administrators, and other 

government officials on emerging issues in officer 

safety and wellness. 

A recent program evaluation done by University of 

North Carolina Global Peers for Progress Institute 

at Chapel Hill validated the RPS model and 

recommended it as a wellness and health navigator 

pilot project. And the team at C2C received a 

Strength and Wellness grant from the HealthCare 

Foundation of New Jersey to screen officers for 

chronic diseases like diabetes and cardiovascular 

sleep disorders to offer an enhanced form of peer 

counseling including peer health navigation and 

wellness coaching using an integrated approach to 

medical and behavioral health care needs.24

23. Governor’s Task Force on Police Suicide, New Jersey Police Suicide Task Force Report, 22 (see note 18).

24. Reciprocal Peer Support won a Silver Award in 2018. American Psychology Association, “2018 APA Psychiatric Services Achievement Awards,” 

Psychiatric Services 69, no. 10 (2018), https://ps.psychiatryonline.org/doi/pdf/10.1176/appi.ps.691007.

25. “Verified Suicides to Date,” Blue HELP, accessed November 15, 2018, https://wearebluehelp.org/.

Advantages and challenges of offering 

the program nationwide

The success of the C2C program has been 

recognized and identified as a model for replication. 

According to Castellano and retired Major General 

Mark A. Graham, director of the U.S. Department 

of Defense Suicide Prevention Office (DSPO)–

funded Vets4Warriors program, the New Jersey 

Vet2Vet Program established in 2002 was modeled 

after Cop2Cop and became Vets4Warriors in 2011 

after receiving a DSPO grant. 

In the future, C2C would like to see a national 

expansion of its model to accommodate the 

calls that they regularly receive from officers in 

need from other states. Although they are able 

to provide intermittent help to officers outside of 

New Jersey, they cannot commit to the aftercare 

and check-ins, which are critical and unique to the 

success of the RPS model. Nationally, officer death 

by suicide is on the rise25 and has become a large 

area of concern in the realm of officer safety and 

wellness. Peer-to-peer intervention and officer 

confidentiality are critical to any program’s success. 

The C2C model offers both, making it a strong 

candidate for replication. Key factors that must be 

included within the model are

• 24/7 call support;

• free, convenient, and confidential;

• structured professional peer support / 

RPS model;

• continuity of care enabled by quality IT / 

technology that tracks client case files;
2 8 LAW ENFORCEMENT MENTA L H E A LT H A N D W E L L N E S S A C T

• cultural approach rather than clinical tailoring to 

address law enforcement needs over mental 

health response;

• connection to high quality clinical and social 

resources;

• high quality training and continued high quality 

of service, monitoring, and supervision;

• high ratio of peers to professionals.

Replication would require a modification of the 

sustainability systems that have been set up 

in New Jersey to perpetuate C2C. New Jersey 

supports C2C through legislatively designated 

asset forfeiture funds, providing it a guaranteed 

funding source that not all states may be able to 

replicate. The call center that hosts C2C is state 

of the art, and funding for such technology is 

split among a number of state-based health and 

human services programs; a small town or agency 

operating in this manner would likely struggle to 

acquire the resources to operate under similar 

circumstances. C2C currently requires in-person, 

on-site staff time. However, an online Rutgers 

Peer Support Certificate Program was launched in 

March 2018 and a move to a cloud-based telephone 

system would allow for remote work. However, “the 

camaraderie, supervision, and peer support among 

the staff is critical to maintaining staff health and 

sustainability. Therefore, the call center as a ‘hub’ is 

still the ideal model,” according to Castellano. 
4. Dallas Police Department

Founded in 1881, the Dallas (Texas) Police 

Department (DPD) is the ninth-largest police 

department in the country, providing policing 

services to more than 1.3 million people in an 

area of 385 square miles.26 The DPD employs 

more than 3,300 sworn and more than 500 

nonsworn members. 

According to an analysis of U.S. Bureau of Census 

data by Bloomberg News Service, Dallas is the 

11th-most racially diverse city in the country. 

According to Bloomberg, Dallas’ population is 48 

percent White, 28 percent Hispanic, 17 percent 

Black, and 6 percent Asian.27 The DPD operates 

across eight patrol divisions in the city. With 24,847 

incidents reported in 2017, larceny is the most 

commonly reported Part 1 crime in Dallas, followed 

by burglary.28

26. “Join DPD,” Dallas Police Department, accessed November 1, 2018, http://www.dallaspolice.net/joindpd.

27. Vincent Del Giudice and Wei Lu, “Washington, D.C., Moves Up List of Most Diverse Regions in U.S.,” Bloomberg, last modified March 1, 2018, 

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-01/washington-d-c-moves-up-list-of-most-diverse-regions-in-u-s.

28. Federal Bureau of Investigation, “Table 8. Texas Offenses Known to Law Enforcement by City, 2017,” Crime in the United States, 2017, Uniform 

Crime Report (Washington, DC: Federal Bureau of Investigation, 2018), https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2017/crime-in-the-u.s.-2017/tables/table-8/

table-8-state-cuts/texas.xls.

Overview of DPD mental health 

programs

While the DPD has had mental health programming 

since before 2016, the ambush attack of July 7, 

2016—in which five officers were killed and nine 

more, along with two civilians, were wounded—

prompted a major push for more mental health 

programming as the department worked to come 

to terms with the attack on its people. To support 

its in-house psychological services and employee 

support program, the DPD has formed important 

partnerships with research and training institutes 

to establish evidence-based programming. These 

partnerships, particularly with the Center for Brain 

Health at the University of Texas as Dallas, place 

Dallas at the forefront of progressive officer mental 

health wellness programming. 

Center for Brain Health Brain Performance 

Institute

The Brain Performance Institute (BPI), housed 

in the Center for Brain Health at the University 

of Texas in Dallas, aims to provide greater 

evidence- and science-based understanding of 

brain health and to teach practical strategies that 

will assist individuals in optimizing performance 

and enhancing overall well-being. In partnership 

with the DPD, the BPI established a flagship 

Power of Mindfulness for First Responders 

Program, teaching mindfulness techniques to law 

enforcement officers while also gathering essential 

data to better understand brain health in the law 

enforcement context. 

The First Responders Program was developed 

following the incidents of July 7, 2016, the most 

deadly in American law enforcement since 

September 11, 2001. Dr. Dianna Purvis Jaffin and 

Dr. Jenny Wright Howland developed the program 

with the intention of building and sustaining officer 

resilience. The program draws on existing research 

in mindfulness and human stress response and 

is supplemented by information about the law
3 0 LAW ENFORCEMENT MENTAL H E A LT H A N D W E L L N E S S A C T

enforcement context provided to the BPI staff 

through interviews with DPD leaders and 

ride-alongs with DPD patrol officers. Based 

on the information gathered through the 

departmental interviews and observations, the 

program developers conducted a pilot of a law 

enforcement–informed mindfulness training with 

two groups of DPD staff members in 2017. They 

then incorporated feedback from the pilot into 

the program design, and the program formally 

launched in January 2018. To date, more than 

1,500 officers have interacted with BPI in some 

manner, and 184 DPD officers have been trained in 

mindfulness. Widespread interest in the program 

has led to its expansion, and it now includes other 

first responders and correctional officers from the 

city, the state, and the entire nation. 

The 12-hour mindfulness course is delivered as 

a three-hour course occurring once per week 

for four weeks. Officers receive active duty pay 

for their time in the program. The classes use 

multiple learning methods including active group 

discussions, facilitated discussions, video, text 

materials, visual aids, and active participation 

to help them understand the science behind 

mindfulness and learn and practice the techniques. 

Each class offers a short didactic segment, a skillbuilding practice, and a class discussion. 

The BPI conducted seven mindfulness classes 

with the DPD from January to August 2018. 

Pre- and post-training assessment data reported 

for 101 participating officers showed statistically 

significant reductions in mind wandering, alcohol 

use, organizational police stress, and negative 

mood and feelings. The analysis reported by the 

BPI also indicates statistically significant increases 

in observation skills, nonjudgment, and positive 

mood and feelings. According to officer feedback 

collected post-training, the majority of participants 

said they strongly agree that the program was 

valuable to them.

According to Dr. Purvis Jaffin and Dr. Wright 

Howland, if the practices taught in the mindfulness 

course are sustained post-training, they have 

the ability to change stress response, improve 

attention and focus, promote cognitive resilience, 

positively impact sleep and mood, improve physical 

and neural health, and reduce performance failures. 

On-the-job situational awareness, sense-making, 

and rapid decision-making may be improved even 

during complex and highly charged situations. 

In addition to the mindfulness program, the BPI 

conducted a pilot study with the DPD assessing 

the impact of a high-performance cognitive training. 

This training is called Strategic Memory Advanced 

Reasoning Training (SMART), and it focuses on 

the ability to quickly filter incoming verbal and 

sensory data, determine meaning and action 

based on those data, and then flexibly use the 

information gathered for rapid and agile decisionmaking. Seventy-four law enforcement officers 

ranging in rank from senior corporals to the chief of 

police underwent nine hours of training in a onemonth period. According to the SMART team, this 

pilot group demonstrated statistically significant 

improvements in complex reasoning and strategic 

attention as well as decreases in self-reported 

symptoms of depression and stress. These 

results suggest that training on cognitive 

performance may be a promising addition to 

law enforcement training.
Dallas Police Department 31

Caruth Police Institute

Founded in 2008, the Caruth Police Institute is a 

collaborative effort between the City of Dallas, the 

DPD, the Community Foundation of Texas, and 

the University of Texas at Dallas. It is a privately 

funded leadership institute embedded in the DPD. 

The institute was created to address the complex 

leadership needs of the DPD and to lead the 

charge on leadership training by viewing leadership 

in a holistic manner. The institute aims to teach 

people how to develop themselves as healthy 

individuals so they can create a healthy culture in 

the department. In addition, a key purpose of the 

leadership institute is to create a culture of learning 

throughout the department in order to develop 

leaders from the beginning of their careers. 

The Caruth Police Institute hosts a number of 

leadership development programs including a 

course for lieutenants, a course for sergeants, and 

a Sworn/Nonsworn Dynamics class for nonsworn 

employees working in a sworn environment. To 

participate in any of the leadership programs, 

employees must complete an application and 

submit letters of recommendation. Each cohort 

typically hosts between 15 and 20 participants. 

Topics covered in trainings include critical incident 

stress, stress management techniques, financial 

management, family support, time management, 

and health and wellness. To date, the institute 

has hosted 900 participants in all its leadership 

programs. 

DPD Employee Support Program

The DPD Employee Support Program (ESP) was 

established to provide access to resources and 

tools for employees, both sworn and nonsworn, 

experiencing personal or professional issues. 

The program provides essential support through 

nondisciplinary procedures, increasing the 

likelihood of officers’ thoughtful participation in the 

program. The main goal of the program, according 

to internal documents provided to the site visit 

team, is to “identify and abate at-risk behavior, 

demonstrated indicators of stress, and training 

deficiencies before policy violations arise.” The 

philosophy of the ESP is that the members of 

the department are its most valuable asset. It is 

therefore imperative that the department protect 

and prepare its members with proper guidance, 

including leadership, coaching, counseling, 

education, training, administration, and assistance. 

Employees are selected for the ESP through selfreferrals and referrals from leadership—confidential 

counseling referrals (either employees themselves 

or friends or family members refer employees to 

the ESP), database identification referrals, and 

supervisory referrals. To maintain confidentiality, 

no records of referrals for confidential counseling 

are maintained. Database identification referrals 

are made by the ESP team, which manages an 

employee database of information regarding 

pertinent performance indicators. When an 

employee is flagged for the presence of one or 

more of these indicators, the ESP team carefully 

evaluates whether the employee meets the 

threshold at which participation in ESP is deemed 

necessary. If the threshold is met, a referral is 

made. (See table 2 on page 32.) Supervisory 

referrals are made by sworn or civilian immediate 

supervisors by submitting a written report through 

the chain of command and to the ESP team.
3 2 L AW E N F O R C E M E N T M E N TA L H E A LT H A N D W E L L N E S S A C T

Table 2. ESP performance indicators and thresholds

Indicator Threshold

Complaints resulting in an IAD divisional investigation 4 in a 12-month period or additional deciding factors

Summary discipline (advice and counsel, supervisor’s report, documented counseling)3 in a 12-month period or additional deciding factors

Use of force complaints 3 in a 24-month period or additional deciding factors

Criminal activity complaint, including domestic disturbances involving 

a 911 police response, sexual harassment, alcohol or drugs, or criminal 

issues 

1 of any kind that has been adjudicated by the criminal justice 

system or additional deciding factors

Unexcused failure to appear in mandatory training, AWOL from work or 

court

3 of any kind in a 12-month period or additional deciding factors

Supervisory review 2 or more employees assigned to the same supervisor identified 

as candidates for the ESP within a 12-month period 

Overall 5 of any of the indicators in this table combined in a 12-month 

period or additional deciding factors

The ESP lasts for up to 90 days, with a minimum 

participation of 30 days. Once selected for the 

program, an employee undergoes an assessment 

period through their chain of command with 

check-ins at 30 days, 60 days, and 90 days. If the 

participant passes the assessment at 30 days, the 

program is complete. If the participant does not 

pass, they continue on for another 30 days and 

the process repeats until the 90-day maximum. 

The employee’s immediate supervisor provides 

the assessment evaluation to the ESP team at 

the end of each 30-day period. During the initial 

30-day assessment, the ESP team, the employee, 

and the employee’s chain of command outline 

a contextually appropriate program in which 

training, education, coaching, and counseling will 

be made available to the employee. Officers have 

a mandatory assignment to a car with a camera 

and microphone system. If an officer is selected 

for the ESP because of use of force complaints, 

the officer is required to wear a body camera for 

the 90-day duration of the program. At the end of 

the initial 30-day phase, the first-line supervisor 

completes an assessment for the ESP team. The 

findings of this assessment determine whether 

or not an employee is given a mandatory 30-day 

reassignment to the ESP program. The 60-day 

assessment determines whether or not the 

employee will continue in the program for the final 

30 days. Successful completion of the program 

occurs if the employee uses the resources made 

available and abates the troublesome at-risk 

behavior. The ESP team makes sure the employee 

knows the resources provided during the program 

are available at any time. Failure to progress 

indicates that an employee did not choose to use 

the resources made available and has failed to 

abate the at-risk behavior. If this occurs after the 

90-day mark, the employee must present to the 

Board of Review for further action to be taken. 

Of 190 cases since 2016, only four members 

have failed to progress through the program. The 

rest successfully completed the program within 

90 days. The ESP team said that participation in 

counseling is the most important factor for success 

in the program. Initially, the ESP was housed 

in the Internal Affairs (IA) division. This was not 

successful, as employees would not go to IA to 

seek assistance. The program was moved to the 

personnel department.

To assist in efforts to mitigate the need for 

participation in the ESP, the ESP team conducted 

several work-life balance seminars covering 

topics such as mindfulness, meditation, love 

languages, acupuncture, and essential oils. 

Because of the overwhelming positive response 

to and participation in these seminars, five more 
Dallas Police Department 3 3

seminars were scheduled for 2018. According to 

ESP leadership, so many officers are interested in 

participation in these seminars that a 2019 seminar 

waiting list is already filling up. These seminars and 

the ESP program as a whole have been of critical 

importance to reshaping the culture of mental 

health care in the DPD. According to department 

leadership, at a local nonprofit that provides 

counseling services to law enforcement at no cost 

to users, the cost to the city for covering these 

services has increased from between $4,000 and 

$8,000 in 2005 to $80,000 in 2017. Members of the 

department suggested that this increase indicates 

a large increase in officers reaching out for 

counseling, in no small part because of the efforts 

of the ESP team.

Programming for communications staff

Communications staff members are the first 

line of help for people in distress, and they must 

handle very stressful situations calmly. As such, 

they experience vicarious trauma in unique ways. 

According to a DPD veteran communications staff 

member, “having leadership in departments who 

have worked with civilians within the department 

makes a huge difference in how civilians are treated 

and what services are made available to them.” 

While nonsworn staffers have access to 

psychological services and the EAP, the DPD has 

taken significant steps to address the unique 

needs of its communication staff. Recognizing 

that telecommunicators—dispatchers and 911 call 

takers—need a contextually relevant culture of 

wellness, in March 2018, the DPD established an 

employee wellness training adapted to the needs 

of telecommunicators. Currently, two instructors 

in the communications staff are trained to conduct 

the three-day wellness training. This training covers 

topics such as emotional wellness, stress, anxiety, 

burnout, and indicators of burnout. In addition, 

the training provides a list of resources available. 

The training also teaches telecommunicators 

techniques for how to deal with stress at their 

desks if staffing demands limit their ability to take 

a proper break. In addition to the training, a quiet 

room has opened for telecommunicators to take 

breaks and relieve stress.

DPD Psychological Services

DPD Psychological Services is housed in the 

personnel department and consists of three staff 

psychologists. Primarily, all three psychologists 

work in the hiring process conducting psychological 

screenings. These psychological screenings are 

conducted using standard industry protocols. Each 

potential new hire undergoes two psychological 

screenings—one to screen for normal personality 

functioning and one to screen for mental disability. 

Using the California Performance Outcomes 

System (POS) model, the psychologists look at 10 

personality dimensions to check for psychological 

suitability, including flexibility, adaptability, social 

interaction, social bias, and other characteristics.

In addition to psychological screenings, the staff 

psychologists conduct a yearly assessment of 

vice and narcotics officers and offer resource and 

referral information. Use of services and referrals 

is voluntary after the initial assessment. However, 

if a problem is identified and voluntary treatment is 

denied, the case is passed to the employee’s chain 

of command for a fitness-for-duty assessment.

The three staff psychologists are available for 

individual counseling, couples counseling, and 

counseling for children 12 and older. Each year, 

approximately 1,000 officers, civilians, and family 

members seek counseling, with a current average 

of two to three new clients per week for each 

psychologist. Unlimited free counseling sessions 

are available to officers, bypassing the common 

financial barrier of insurance limits. The DPD 

counseling office is located at an off-site location 

and is not identified as a DPD office, and both of 

these qualities increase officer participation by 
3 4 LAW E N F O R C E M E N T M E N TA L H E A LT H A N D W E L L N E S S A C T

increasing privacy and confidentiality. According to 

a staff psychologist, mid-level officers with eight 

to 10 years on the job seem most likely to seek 

counseling.

DPD Psychological Services also assists with 

retirement planning, debriefing after critical 

incidents, supporting the peer support team, inservice trainings, and participation in family night 

at the training academy to provide information on 

available services. The team works to keep in good 

relationships with DPD leadership, DPD chaplains, 

and other clinicians throughout the community. 

Key learnings for replication

•	 Providing tailor-made wellness programs 

for nonsworn employees is important for 

creating a well-rounded culture of wellness 

within departments that benefits all 

employees.

•	 Partnerships with learning institutions are 

helpful in moving towards evidence-based 

programming.

•	 Training leaders to focus on personal 

and departmental wellness and training 

employees to become leaders beginning 

early in their careers will assist in creating a 

culture of holistic wellness in departments.

•	 Having a nondisciplinary program that 

provides support and essential services 

to employees presenting at-risk behaviors 

allows all employees to seek help without 

fear, becoming more productive and 

healthy.

•	 Proper research studies provide powerful 

findings that can guide training and 

practice to establish healthier and optimally 

performing individuals, agencies, and 

communities.

Conclusion

The DPD is a leader in establishing mental 

wellness programs that not only are evidencebased but also add to the breadth of research 

available for the field of law enforcement. 

Establishing and relying on external partnerships 

has been key for the DPD’s forward motion and 

rapid growth in mental wellness programming. 

In addition, the DPD has made great efforts to 

not simply include nonsworn civilians in mental 

health wellness programming, but also recognize 

the unique needs of nonsworn employees 

and take action to create programs that are 

contextually appropriate for them. These attributes 

demonstrated by the DPD should be considered for 

replication by agencies across the nation.
5. Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department

Indianapolis is the 17th-largest city in the United 

States29 and the state capital of Indiana. The 

Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department 

(IMPD), which was created by the 2007 merger 

of the Indianapolis Police Department and the law 

enforcement division of the Marion County Sheriff’s 

Office, serves the city of Indianapolis and Marion 

County except for the airport and four small cities 

in the county. The population served by the IMPD 

is 863,00230 and the jurisdiction covers 364 square 

miles.31 In 2018, the IMPD has a sworn force of 

1,612 officers and 194 nonsworn staff. Its mission 

statement reads, “We are dedicated to upholding 

the highest professional standards while serving 

the community in which we work and live. We are 

committed to the enforcement of laws to protect 

life and property, while also respecting individual 

rights, human dignity, and community values. We 

are committed to creating and maintaining active 

police/community partnerships and assisting 

citizens in identifying and solving problems to 

improve the quality of life in their neighborhoods.”32

29. American FactFinder, “Total Population: All Places within the United States, 2017 American Community Survey 1-Year Estimates,” 

U.S. Census Bureau, accessed November 13, 2018, https://factfinder.census.gov/faces/tableservices/jsf/pages/productview.xhtml?

pid=ACS_17_1YR_B01003&prodType=table.

30. American FactFinder, “Annual Estimates of the Resident Population: 2017 Population Estimates, Indianapolis city (balance), Indiana,” 

U.S. Census Bureau, accessed November 13, 2018, https://factfinder.census.gov/faces/tableservices/jsf/pages/productview.xhtml?src=CF.

31. “Service Districts,” Official Website of the City of Indianapolis and Marion County, accessed September 14, 2018, 

http://www.indy.gov/egov/city/dps/impd/enforcement/districts/Pages/home.aspx.

32. “Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department,” Official Website of the City of Indianapolis and Marion County, accessed September 14, 2018, 

http://www.indy.gov/eGov/City/DPS/IMPD/Pages/home.aspx.

The Office of Professional Development 

and Wellness

The IMPD developed the Office of Professional 

Development and Wellness (OPDW) as a 

comprehensive program that seeks to improve 

officer well-being in all aspects of their lives. The 

approach begins in basic training and continues 

throughout an officer’s career. The program has 

evolved and now includes mentoring for new 

officers; training on resiliency skills in the basic 

academy; a CISD team; counseling, mental health, 

and resiliency services; suicide prevention; physical 

health care; financial health counseling; working 

closely with EAP and other insurance providers; a 

military transition support system; and family support 

systems. In addition to working with officers, their 

families are also able to access all services and are 

included in individual plans for officers.

The unit was designed with and has strong buy-in 

and support from the FOP and from rank-and-file 

officers. The office has four full-time staff members 

who are selected based on their skills rather 

than their positions to serve in the unit. The unit 

operates during business hours, but staff members 

are available 24 hours a day for call outs, referrals, 

or crisis interventions. A high level of confidentiality 

and trust has been established in the unit and in 

how the administration respects and protects the 

role and function of the unit. 

How the program started

In 2010, Brian Nanavaty, a highly respected captain 

in the IMPD, recognized that a lot of disciplinary 

issues in the department grew out of the trauma 

experienced by officers in their work, which often 

caused problems at home as well. He realized that 

the department needed to develop a proactive 

solution to its disciplinary problems. He had the trust 

and respect of troops on the ground, and he worked 

with the FOP to develop what is now the OPDW. 
3 6 LAW ENFORCEMENT M E N TA L H E A LT H A N D W E L L N E S S A C T

From 2010 to 2016, the IMPD had no set-aside 

budget line for the OPDW. In 2016, they worked 

with the city council to get the funding approved to 

launch the program. With the essential assistance 

of the FOP in educating the city council, this 

effort secured a protected budget line of $50,000 

dedicated to law enforcement suicide prevention. 

The OPDW uses EAP counselors and psychologists 

rather than in-house psychologists or counselors. 

The office has developed strategies targeting 

basic recruits during their time in the academy and 

their first year or two of service. These strategies 

include an intentional focus on understanding 

stress, its impact on mental and physical health, 

and tools for how to manage stress throughout 

their careers. Officers are assigned a mentor 

during basic training and their first year or two on 

the force. In addition, the office provides crisis 

response and a comprehensive array of additional 

services to ensure all officers and their families 

access to prevention, intervention, and treatment 

that improve officer well-being.

How the wellness program functions

The wellness component of the OPDW considers 

everything they do to be peer support on some 

level. However, there is a formalized Police Officer 

Support Team (POST) that works in tandem with 

the CISD team to provide peer support during 

acute incidents and ongoing support for officers 

experiencing cumulative trauma. There are 

three CISD/POST teams of 10 people each—all 

volunteers—on call for a month at a time. The 

teams are all trained in critical incident response.

Following a critical incident, the OPDW team waits 

a day to bring the officer in with their spouse to 

check in and see how they are doing. The unit 

reports that officers actually seem to handle 

shootings fairly well. According to the OPDW team, 

“We encourage their spouses to come in when the 

officer goes back to work; the spouses tend to be 

the ones that have the most trouble. This makes 

it easier for them to come back later if they begin 

having problems. The team lets them know what 

the process is going to be for the investigation and 

what they can expect.” The officer is scheduled 

for at least one EAP appointment to let them 

know what to watch for in terms of post-incident 

reactions. Sixty to 70 percent of officers will make 

a second EAP follow up visit on their own. EAP 

does a follow-up call four weeks later. 

The OPDW also seeks to build a base of resiliency 

in officers before problems happen. The mentoring 

program grew out of a desire to do more to 

prevent problems by equipping new officers 

with resiliency skills in the training academy as 

recruits. The team realized that new recruits often 

struggled during the academy and in their first year 

or two on the job, so they developed a mentoring 

program that now has 144 officers in the IMPD 

trained as mentors to work with every new recruit. 

Mentors are assigned during recruits’ first week 

in the academy. Mentors are encouraged to have 

regular interaction with their recruits, from having 

lunch or coffee to providing support for homework 

assignments, running or working out with them, 

and offering guidance and encouragement. 

Mentors can also flag problems and get recruits 

the support and services they may need. For 

example, mentors realized that recruits whose 

native language is not English sometimes struggle 

with the law section of the academy and helped 

provide extra support to prevent problems before 

they became an issue. In another situation, one 

of the recruits had his civilian roommate commit 

suicide. The mentor met with the recruit to provide 

support and links to services.

Officers must have three years in the agency, no 

open disciplinary actions, and positive evaluations 

to become mentors. Mentors can be field training 

officers (FTO), but not the FTO for their particular 

mentee. Mentors are matched male-male and 
Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department 3 7

female-female because women in the academy 

often experience issues that only another woman 

can speak to.

Mentors go through a three-day training that 

focuses on knowing themselves, active listening, 

and emotional intelligence; a challenge course; and 

understanding generational differences, resources 

(EAP, etc.), chaplains, CISD, financial literacy and 

financial planning, self-care, and goal setting. 

Trained mentors wear a pin that identifies them 

as a mentor. 

How officers access the unit

When officers are disciplined, supervisors can 

mandate referrals to the OPDW for services as part 

of the officer remediation agreement. This referral 

provides an opportunity to identify if there are 

underlying issues that can be addressed through 

EAP or other interventions. Officers involved in 

critical incidents or near-miss incidents are also 

mandated for at least one session with the unit.

In addition to mandated referrals resulting 

from disciplinary actions and critical incidents, 

supervisors are trained on recognizing warning signs 

and are encouraged to make referrals to the unit 

as a preventive measure. And the unit works with 

officers and immediate family members who come 

in voluntarily for a range of issues from dealing with 

critical incidents, longer term exposure to trauma, 

family problems, and recovering from injuries, 

among other things. For example, officers who 

come in for financial issues are provided access 

to financial literacy training, debt management 

counseling, and money management advisors.

Resources to support officer wellness

The unit meets with the EAP provider on a monthly 

basis to case manage referrals and monitor 

cultural competence of the providers to ensure 

counselors understand how best to work with law 

enforcement officers. The unit maps and develops 

relationships with all types of treatment providers 

in Marion County to provide immediate access to 

the appropriate services as needed. They meet with 

the stress center and mental health and addictions 

centers to know who to work with. This includes 

addressing the officers’ privacy, including arranging 

for them to be seen without sitting in the public 

waiting room.

Because the department recognizes that wellness 

involves the body as well as the mind, IMPD officers 

have access to physical fitness resources located at 

the training academy facility. Officers injured off duty 

may access physical therapy for those injuries. The 

IMPD offers annual health screenings, but only 200 

officers take advantage of the program. The IMPD 

is seeking to strengthen officer physical health and 

well-being as an area for future growth.

The unit keeps track of officers who are injured 

or sick and makes regular contact and provides 

support services for the officer and family based 

on individual needs such as meals, transportation, 

snow shoveling, regular contacts, emotional and 

physical support, and access to the sick leave bank.

The IMPD’s Deployed Military Support Unit 

(DMSU) supports deployed officers and their 

families. The unit provides support when an 

officer deploys, while they are on assignment, and 

when they return. When an officer is deployed 

the unit assists them with turning equipment and 

preparations for departure. The unit stays in contact 

with the families while the officer is deployed, 

including making sure the family is accessing 

all the benefits they are eligible for during the 

deployment. When the officer returns, the unit 

assigns them a mentor officer who is former 

military and can provide assistance with their 

readjustment to work and family life. The DMSU 

also helps officers get access to services they 

are eligible for through the VA upon their return to 

civilian life.
3 8 LAW ENFORCEMENT MENTA L H E A LT H A N D W E L L N E S S A C T

Advantages and challenges of offering 

the program

Interviews with the OPDW, the FOP, and CISD 

unit identified several factors that can assist other 

law enforcement agencies seeking to strengthen 

officer safety and wellness—especially mental 

wellness. The following observations are a 

summary of those interviews.

The role of the FOP in the active design of the 

original program and advocacy for its funding with 

the city council was a critical factor in gaining the 

trust and acceptance of the rank-and-file officers 

for the program. The union supports the work of 

the unit both financially and philosophically. Before 

there was a formal budget for the program, the FOP 

created a pool of funding to cover insurance co-pays 

for officers to access mental health services.

Today, the IMPD FOP has a grant with the National 

Police Foundation and the National FOP looking at 

how the community responds to a critical incident 

and how that affects the officer or officers involved. 

Does it affect an officer’s recovery and PTSD? 

The FOP continues to be an active supporter of 

improving officer safety and wellness.

The impact of training mentors and peer supporters 

goes far beyond the direct impact they have in 

the moment on the individual officers affected. 

The culture of the organization grows as more 

and more officers develop greater empathy and 

stronger communication, leadership, and coaching 

skills along with increased knowledge and 

understanding of self-management and resiliency 

tools. Sergeant Aaron Snyder of the OPDW said, 

“The mentoring program has helped change the 

culture in our agency, making it acceptable to talk 

about the things we are struggling with in our 

personal and professional lives. Mentors are more 

likely to see someone who is struggling 

in the department who is not their mentee and 

proactively reach out to them and help connect 

them to services. As a mentor, they have skin in 

the game, they have ownership in the success of 

others and in the organization.”

IMPD’s 144 trained mentors represent nearly 10 

percent of the organization. Added to the 45 peer 

supporters trained in how to recognize warning 

signs of mental or emotional distress and the skills 

to facilitate and communicate around formerly 

taboo topics of mental well-being, the IMPD is 

beginning to feel like a healthier organization.

Challenges that the IMPD staff shared include the 

fact that mental wellness issues are not easy to 

address; these are problems the profession never 

dealt with head-on in the past. Liability and risk is 

a gray area and decisions about how to deal with 

mental wellness questions can be subjective. 

There is a tendency for some to say they are not 

going to deal with a high-risk individual and come 

down hard—to terminate rather than to tolerate. 

That is a balancing act that all departments wrestle 

with. Unit staff members at the IMPD believe that 

an agency has to commit to live in the middle of 

the gray area to effectively help employees with 

these issues. These are issues that some front-line 

supervisors do not want—or know how—to deal 

with. New supervisors should be trained in how to 

identify officers who are struggling and how to get 

them to the resources available to them.

Interviewees also noted that PTSD is a complicated 

emerging issue with limiting legal and regulatory 

definitions that affect the ability to treat PTSD 

through insurance providers and pension systems. 

The IMPD had the first pension case statewide 

that recognized PTSD as a service-related disability. 

It required the department to do research to prove 

it was the result of line-of-duty service. This is an 

area requiring further development to better meet 

the needs of officers.
Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department 3 9

Key learnings for replication

• Whoever emerges as the champion or 

advocate for the program needs to be seen by 

the rank and file as someone they trust to have 

their best interests at heart.

• Union buy-in is an important component. 

Involve them from the beginning; the more 

they own the development of the program 

the greater the support and willingness to use 

the mental wellness services from sworn and 

nonsworn staff.

• Selecting the right staff is essential; one bad 

placement in the team can undo all its good 

work and destroy trust.

• Confidentiality is essential in building trust in 

the programs and people in wellness programs 

and teams. If confidentiality is violated or 

viewed as compromised, officers will not 

access the mental wellness services.

• An increased focus on officer wellness should 

be holistic, including mental, physical, financial, 

and personal and family aspects.

• Systematizing the program is important for 

sustainability, but flexibility is important too. Don’t 

box the program in with too many limitations.

• It is important to have the full support of 

management, but the push to use the services 

should come from peers, the union, and word 

of mouth.

• It helps to have had stability in the 

administrative chief responsible for the 

program; that maintains the level of trust and 

continuity in support for the program.

Conclusion

The IMPD OPDW sees its role in promoting 

officer wellness as a holistic approach that 

includes mental, physical, financial, and personal 

wellness. This investment in officers beginning as 

basic recruits in the academy through their early 

years and throughout their careers contributes to 

improved officer health and well-being and higher 

job satisfaction and job retention. There is a need 

for further research of the impact of the program 

on these indicators to validate the actual changes 

of the strategies currently employed and ways to 

replicate or improve those outcomes. 

6. Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department

The events that occurred the evening of October 

1, 2017, were shocking and devastating to the 

members of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police 

Department (LVMPD). Off-duty and on-duty police 

officers alike were faced with the uncertainty of 

a coordinated and violent attack on their city at 

one of country music’s largest festivals. Fifty-one 

police officers were working overtime the night 

of the event at Mandalay Bay but more than 900 

officers answered the call that day to serve and 

protect, support their peers, and act as backup at 

other locations. All were unified in a heroic front 

to respond and serve, but the incident sent waves 

of trauma throughout the community, and no one 

who worked in emergency response in the city 

was left untouched.

Despite the event’s huge impact, the LVMPD 

was prepared to serve its employees in crisis 

with their long established Police Employee 

Assistance Program (PEAP). A tool of the LVMPD 

that is deployed when officers experience a critical 

incident or officer-involved shooting, PEAP is one of 

the oldest programs of its kind in the country and a 

critical part of the LVMPD culture. 

Origins of PEAP

When Detective Ed Jensen and Lieutenant Jerry 

Keller lost one of their colleagues to suicide in 

1984, they felt a program to support officers who 

were involved in an OIS was critical. It was a 

time in policing when officers who experienced 

stress, trauma, or depression were perceived as 

being weak and, in some agencies, unfit for duty. 

Officers of that era learned to keep their feelings of 

depression and anxiety to themselves or risk being 

assigned to a desk job and issued a “rubber gun.” 

This uninformed stigma around mental health 

diagnoses ignored the accumulating research that 

identified trauma as a mental health condition with 

lasting effects on an individual’s life. 

Then Sheriff Jon Moran tried to anticipate the 

needs of his employees and saw the importance 

of addressing his officers’ psychological needs 

and their ability to process trauma. Using the 

suggestions of Det. Jensen and Lt. Keller, the 

sheriff coordinated the creation of a 24-hour-a-day, 

7-day-a-week team of peer support officers ready 

to deploy to the field in the case of an OIS, a lineof-duty death, or a major incident where an officer 

had been harmed. PEAP, internally known as “the 

team,” would be there to walk the officer involved 

through the processes of OIS situations and 

investigations, giving them the tools to understand 

what to expect, emotional support to process their 

feelings, family support, and explanations of OIS 

standard operating procedures. 

Today, in 2018, the LVMPD has 6,000 employees 

(combined corrections, sworn, and nonsworn) 

with regular access to a suite of mental and 

physical wellness tools. PEAP has grown to 

include one director, five LVMPD peer counselors, 

a PEAP manager, and a law enforcement support 

technician. PEAP’s staff members are not 

trained counselors or psychologists, nor are they 

considered the replacement of either; rather, they 

are appointed officers who serve as immediate 

trauma support. They assist employees with 

referrals to appropriate specialists, coordinate 

professional counseling resources, and maintain 

the anonymity and confidentiality of participants 

while providing support services. According to 

the PEAP section manual, the program’s goal is to 

ensure the emotional health and well-being of all 

employees, recognizing the unique set of stressors 

specific to the field of law enforcement.
4 2 LAW ENFORCEMENT MENTAL HEALTH AND WELLNESS ACT

About the program

PEAP builds relationships with the employees and 

employee families of LVMPD from the moment 

they enter the field of law enforcement. Whether 

at the academy or during human resources 

onboarding, all LVMPD staff members, officers, 

and families are informed about the department’s 

approach to health and wellness. PEAP works to 

change the paradigm around health and wellness 

in law enforcement so officers no longer feel alone. 

It helps officers with a wide range of needs from 

counseling and stress to health management 

and insurance assistance. PEAP staff members 

walk alongside officers, staff, and LVMPD families 

to ensure they have access to the resources 

necessary to create and maintain a healthy, vibrant, 

and supportive LVPMD working environment. 

From recruits first moment in the academy, PEAP 

is an available presence. Twice during their training, 

PEAP provides lectures to the officers about topics 

such as post-shooting trauma, death and grief 

issues, and communication skills. This allows PEAP 

staff not only to display the available supportive 

resources but also to host trauma response 

courses and provide education around mindfulness 

techniques that help officers to remain calm before 

and after a high adrenaline moment.33

Another training goal for PEAP includes teaching 

recruits how to self-assess and support themselves 

for stable mental and physical health throughout 

their careers. The training presentations and 

education seminars include PEAP staff teaching 

recruits how to mitigate the risk of experiencing 

lasting trauma or the physical impacts from the 

stress of their job. Finally, in the early days of 

employment—before recruits start the academy—

PEAP attends Academy Family Night, educating 

spouses, parents, and children of new LVMPD 

recruits about the mental health and well-being 

33. Rollin McCraty and Fred Shaffer, “Heart Rate Variability: New Perspectives on Physiological Mechanisms, Assessment of Self-regulatory Capacity, 

and Health Risk,” Global Advances in Health and Medicine 4, no. 1 (2015), 46–61, https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.7453/gahmj.2014.073.

resources offered to employees and their families. 

This and similar activities extend access to lifegiving resources beyond the officers and into their 

network of support. 

At the LVMPD, PEAP is so deeply embedded 

in the day-to-day operations of the organization 

that PEAP Director Annette Mullin participates 

in regular debriefings and is present at all Critical 

Incident Response Team (CIRT) debriefs. Mullin 

offers suggestions of mental health support to 

the leadership, but she does not attend executivelevel debriefings so as to ensure she is not put in a 

position of breaching confidentiality with any officer 

involved in an incident. As she learns the necessary 

details of each event in the 24-hour, 48-hour, or 

72-hour CIRT briefings, she and her team are able 

to offer trauma response tactics to both of the 

commanders in the room as well as the officers 

involved in the shooting. PEAP also provides critical 

incident stress debriefings to all employees. If an 

employee responds to a call involving the death of 

a child, suicide of a child, difficult homicide, etc., 

supervisors can request that PEAP debrief the 

incident with the responding unit or call taker. This 

allows the employee to work through the stress 

of the call, to realize they are not alone in their 

feelings, and to receive tools to process what they 

have encountered. With these stress debriefings 

PEAP hopes to diffuse the long-term effects of 

stress on the 30-year career of the law enforcement 

employee. In addition, as an incident is assessed 

and findings are made, PEAP staff members are 

made aware of the dynamics of the case, so they 

can be successful emotional navigators and provide 

support for the LVMPD employee.

The PEAP team understands their role is 

contingent upon the trust they are afforded by 

those they serve. According to Director Mullin, it is 

because of this commitment to building trust that 

the team is tactical about their approach to at-risk 
Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department 4 3

officers, never forcing themselves on any one 

individual but providing check-ins that build rapport. 

Mullin meets with the undersheriff weekly to 

discuss topics of concern for the department as a 

whole. While she can recommend leave specifically 

when an officer has just undergone a major loss, 

a mental health break, or an injury, she maintains 

confidentiality, never disclosing more than is 

necessary about a particular officer’s need. The 

relationship the PEAP team has with its clients is 

seen as similar to the relationship an officer would 

have with an outside psychologist, and privacy is 

sustained under the rules of reporting as laid out in 

the department’s PEAP policies.

PEAP’s peer programs are the most commonly 

used among LVMPD’s employees because of the 

history of the program. Because of a concerted 

effort to regularly inform employees about their 

services and an intentional engagement with 

staff—police, corrections officers, and civilian 

personnel—who may be at risk, PEAP has a wide 

variety of trained peer service members. These 

professionals understand the unique stressors of 

the job and are prepared to offer the best possible 

response to their colleagues. Counseling, family 

therapy, chaplain counseling service, and substance 

abuse resources are also available through PEAP’s 

referral-based programs. PEAP collaborates 

frequently with other key officer wellness players in 

the community to build trust and most effectively 

assist officers during crisis, said Director Mullins. In 

addition, PEAP has established a solid re-entry plan 

for an officer returning to duty using an incremental 

approach following treatment to sustain health 

and safety as they return to the field and to ensure 

long-term success. 

PEAP is a voluntary program unless a critical 

incident mandates a response. PEAP approaches 

every interaction in a collaborative manner, 

assessing all resources available to most holistically 

respond to a variety of issues. For example, if 

someone has passed away, PEAP mobilizes 

LVMPD staff members and families to help the 

family throughout the entire process, from planning 

the funeral to insurance claims. Since the incidents 

of October 1, 2017, the LVMPD has expended 

additional energy on collaboration and partnership 

with a variety of law enforcement organizations. 

They have reached out to agencies that have 

experienced mass shootings to learn about their 

recommendations for available resources and 

approaches to assist staff in dealing with similar 

trauma experiences. This process has ensured 

that LVMPD employees have continued access 

to perceived high-quality health and wellness 

resources in the midst of an exhaustive and 

public investigation.

Resources provided by PEAP

The mental health and well-being resources offered 

to the officers of the LVMPD are comprehensive. 

The resources were developed during a period of 

33 years and built on the foundation of both realtime experience and information from the fields 

of psychology and law enforcement health and 

wellness. PEAP is an inclusive program that can 

help employees resolve personal problems that 

may adversely impact their work performance 

and conduct health and overall well-being 

assessments. According to internal department 

guidance, PEAP addresses concerns in the 

quickest, least restrictive, and most convenient 

manner while minimizing cost and protecting client 

confidentiality.

PEAP provides educational presentations, 

orientation, and outreach in stress management, 

compassion fatigue, suicide prevention, postshooting trauma, officer-involved shootings, CISD, 

and communication skills. These courses are often 

offered at the academy or at in-services for the 

department and have been made available in some 

cases to LVMPD families as well. 
4 4 LAW ENFORCEMENT M E N TA L H E A LT H A N D W E L L N E S S A C T

PEAP has spent years building trust with its 

employees by virtue of their practice of inclusion. 

From day one, leadership has advocated for 

an employee-to-employee network that allows 

employees to talk to their trained peers about their 

concerns and psychological needs. Housed off site 

to protect the anonymity of those seeking their 

support, PEAP staff members train employees 

to help their peers walk the roads of trauma, 

investigation, loss, and fear. 

PEAP offers management consultation, 

assessments counseling, and referrals for services 

to employees with personal or work-related 

concerns such as stress, financial issues, legal 

issues, family problems, office conflicts, and 

alcohol and substance abuse issues. These referral 

services are supported by providers who specialize 

in law enforcement psychological needs and have 

an aptitude for working with patients and clients 

who have concerns common to law enforcement 

agents such as PTSD treatment and the use of 

EMDR therapy.

PEAP offers resources to employees and their 

family members who serve in the military by 

providing a mentorship and partnership program 

to ease the stress common to many affected by 

military deployments. 

PEAP uses trained professionals to provide trauma 

resiliency training, regularly offered for both entire 

squads and individuals on a case-by-case basis. 

Managers are encouraged by PEAP to set aside 

time as needed at roll call or around the office to 

allow their team to address existing trauma based 

on a critical incident. 

Chaplains are assigned to each LVMPD command 

and bureau, but they can also be contacted directly 

by LVMPD employees either through a supervisor 

or the PEAP office. Chaplains have been embedded 

in area commands for years and have built 

credibility with LVMPD employees that truly helped 

PEAP reach multiple employee needs after October 

1, 2017. Chaplains serve 20 hours a month by doing 

volunteer ride-alongs in the area commands they 

serve. The area command employees develop a 

true relationship with their chaplains which allows 

a chaplain to be a resource in times of crisis. This 

initiative provides comfort, advice, and spiritual 

support when employees are affected by a variety 

of life’s issues whether or not they are work-related. 

PEAP is first on scene along with command staff 

to provide immediate support for the officer(s) 

following an officer-involved shooting. Initially, PEAP 

serves as a resource to the officer, allowing them 

to understand the process they will undergo as 

the incident is in review. Following the immediate 

response, all officers involved in a critical incident 

have to undergo a PEAP evaluation with the staff 

psychologist. During this time, any necessary 

resources the officer may need or referrals are 

handled and the PEAP director can advise on 

the officer’s ability to return to duty. PEAP also 

serves as an information resource and support for 

families of the officer during this time; whether it 

be medical and wellness referrals, funeral planning, 

or compassionate listening, PEAP is deployed to 

engage and support all staff of the LVMPD.

Every year on the anniversary date of their hire, 

LVMPD employees receive a personal health 

assessment. The personal and confidential 

assessment gives the employee a score that 

allows them to identify whether they have a need 

to address the stress and trauma in their life. If 

the employee should reach a certain level, the 

assessment will provide recommendations for a 

PEAP referral and also includes a reminder of PEAP 

services available for all employees as needed. 

The LVMPD PEAP has long been the standard in 

peer-to-peer counseling. On October 1, 2017, as the 

LVMPD responded to the attacks at the Mandalay 

Bay Hotel, the established PEAP team was 

ready to deploy, sending staff to the scene of the 

shooting, local hospitals, and precincts to serve as 
Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department 4 5

a sounding board for concerned families and staff. 

So often trauma response comes in the wake of a 

critical incident, leaving gaps as the practices catch 

up to the need. The LVMPD was not in that position 

in October 2017. The LVMPD spent decades 

perfecting their process so that when the most 

harrowing calls came, they had the tools, systems, 

and best responses in place with deployment as 

their primary focus. Today, they have stayed up to 

date on the changing priorities of the investigation 

and continue to serve the officers who were on 

site that night as their body-worn camera data are 

released and their actions become available for 

public commentary. PEAP team members travel 

the long and arduous road of review with their 

officers, ready at a moment’s notice to engage, 

deploy, and respond to their needs. 

Key learnings for replication

• All PEAP employees are appointed and 

stand inside a system independent of rank, 

and therefore their rank is not a part of their 

engagement with any LVMPD staff. This 

matters so that no one interacting with PEAP 

feels they are in a position of power that could 

jeopardize an employee’s status and so that 

they are seen as officers and equals. 

• The PEAP team has a diversity of professional 

and police experience, including corrections 

and leadership, to help them have a wide range 

of staff who can respond to a variety of needs 

from all LVMPD staff. 

• PEAP’s purpose at any scene is to be a 

presence and offer support. They are there to 

help not only the officer or officers involved in 

the incident but also their supervisors and the 

investigating team.

• PEAP services are housed in an off-site facility, 

making it easier for LVMPD employees to 

access the services without the threat of 

feeling judged. 

• PEAP counselors focus on having their clients 

be active participants in the solutions they 

are creating. Law enforcement officials are 

natural helpers, so when an individual is feeling 

helpless but can identify their own solutions, 

they will feel a connection to the solution and 

thus it is more sustainable. 

• PEAP’s legitimacy comes from the leadership it 

serves. The sheriff believes in PEAP’s services, 

and he continually advocates for it—at times 

speaking about his own personal experiences 

in PEAP. This humanizes the program and 

creates broader avenues for the staff to feel 

safe about accessing PEAP services. 

• PEAP staff members are regularly trained 

in the field of law enforcement mental 

health and wellness. They visit with other 

departments for consultation and go to 

national conferences on peer-to-peer supports; 

the team is also always accessing up-to-date 

research and methodologies to grow the 

department’s initiatives. 

Conclusion

Peer support services have proven their value for 

many years through demonstrated effectiveness 

and the establishment of mental well-being and 

self-care as normal among police professionals. The 

LVMPD has created a culture of care and concern 

where employees understand that their duty is to 

serve and protect; their leaders and the policies of 

the LVMPD will serve and protect them as well. 

7. Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department

The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department 

(LASD) is the largest sheriff’s office in the country 

and the fourth-largest policing force in the 

United States. With 18,000 sworn and nonsworn 

employees,34 the LASD oversees the safety of 12 

million civilians spread across 4,084 square miles.35

Managing the resources and needs of such an 

enormous staff would be a bureaucratic challenge 

for many agencies, but for the LASD, organizational 

management has become a feature of their model 

practices. Los Angeles County has slightly more 

than 10 million residents,36 and it is the secondlargest school district in the country with an 

estimated 667,300 students enrolled annually.37 On 

any given day, a deputy in the LASD can be found 

on patrol in the 42 contract cities in the county; 

141 unincorporated communities; 216 facilities, 

hospitals, and clinics located throughout the 

county; nine community colleges; the Metropolitan 

Transit Authority; and 37 superior courts. The 

LASD also provides services such as laboratories 

and academy training to smaller law enforcement 

agencies within the county.38 In addition, the LASD 

is responsible for securing approximately 18,000 

inmates daily in seven custody facilities.39

LASD staff must be versatile and able to interact 

with people from a variety of backgrounds, and 

an agency of its size must be ready for critical 

incidents daily involving either the community, the 

inmates under its care, or its sworn employees 

themselves. LASD leaders acknowledge the 

34. “About Us,” Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, accessed September 26, 2018, http://www.lasd.org/about_us.html.

35. “About Us,” Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department (see note 30).

36. “Statistics,” County of Los Angeles, accessed October 13, 2018, https://www.lacounty.gov/government/geography-statistics/statistics/.

37. Benjamin Elisha Sawe, “Largest School Districts in the United States,” WorldAtlas.com, last modified April 25, 2017, https://www.worldatlas.

com/articles/largest-school-districts-in-the-united-states.html.

38. “About Us,” Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department (see note 30).

39. “About Us,” Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department (see note 30).

40. Psychological Services Bureau (PSB) Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department (Los Angeles; California Department of Corrections and 

Rehabilitation, n.d.) http://www.cdcr.ca.gov/COMIO/Uploadfile/pdfs/2016/April20/LA Sheriff_Psychological Services Bureau-Overview.docx.

41. “Police and Public Safety,” American Psychology Association, accessed October 13, 2018, https://www.apa.org/ed/graduate/specialize/police.aspx.

42. Ellen Kirschman, “Becoming a Police Psychologist,” Psychology Today, last modified February 2, 2018, https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/

cop-doc/201802/becoming-police-psychologist.

depth of their employees’ experience and are 

invested in maintaining the health and values 

of their people and organization by providing 

employees and their families confidential, off-site 

mental health and wellness services through the 

Psychological Services Bureau (PSB). The LASD is 

seen by outside observers as a “leader in utilizing 

psychology and the behavioral sciences to enhance 

the welfare of its employees, its organizational 

efficiency, and its law enforcement mission.”40

Description of the unit

In 2011, the American Board of Professional 

Psychology (ABPP) recognized police and public 

safety psychology as a distinct specialty within 

the field of professional psychology and initiated 

an examination and board certification process for 

recognizing specialists in the field. The American 

Psychological Association describes police and public 

safety psychologists as those with a specialized 

focus on the functions of the police and public 

safety units, the unique working conditions of the 

field, and the unusual stress of public safety work 

and who have the psychologist’s understanding of 

a law enforcement agent’s ability to adapt to high 

stress situations.41 This uniquely important field is a 

growing body of specialization among psychologists 

across the country with only a small number of 

trained psychologists in the field, according to 

Psychology Today.

42 Yet despite the small body of 

specialists, who make up only 1 percent of the 
4 8 L AW E N F O R C E M E N T M E N TA L H E A LT H A N D W E L L N E S S A C T

broader psychology field43 in the United States, the 

LASD PSB employs 21 psychologists with a law 

enforcement psychology specialty. 

The PSB focuses on three of the four domains 

identified by the ABPP as specialty practice 

areas of police and public safety psychologists: 

(1) intervention, (2) organizational development, and 

(3) operational support. With a total of 33 staffers 

at the PSB, eight law enforcement psychologists 

(LEP) and two deputy sheriffs—one to support the 

Substance Use Recovery Services and one the 

Peer Support Services Program—staff the PSB’s 

Employee Support Services Unit (ESSU). This 

program provides clinical psychological services 

to all LASD and Los Angeles County Probation 

Department (LACPD) employees and their families. 

In addition, 10 psychologists, designated as 

industrial/organizational (I/O) consultants primarily 

work in the PSB’s organizational development unit 

(ODU) or law enforcement mission (operations) 

support unit (OSU) or both, providing consultation 

to department executives, managers, and 

supervisors on a wide range of topics and 

developing and implementing department-wide 

training programs to improve employee wellness, 

organizational efficiency, and the effectiveness of 

law enforcement operations. 

The PSB’s training programs are deployed at 

the LASD academy both for new recruits and 

as continued education opportunities for LASD 

sworn and civilian employees. Although all of the 

employed psychologists serve in the capacity 

of trainers on a large variety of subjects since 

late 2015, the PSB has committed four new I/O 

staff psychologists solely to the development 

and delivery of two new mandated departmentwide training programs: CIT for field operations 

personnel and de-escalation and verbal resolution 

training (DeVRT) for all custody personnel. These 

programs specifically address improving outcomes 

during law enforcement encounters with people 

who have mental illnesses both in the communities 

served by the department and in custody. 

While both LEP and I/O psychologists staff the four 

clinical sites providing employee support and clinical 

services to the broader LASD and LACPD sworn 

and nonsworn employees and their families, they 

also work on consulting assignments throughout 

the LASD, including custody and patrol divisions, 

and in specialized LASD bureaus such as Criminal 

Intelligence Bureau, Homicide Bureau, Special 

Victims Bureau, and Human Trafficking Bureau. The 

psychologists also provide a variety of training and 

development programs for LACPD personnel.

43. Auntré Hamp et al., “How Many Psychologists Are Licensed in the United States?” Monitor on Psychology 45, no. 6 (June 2014), 13, 

https://www.apa.org/monitor/2014/06/datapoint.aspx.

44. Psychological Services Bureau (see note 36).

How it started

The first staff psychologist was hired at LASD 

in approximately 1975 to provide psychological 

services to its sworn and civilian employees 

and their families. Police psychology, as it was 

commonly known then, was only in its infancy as 

a subfield of psychology. Yet by the late 1970s and 

early 1980s, the LASD had hired several more staff 

psychologists and was regularly offering mental 

health support through its employee services 

programming, gradually becoming a training ground 

for many police psychology professionals looking 

for clinical work, led by experts in the field. At that 

time, the PSB was designated the Psychological 

Services Unit.

As the agency grew, so too did its investment in 

the mental health and well-being of its employees. 

In the late 1980s, the department changed the 

name of the unit to the ESSU as there was concern 

that the terms psychology and psychologist had 

negative connotations and deterred employees 

from voluntarily seeking the unit’s services.44
Los Angeles County Shariff’s Department 4 9

However, by the mid- to late 1990s the field of 

law enforcement psychology was developing as 

research began to emerge that identified trends 

and needs with regard to the mental health and 

wellness of law enforcement professionals. It 

was during that time that Dr. Steven Sultan, now 

Director of the PSB, joined the LASD unit after 

seeing many law enforcement professionals in his 

private practice and observing the specialized need 

for care they exhibited. Prior to private practice, 

Sultan had been trained in what was then known 

as police psychology as a doctoral intern on the 

staff of the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) 

from 1977 to 1978. Continuing his predecessor’s 

leadership, Sultan engaged the ESSU in 

organizational and operational consultation, using 

informed methods of practice in a law enforcement 

setting to drive training, early intervention 

programs for substance abuse and domestic 

violence incidents, and police psychology practices 

for trauma response to help improve the agency’s 

efficacy and employee health and satisfaction. 

As reported by today’s PSB team, ODU, OSU, 

and clinical practice became a cornerstone of the 

unit’s work in the LASD, setting PSB apart from 

standard ESSUs of that time and creating what is 

now the PSB LASD in 2015.45 Today, the unit serves 

in a variety of clinical, organizational development, 

and mission support services creating a culture 

of access, education, consultancy, and law 

enforcement psychological services to the LASD 

employees and their families as well as the 

organization’s leadership. 

How officers access the unit

The PSB’s central and satellite offices operate out 

of commercial office buildings outside the standard 

sheriff’s department facilities around the county and 

its municipalities. This is designed to give officers 

who voluntarily seek services anonymity from 

their commanders and peers during their receipt 

of psychological services. Officers may self-refer 

and can call or walk into the PSB and schedule 

an appointment with their many clinicians; they 

can also be referred to the PSB by a supervisor, 

employee services specialist, or by a peer-to-peer 

program support colleague. 

Because psychological well-being and management 

are a critical part of LASD onboarding in the 

academy phase, deputies and civilian staff learn 

from day one about the agency’s intentional 

investment and care of their health and well-being, 

making access to resources available to their staff 

and their families a priority. However, the PSB is 

not the fitness-for-duty arm of the LASD. Dr. Sultan 

recognized, as did his mentors such as Martin 

Reiser at the LAPD, “father of police psychology,”46

that in order to truly help those they serve, they 

could not be both listener and deciders of their 

employees’ future. Assistant Director of PSB, Dr. 

Jennifer Hunt, said it best: “We do not bring you 

in for fitness for duty or decide if you can stay.” 

For fitness-for-duty assessments, employees are 

sent instead to a county unit not associated with 

the LASD, and a PSB client can decide if they want 

to release their records to the separate county 

psychologist conducting the assessment. 

45. Psychological Services Bureau (see note 36).

46. Steve Chawkins, “Martin Reiser Dies at 87; LAPD’s First Staff Psychologist,” Los Angeles Times, April 16, 2015, http://www.latimes.com/local/

obituaries/la-me-martin-reiser-20150417-story.html.

Not only does PSB house psychologists and peer 

support staff to engage the LASD employee 

community as needed, but the law enforcement 

psychologist team is also deployed to units 

where they build relationships with officers on a 

one-on-one basis. Officers in crisis can seek out 

support from the psychologists when they are 

present, through one of 99 peer-to-peer counselors 

deployed throughout the agency, or through a unit 

chaplain. The PSB unit also retains 24/7 emergency 

response protocols should an officer be involved 
5 0 L AW E N F O R C E M E N T M E N TA L H E A LT H A N D W E L L N E S S A C T

in a critical incident or experience a mental 

health issue and need immediate intervention. In 

addition, each officer involved in a critical incident 

is mandated by agency policy to report to the PSB 

unit within three to five days of the incident for a 

confidential critical incident debriefing. Following 

this initial visit there is a required follow-up via 

email or telephone within two weeks and a fourmonth check-up with the PSB as part of the unit’s 

standard operating procedures. The PSB is available 

to provide additional services for deputies or 

civilian employees if they choose to engage in a 

deeper response outside of the required visit. Also, 

the PSB retains a network of law enforcement 

specialist psychologists throughout the county for 

referrals should the employee wish to seek support 

outside of the department. Finally, command staff 

members who have concerns about an employee 

or who may identify someone who has a critical 

need for engagement can be referred to PSB 

through outreach from the commander. The PSB 

then responds to the employee in need usually 

through consultancy relationships with each of the 

LASD units. 

Resources to support officer wellness

On-site confidential psychological services. The 

PSB is uniquely staffed with a large body of law 

enforcement psychology specialists allowing for 

immediate access to trained professionals both in 

times of crisis and as an everyday mental health 

maintenance tool. Their free services to employees 

of the LASD and the LACPD allows for an opendoor policy to mental health check-up and care for 

employees and their families giving employees 

direct access to a host of qualified care providers. 

Their staff, all trained in EMDR and other therapies 

for processing traumatic experiences, is prepared to 

address post-traumatic stress incidents through 

the healthy processing and response to harmful or 

hurtful incidents to decrease the likelihood of the 

development of PTSD in the LASD and LACPD staff. 

Peer support and addiction recovery programs. 

Led by a formally trained deputy, peer-to-peer 

services is a program of LASD employees helping 

other employees in need. Those identified as 

peer support providers are deputies and civilian 

employees from every rank and most units in 

the department. They attend a mandatory threeday peer-to-peer training and then get on-the-job 

mentoring from those who have previously been in 

the program to learn how to assist their coworkers 

with personal and on-the-job related questions and 

concerns. In addition, having been trained through 

the PSB, peer support staff members are given a 

broad understanding of PSB services so that they 

can refer their peers for any number of important 

mental health and wellness programs that can 

offer problem-solving tools, addiction resources, 

and family and marital support as needed. These 

engagements are considered confidential except 

where child or elderly abuse are present or there is 

an imminent danger of harm to others, as well as 

in cases of suicidal ideation, the risk of imminent 

self-harm, and significant violations of the law.47

47. “Volume 2, Chapter 7, Administrative and Training Division” (Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, n.d.), http://shq.lasdnews.

net/shq/mpp/2-07.pdf.

Unit chaplains program. Offered as an additional 

confidential and emotional well-being service to 

LASD employees and their families, the chaplain 

program provides for the spiritual and personal needs 

of personnel and their family. The volunteer chaplains 

are assigned to each unit and will often spend their 

time getting to know the employees. They provide 

spiritual and emotional support as well to families 

involved in critical incidents who are in emotional 

distress. They can also be called upon to offer up 

benedictions at departmental and community 

events. The chaplain program offers an ethical 

presence to each unit they serve and is meant to 

both aid and guide the personnel as they need. 
Los Angeles County Shariff’s Department 5 1

Organizational consultant program. This service within 

the ODU is designed to increase effective training 

protocols. The organizational consultants in the PSB 

provide on-site training and consultation to first-line 

supervisors and command staff. This program was 

designed to give leadership the skills to identify 

harmful work stress and burnout that could occur 

among LASD personnel. 

CIT and DeVRT training programs. The intent of the 

LASD’s CIT and DeVRT courses, as prescribed 

by management, is to increase the skills and 

use of de-escalation techniques during calls for 

service involving persons with suspected mental 

illness.48 Although specifically designed as a 

training mechanism for improved police responses, 

this training rolled out to LASD recruits and staff 

members beginning in 2015. It was featured by 

the International Association of Chiefs of Police 

(IACP) in their regular Police Chief magazine as 

groundbreaking in helping officers best navigate 

crisis intervention with an individual who may be 

suffering from a mental health disease or break. 

The PSB designed training seeks to arm officers 

with CIT techniques but also the ROAR strategy 

(respond, observe, assess, and react), which was 

developed by PSB psychologists. It gives deputies 

the tools to address challenging calls by both taking 

their time and moving the situation through various 

stops and starts that can address the community 

member’s specific need while keeping themselves 

safe. Deputies who have been through the course 

reported to the IACP that “They would apply these 

concepts to the persons they protect and serve 

everyday but, more significantly, that they are further 

driven or feel empowered to utilize these course 

concepts in their own lives beyond the badge.”49

Advantages and challenges of offering 

the program

The PSB has created an organization of education, 

service, and departmental improvement. Designed 

to serve not just the one-on-one needs of the 

LASD staff, PSB has also taken the reins on 

psychologically informed trainings such as CIT and 

DeVRT and intentional outreach to their colleagues 

both sworn and nonsworn through familiarity, onsite engagement, and critical incident response 

mechanisms. PSB staff members are ready at a 

moment’s notice to deploy to areas of crisis, such 

as to follow a deputy who has recently experienced 

a “gassing”50 at one of the correctional facilities, 

through the medical care required after exposure 

to such fluids. They were not only there on the 

day of the incident to offer emotional support 

but would also follow up throughout the HIV, 

hepatitis, and other communicable disease testing 

phase to support the deputy with any perceived 

trauma or questions. 

48. Jennifer Hunt et al., “Changing Law Enforcement Culture One Deputy at a Time with LASD-CIT: Is that Crisis Intervention Training or Changing 

Inherent Thinking? Or Both?” Police Chief, accessed October 12, 2018, http://www.policechiefmagazine.org/changing-law-enforcement-culture-onedeputy-time/.

49. Hunt et al., “Changing Law Enforcement Culture One Deputy at a Time” (see note 44).

50. “Gassing” is prison slang for the act of throwing feces or some other bodily fluid such as urine, blood, or saliva at a jail or prison staff member. 

Gassing is an act of rebellion by inmates against custodial staff and is a felony in most U.S. states.

Key learnings for replication

• The employment of a law enforcement 

specialist psychologist creates access for 

employees to specially informed mental 

health providers who deploy academic and 

institutional knowledge to their method of 

support. Law enforcement agents across 

the country have said that all too often 

nonspecialized mental health providers end up 

empathizing with the agent without addressing 

the trauma they experience, which creates 

a gap in their mental health care response. 

Trained law enforcement psychologists can 
5 2 LAW ENFORCEMENT M E N TA L H E A LT H A N D W E L L N E S S A C T

provide best practices in the field to their 

clients allowing for more immediate care 

without retraumatizing the officer.

• Access to psychologists, trained peers, and 

chaplains in each unit provides for relationship 

building that creates lasting trust. This trust that 

is established in times of normalcy allows for 

more immediate action during critical incidents, 

as the PSB staffers who are available on a 

regular basis to each unit have pre-established 

relationships and can step in to serve their 

colleagues. As well, regular observation 

from trained professionals allows for easier 

identification of an employee who may be 

undergoing unexpected personality changes, 

addiction, or personal trauma. 

• Advanced training in best practices for mental 

health fitness begins inside the academy 

for LASD sworn officers and prepares them 

for deployment and engagement with their 

community. Their education in CIT and DeVRT 

tactics not only allows for better responses 

within their community or in custody facilities 

when interfacing with someone with mental 

health problems but they are able to deploy 

these tactics in their personal lives, both being 

taught how to self-assess and serve their own 

families and community.

• Confidentiality among PBS staff members 

and their clients is paramount to the success 

of the unit. The PSB creates a culture of 

separation from the personnel’s employment 

status and their traumatic experiences by 

maintaining confidentiality like that of private 

care professionals. Understanding that no staff 

psychologist is going to call your commander 

and deem you unfit for duty allows for PSB to 

be seen as a safe place for support and healing. 

Conclusion

The LASD and its valued PSB are leading the 

way on creating mental health stability among its 

personnel. Engaging specialized care providers to 

address law enforcement trauma, suicide, and a 

variety of other mental health taboos helps create 

a culture of care at the LASD. This builds force of 

personnel prepared to serve the community as 

they themselves are served by their employer. 

Creating an opportunity for its 18,000 employees 

to engage in training that advances not only their 

professional skills but also their own personal 

mental health care management creates a holistic 

approach to organizational development. While 

the field of officer safety and wellness does 

not always address the needs of correctional 

officers—who are often viewed as experiencing 

unique forms of trauma—the LASD addresses 

their needs alongside patrol deputies, making its 

entire agency’s mental health care a part of its 

values and mission. Agencies seeking to model 

their own mental health and wellness programs 

after the best in the field should consider the value 

LASD has found in employing law enforcement 

psychologists, maintaining strict confidentiality 

within their psychological services units, and 

providing regular access to trained peers and 

professionals as a lynchpin to mental health and 

wellness program success.
8. Milwaukee Police Department

The Milwaukee (Wisconsin) Police Department 

(MPD) has 2,500 employees with an authorized 

sworn force of 1,850. The city of Milwaukee is 

96.2 square miles with a population of 595,351 

divided into seven police districts; Milwaukee 

is the 31st-largest city in the United States.51

The mission of the MPD states, “In partnership 

with the community, we will create and maintain 

neighborhoods capable of sustaining civic life. 

We commit to reducing the levels of crime, fear 

and disorder through community-based, problemoriented, and data-driven policing.”52

In 2014, the MPD revised its approach to provide 

internal departmental support for officer mental 

health through an integrated three-pronged 

strategy that includes a revised early intervention 

program, a stronger chaplaincy program, and an 

internal peer support program. 

The MPD had implemented an early intervention 

program (EIP) in 2005, formally noted as an early 

warning system located in IA. On the peer support 

side, the department has a long history of a peer 

support program begun in 1986 that operates as 

a separate organization from the department. It is 

known as the Police Officer Support Team (POST, 

just as in Indianapolis) and serves as a regional 

organization providing peer support assistance to 

Wisconsin departments small and large during 

critical events. 

51. American FactFinder, “Total Population: All Places within the United States, 2017” (see note 25).

52. “Welcome to the Milwaukee Police Department,” Official Website of the City of Milwaukee, accessed November 14, 2018, 

https://city.milwaukee.gov/police#.W5P-IJNKjOQ.

Overview of the mental wellness team

The three components of the MPD mental 

wellness team are (1) the EIP, (2) the chaplaincy 

program, and (3) the internal peer support program 

(rather than the independent regional POST that 

now operates outside the department). These three 

components are closely aligned and work together 

as an integrated team. While this team does not 

have a formal name, they describe themselves as 

the mental wellness team. 

The mental wellness team recognizes that 

establishing trust is based on demonstrating the 

ability to protect confidentiality. They identified 

that a small, tight team makes it easier to maintain 

confidentiality. The team also identified face time 

with officers and staff as a critical component 

of their ability to establish trust within the 

department. The team achieves this face time 

through “pop-ups,” where they show up at the 

seven district offices on a regular basis just to 

touch base, say hi, and informally visit to see how 

people are doing. They host an annual cookout 

in each district as a way of connecting with the 

officers and staff in an informal way. Chaplains 

provide services to families through weddings, 

funerals, and so on. These informal efforts help to 

build relationships and establish higher comfort 

levels during critical incidents. 
5 4 LAW ENFORCEMENT MENTA L H E A LT H A N D W E L L N E S S A C T

The mental wellness team is responsible for 

responding to the scene of a critical incident 

involving the MPD, providing on-scene support 

for those involved, and critical incident group 

debriefings, individual follow-up and counseling 

(mandatory and voluntary) with those affected, 

and ongoing follow-up and peer support over time. 

Referrals for any additional services required are 

coordinated with the EAP.

Program expansion

In 2014, the staff members of the EIP in IA began 

looking at their program’s goals and design. 

They conducted focus groups within the MPD, 

researched best practices through the IACP, and 

did a site visit to the DPD to look at the indicators 

signaling officers in trouble. Based on what they 

learned, the EIP staff worked through a new design 

to shift from an early warning system in IA to a 

prevention and early intervention system focused 

on officer well-being located in Training. The 

new approach was approved by the department 

leadership and launched in 2015. 

The elements of the revised EIP included hiring 

a full-time in-house psychologist to offer a more 

immediate and trusted source for officer mental 

health services to supplement the city’s employee 

assistance program. Funding for the psychologist 

came through a grant from a local foundation but is 

being transitioned to the regular budget in 2019. 

The team finalized an updated EIP model with an 

evidence-based early warning system of indicators 

focused on prevention and early intervention for 

officer mental wellness. An experienced officer 

was assigned full time to the team as an early 

intervention and peer support coordinator, and a 

retired officer who is also an ordained minister 

was brought on to the team to serve as a full-time 

chaplain offering a stronger spiritual component to 

the model.

Each of the key staff members (in-house 

psychologist, peer support, chaplain) has earned 

the trust of all levels in the department and with 

the union. The chaplain is a retired MPD officer who 

is greatly respected and beloved. The psychologist 

is not an officer, but her father and other family 

members are; she understands the culture of law 

enforcement. The peer support coordinator has 

26 years on the force and has demonstrated his 

ability to be trusted in this sensitive position. The 

captain supervising the unit actually served as the 

lieutenant who redesigned the EIP while serving in 

the unit in 2014.

Current program components

Early intervention program

The MPD uses the Administrative Investigations 

Management (AIM) system to track employee 

performance and monitor (over 90 days) nine 

indicators that will flag officers or employees with 

behaviors that result in an alert. AIM provides 

alerts to the IA Division, to supervisors, and to the 

EIP coordinator. The EIP coordinator in the mental 

wellness team then screens the alerts for false 

positives and, after the false positives are weeded 

out, sends a message to the relevant captain 

and lieutenant that their employee has an alert in 

the AIM system that requires the supervisor to 

provide some kind of review and follow up. The 

EIP coordinator tracks to make sure that alerts are 

responded to in a timely manner and documented 
Milwaukee Police Department 5 5

in the system. These early interventions are not 

viewed as disciplinary but rather as a mental 

wellness check to make sure everything is okay.

Training is an essential component of implementing 

the EIP. The mental wellness team trained all of 

the sergeants and lieutenants on recognizing 

indicators as supervisors and trained all line officers 

to recognize early warning signs in their peers. 

Officers were educated on the expanded resources 

available for prevention and early intervention and 

how to work with the mental wellness team to 

provide support for officers and all staff. The mental 

wellness team conducts regular two-hour inservice trainings to keep the entire staff current on 

resources and best practices on mental wellness 

and resiliency.

The standard operating procedure (SOP) for 

critical incidents was being reviewed in 2018 and 

awaiting formal approval but is being used as the 

framework for the mental wellness team. The 

SOP includes critical incident response protocols; 

mandatory and voluntary access to psychological 

services; systems for self-referral, family, peer, 

and supervisor referral; and mental wellness team 

roles and responsibilities before, during, and after a 

critical incident. 

Access to in-house mental health services consists 

of one full-time psychologist who provides mental 

health services with backup from the city’s EAP. 

The psychologist responds on-site during critical 

incidents as part of the mental wellness team if 

the incident involves an officer death; otherwise 

only the chaplain and peer supporters respond. 

The psychologist participates in critical incident 

debriefings that are led by peer supporters and 

occur in small groups made up of staff members 

with similar functions (line officers, supervisors, 

dispatch, etc.). Individual sessions are mandatory for 

officers and staff members involved in a shooting or 

use of force situation. The psychologist also provides 

training on the use of the EIP tools and resources 

for mental health services during in-service training, 

basic academy classes, and other venues.

The EAP provides links to services such as 

placement for residential treatment. The city’s 

insurance provides three free mental health visits 

and then falls back to the regular co-pay for mental 

health services. The union employs a psychologist 

but is also very supportive of the in-house 

psychologist and mental health wellness team. 

The union has also taken on the role of sponsoring 

the cost of the district cookouts that the mental 

wellness team hosts each year.

Chaplaincy program

The MPD chaplaincy program is embedded in the 

mental wellness team as a key component with 

much more of a role in addressing officer mental 

health and well-being issues than is normally found 

with chaplaincy programs. The lead chaplain and his 

assistant are both ordained ministers and retired 

MPD officers who have stellar reputations and 

have earned the respect and trust of the entire 

department. They are both volunteers.

The chaplains work with sworn and nonsworn 

employees of the department and their families 

regardless of rank or religious belief. They provide 

spiritual guidance or counseling at individuals’ 

request. Because they are ordained, they are covered 

by clergy-penitent privilege, which means that state 

statute protects their conversations. The lead chaplain 

serves on the board of the POST and has had 

extensive training and experience in peer support.
5 6 LAW ENFORCEMENT MENTA L H E A LT H A N D W E L L N E S S A C T

The chaplains are a formal part of the mental 

wellness team that responds to the scene of 

critical incidents. They can sit with the officer 

involved in a critical incident while the investigation 

is going on so the officer is not left alone—but is 

with someone they can choose to talk to without 

fear of having their confidentiality violated in any 

way. This is an important change, as historically, 

the peer support team was not allowed to sit with 

the officer during the incident investigation at the 

scene. Now either the psychologist or the chaplain 

can sit with the officer during a critical incident and 

be protected by clergy or doctor privilege. 

The chaplains are fully trained in the EIP and peer 

support program and serve as an active part of the 

mental wellness team. They participate in trainings; 

conduct group debriefs; do one-on-one counseling 

or mentoring as requested; provide follow-up 

support to individuals and their families; and refer 

employees or their immediate family members 

to their own personal clergy or other counseling 

resources such as the psychologist in the EIP, EAP 

services, and the POST.

The chaplains, like the rest of the mental wellness 

team, have a good relationship with commanders. 

The team is known and trusted not to jeopardize 

crime scenes. The key is when officers are taken 

downtown to give statements to Internal Affairs, 

they are able to trust that the mental wellness 

team will not violate their confidentiality. The 

mental wellness team is able to let the officer 

know what the EIP follow-up will be in the 

immediate situation and what resources are 

available to them and to their family members. The 

Internal Affairs Bureau now expects the 

involvement of the mental wellness team and 

welcomes their role in providing support to the 

officer during and following the incident without 

compromising the investigation in any way.

In addition to their active role in the mental 

wellness team, the chaplains perform more 

traditional roles including conducting weddings, 

funerals, and death notifications. The Salvation 

Army Chaplaincy Program provides emotional and 

spiritual support to community members who have 

been affected by an incident.

Peer support program

The MPD has had a strong POST program in 

place since 1986. That program has emerged as 

an independent organization separate from the 

MPD and serves now as a regional support system 

for small and large departments during a critical 

incident. The outside nature of the POST makes 

them not quite a fit as an integral part of the 

internal MPD mental wellness team. As a result, 

the mental wellness team found itself in need 

of a bridge to address the peer support needs of 

officers on a daily, ongoing basis rather than just 

during a critical incident. The officer assigned as 

the early intervention and peer support coordinator 

began by filling that role himself. As a 26-year 

veteran on the force, he was well known and 

trusted. But the size of the department requires 

a significantly larger team of vetted, trained, and 

trusted peer supporters. 

CISDs are coordinated and attended by the mental 

wellness team as part of a continuum of prevention 

and early intervention care and services provided. 
Milwaukee Police Department 5 7

Normally, the psychologist, chaplain, and EIP 

and peer support coordinator sit in while the 

CISD is conducted by a trained peer supporter. 

Peer supporters receive training to conduct 

CISD sessions in small groups (no more than 

eight to 10 people) using the seven steps in 

the Mitchell model53 as a guide. The CISD is a 

psychoeducational small group process that 

involves several key components that can be used 

in a flexible manner in a debriefing session.

The seven steps are as follows:

1. Introductions

2. Brief review of the facts

3. Thoughts—immediate thoughts about the 

situation

4. Reactions—how are you feeling?

5. Symptoms—cognitive, physical, emotional, or 

behavioral 

6. Teaching—explanation of reactions and stress 

management information

7. Re-entry—final questions, thoughts

The mental wellness team added quarterly critical 

incident debriefs for the high-risk units even 

when there has not been a critical incident. 

The department recognized that many units 

experience cumulative trauma exposure based 

on the nature of their assignments such as 

dispatch, crime scene forensics, child pornography, 

sexual assaults, etc.

The mental wellness team provides a presentation 

at Family Night the day before graduation from 

the academy for the family members of new 

basic recruits where families are introduced to 

the resources available to them. Each family 

receives a copy of Gilmartin’s book on Emotional 

Survival.54 The mental wellness team collects 

contact information and email addresses to be 

able to provide follow-up support to the families in 

the future.

Separate from the department, a support group 

has formed called Shielded Hearts, which provides 

services to families during crisis situations and 

follow up support and comfort.

53. Jeffrey T. Mitchell and George S. Everly, Jr., Critical Incident Stress Debriefing: An Operations Manual for CISD, Defusing and Other Group Crisis 

Intervention Services, 3rd ed. (Ellicott City, MD: Chevron Publication Group, 2001).

54. Kevin M. Gilmartin, Emotional Survival for Law Enforcement: A Guide for Officers and Their Families (Tucson, AZ: E-S Press, 2002).

Key learnings for replication

• Set up parameters and boundaries before you 

launch an in-house mental health program. 

Once trusted mental health services are in 

place, demand is likely to be overwhelming. If 

those resources are limited, such as having only 

one psychologist for a large department, it is 

important to establish the limitations up front 

regarding hours available, number of follow ups, 

other support staffers who can handle some 

tasks, etc. It is also important to have a backup 

system in place. Who covers when the one 

psychologist is on vacation, in training, or sick?

• Confidentiality is essential to the program’s 

success. The team’s biggest task is earning 

the department’s trust that information will 

be treated professionally and in confidence. It 

only takes one breach to undermine the entire 

framework of trust.
5 8 LAW ENFORCEMENT M E N TA L H E A LT H A N D W E L L N E S S A C T

• Face time is essential to building trust and 

relationships in the department and with 

families. The team works hard at being present 

in the district offices and at department events, 

being involved in the life of the department.

• Partners of those involved in critical incidents 

are also now being seen; sometimes they are 

the most impacted, feeling they could have or 

should have protected their partner. They feel 

helpless and as if they lack control.

• The program must be tightly controlled to make 

sure that there is no risk to confidentiality; it 

must not grow too fast.

• The team also affirmed how important training is 

across the board. “We are changing the culture, 

we don’t want to hear ‘oh, we saw that coming;’ 

that is not acceptable. Now officers know that 

there are resources available, they know what to 

watch for, they don’t have to have the answers, 

they just need to make the referral.” 

• The MPD is participating in research tracking 

stress levels in police recruits in the academy, 

teaching them the use of self-regulation 

techniques to modify heart rate variability. This 

research on resilience will provide information on 

the effectiveness of self-regulation techniques to 

improve cardiovascular health in officers.

Conclusion

The MPD’s transition from an EIP located in IA to 

a mental wellness team with an EIP component 

located in the training division is an example 

of how departments can assess their mental 

wellness programming against best practices and 

make adjustments to strengthen support systems 

for officers, staff members, and their families. 

The MPD combination of EIP, training, an in-house 

psychologist, chaplains and peer supporters shows 

how existing resources can be augmented and 

refocused for prevention and earlier intervention.
9. Metropolitan Nashville Police Department 

The Metropolitan Nashville (Tennessee) Police 

Department’s (MNPD) mission is “to provide 

community-based police products to the public 

so they can experience a safe and peaceful 

Nashville.”55 The MNPD covers the metropolitan 

area of the city of Nashville and Davidson County, 

Tennessee, covering 526 square miles and serving 

a population of 691,243.56 Greater Nashville is 

the 24th-largest city and the 7th-fastest growing 

metropolitan area in the United States, adding 

100 people a day.57 The MNPD has a total staff of 

approximately 2,000 employees, of whom 1,443 

are sworn officers.

55. “Mission Statement of the Nashville Police Department,” Metropolitan Government of Nashville and Davidson County, accessed November 15, 

2018, https://www.nashville.gov/Police-Department/Mission-Statement.aspx.

56. ”Davidson County, Tennessee: 2017 Population Estimates,” U.S. Census Bureau, accessed November 15, 2018, https://www.census.gov/searchresults.html?q=davidson+county%2C+TN&page=1&stateGeo=none&searchtype=web&cssp=SERP&_charset_=UTF-8.

57. Samantha Sharf, “Full List: America’s Fastest Growing Cities,” Forbes, last modified February 28, 2018, https://www.forbes.com/sites/

samanthasharf/2018/02/28/full-list-americas-fastest-growing-cities-2018/#4a1019d7febf.

Origins of the Police Advocacy and 

Support Services

The officer and employee mental health services 

at MNPD had an unusual trajectory. In 1970, the 

department launched a Youth Guidance program. In 

1975, MNPD began a proactive victim intervention 

program (VIP) that focused initially on rape victims. 

The department sought grants to expand victim 

services. Domestic violence (DV) counseling was 

added in 1994. Carol Etherington, then a student 

nurse practitioner, was responsible for developing 

and overseeing these programs. 

Now Associate Director of Community Health 

Initiatives at Vanderbilt Institute for Global Health, 

Etherington describes how “The collaborative 

process of trust was built with an in-house 

Behavioral Health Services division. We were able 

to work together with officers, know each other, 

know the victims, it made it easier for officers to 

trust the behavioral health team when the officer 

mental health programming started.”

As a result of the counseling and training on 

understanding the experience of trauma, officers 

began to better understand the needs of victims. 

The training also raised their awareness of the 

impact of trauma on mental health and posttraumatic stress for everyone involved, including 

themselves. Officers became more familiar and 

comfortable with talking about their own struggles 

and seeking help.

The Police Advocacy and Support Services (PASS) 

program began in 1986 to provide behavioral health 

services to police officers, nonsworn employees, 

and their immediate families. A complementary 

peer support program also began at the same 

time. The PASS program had very strong support 

from the FOP, the department, and the city when 

it was created. That support and funding has been 

maintained over time. As grant funding came to an 

end, the department created full-time positions for 

police crisis counselors. The PASS program has a 

staff of six and is housed in a separate location to 

provide a greater level of privacy and confidentiality 

to personnel as they use services.
6 0 LAW ENFORCEMENT MENTAL H E A LT H A N D W E L L N E S S A C T

A chaplain program was added in 1996 and was 

expanded to include a volunteer chaplain program 

in 2005. The chaplain program is a component of 

the overall support system for victims of crime. The 

chaplains’ primary responsibility is delivering death 

notifications to next of kin.

All of these programs have now merged into 

the Behavioral Health Services (BHS) division 

with diverse services for employees (sworn and 

nonsworn) and services focused on youth and 

victims. These services include a youth services 

division offering the Youth Guidance Program, 

Victim Intervention Program / Domestic Violence 

Counseling, and other family support services.

Description of the PASS program 

The BHS division is one of the most 

comprehensive in-house mental health services 

programs in the country. The division is involved in 

the following: 

• Coordinating psychological evaluations 

for employment and fitness for duty with 

contracted psychologists per IACP guidelines

• Providing a range of mental health services to 

victims of crime, at-risk youth, police, civilians, 

and other metro employees

• Providing on-call crime scene response, 

trauma intervention, crisis debriefing, case 

management, individual and group counseling, 

advocacy, and court accompaniment

• Delivering training for employees and the 

community

• Building community partnerships and crisis 

mental health response

The PASS program focuses on law enforcement 

employees and their immediate families. Its 

services include counseling and advocacy services 

such as individual, couples, and family counseling; 

CISD; support and therapy groups; training and 

education; and mental health response for major 

disasters. It addresses a wide range of issues 

such as substance and other types of addictions, 

post-traumatic stress, depression, grief and 

loss, marriage, families, couples, children, and 

adolescents. When a critical incident or trauma 

occurs, the entire police family is affected, so 

PASS makes critical incident stress interventions 

available to family members as well. The PASS 

program focuses on three types of services: 

(1) trauma, (2) therapy and counseling sessions, 

and (3) training.

MNPD police crisis counselors and peer supporters 

are trained in the Mitchell model58 for crisis 

intervention, a well-known protocol for critical 

incident stress debriefing. It is departmental 

procedure that follow-up will occur following any 

critical incident. 

58. Mitchell and Everly, Critical Incident Stress Debriefing (see note 49).

In addition to supporting personnel involved in 

critical incidents, PASS clinical staff members 

provide employees and families with individual, 

family, and couples therapy on a voluntary basis. 

Mandated counseling services are also provided 

based on referrals from supervisors or disciplinary 

procedures. PASS conducts annual wellness 

checks for employees who work in high-risk 

divisions and schedules support groups as needed. 

Divisions considered high risk include child sex 

crimes, the fatal crash team, crime lab, domestic 

violence, and homicide. These units undergo an 

annual, supervisor-required wellness check-in with 

PASS because of the frequent exposure to graphic 

and traumatizing experiences in the daily work. 
Metropolitan Nashville Police Department 6 1

PASS staffers also provide training for basic recruits 

and annual in-service training for counselors, peer 

supporters, and volunteer chaplains. The police 

recruits undergo more than 40 hours of training 

covering various mental health topics that include 

the following: 

• How officers can take care of themselves from 

hiring to retirement 

• Addressing domestic violence in law 

enforcement

• How officers can keep their families healthy 

and thriving despite the job constraints

• Skill development for stress management and 

anger management 

• A resiliency series that teaches officers to be 

emotionally resilient from anger management 

to mindfulness practices

PASS also provides mental health training for the 

command staff and the Citizens Police Academy.

Peer support program

The peer support program began in 1986 as a 

complement to the PASS program. The MNPD 

has 55 trained peer supporters with access to a 

regional network of 65 peer supporters as needed 

for a major critical incident. The Davidson County 

Sheriff’s Office, the 911 call center, Metro Nashville 

Fire Department, university police departments, and 

other agencies are part of the peer support network. 

The peer support program provides a way for law 

enforcement and correctional personnel to deal 

with professional or personal problems with the 

support of fellow officers who are trained to 

provide confidential support. The program recruits, 

trains, and vets peer supporters and provides 

emotional support to employees and their family 

members with personal or professional trauma, 

illness, or injuries in the line of duty.

The MNPD peer support program has helped 

a number of smaller law enforcement agencies 

in surrounding counties start their own peer 

support programs. They frequently collaborate 

on training opportunities.

Retirees, former employees, and families

Retirees and former employees and their families 

also have access to PASS. Retirees are an audience 

that the BHS plans to work with more. Pensioners 

can be hired back by the department part time up 

to 32 hours a week. They make great contributions 

to the peer support program.

The chaplain program has a staffed component and 

a volunteer component. The two staff chaplains 

primarily provide death notifications, and they can 

deliver invocations and benedictions for the MNPD 

and community events. But they also perform 

hospital visits, baptisms, weddings, funerals, etc. 

at the request of employees. The staff chaplains 

oversee the volunteer chaplain program that 

provides support services for victims of crime and 

the community.

The spouses of officers participate in a variety of 

family readiness programs including Wives 5-0, 

Women Behind the Badge, and other support 

groups that mobilize support for families such as 

providing meals during and after critical incidents.
6 2 LAW ENFORCEMENT M E N TA L H E A LT H A N D W E L L N E S S A C T

MNPD keys to success

The unique aspect of the BHS is the broad nature 

of the programming that began with youth services 

in the 1970s, expanded to include victims of crime 

support services, and then added the officer mental 

health support services (PASS) in the 1980s. There 

is recognition in the MNPD and the Nashville city 

government of the need to invest in prevention 

and early intervention strategies as well as the 

ability to respond to critical events with crisis 

intervention support systems for officers, victims 

of crime, and even potential perpetrators of crime. 

The accompanying investment of resources has 

an impact on the culture of the law enforcement 

agency and the culture of the community. 

Examples of ways the BHS impacts the broader 

community include the Youth Services Division, 

where they use the evidence-based Strengthening 

Families program to reduce juvenile delinquency. 

A new Family Safety Center will bring together 

all the different counseling functions along with 

community advocates and agencies. The VIP also 

does victim advocacy work, including hosting an 

annual Crime Victims’ Rights Week event in April 

and Season to Remember in December, where the 

families who have lost loved ones through crimes 

or in the line of duty make and hang ornaments 

on a memorial holiday tree. The VIP also runs 

support groups for victims and their families such 

as homicide support groups, which have evolved 

into a Forever Group for those seeking not to forget 

loved ones lost to crime.

While early education and training in community 

mental health led to MNPD’s officer wellness 

program, the reverse has also become true. As 

officers become more aware of their own mental 

health and the need to take responsibility and 

ownership for their own resilience, they are better 

equipped to respond to people with mental health 

issues in public safety settings as well as the 

needs of victims of crime and the community itself 

following any traumatic event.

PASS staff is looking to be even more proactive 

by addressing several strategies in more depth, 

including the following:

• Resiliency training for officers

• Expand mental health and wellness training in 

the academy

• Strengthen a “hire to retire” continuum of 

support

• Sworn mentorship program

• Annual wellness checks for all officers

• Monitor daily field reports for potential lower 

level critical incidents

• Family Day at the beginning and end of 

academy

• Enhance a bio-psycho-social-spiritual model of 

services

• Promote a wellness philosophy

Key learnings for replication

• BHS has strong buy-in at every level from 

the officer to the chief to the mayor. This has 

resulted in continuity and commitment to 

sustain the same level of effort even in tough 

economic times.
Metropolitan Nashville Police Department 6 3

• Confidentiality is essential to maintaining the 

trust of officers and employees; without that, 

they will not use the services.

• Trust and familiarity can be established in the 

academy early on. If a recruit meets the BHS 

mental health team in the academy and is 

trained on how to manage their own stress 

and mental health, they will be more likely to 

access the services when needed.

• Fitness-for-duty assessments should be 

handled by an outside firm, per IACP guidelines 

for psychological evaluations. Conducting 

them internally compromises the trust and 

confidence that officers have in the BHS.

• The union is actively involved. The FOP 

president is a peer supporter; there is a wide 

range of peer supporters from captains to 

veteran officers and new officers.

• It is important to educate, engage, and support 

families as early as possible. This should begin 

in the training academy. PASS holds a Family 

Day before graduation for family members 

of recruits to orient them on what to expect 

having a police officer in the family. BHS 

resources and proactive strategies and tools 

are shared with the families.

• PASS offers voluntary support groups for 

officers and family members following critical 

incidents on a national level such as after the 

Dallas and Baton Rouge police ambushes.

• BHS has done a good job of incorporating 

officers into their training by using an 

officer safety and wellness panel where 

officers—rather than just the PASS staff—

share their experiences.

• BHS connects with new supervisors and 

participates in their early training so that they 

know how to refer officers that need help. 

BHS trains the first 30 to 40 candidates on the 

promotion list even before they are promoted.

• Ten percent or fewer of PASS cases are 

mandated. Most employees come on their own 

because of outreach to address personal and 

professional issues. 

• Succession planning is critical. A change in 

director can compromise trust in the program. 

Having someone who is already known and 

trusted ready to make the transition reduces 

the fear factor.

• There is an early warning system in place 

through human resources, as recommended 

by the IACP, that tracks key indicators and 

flags officers for early interventions including 

counseling.

• Most traumatic calls happen in patrol and often 

involve new officers who are not as prepared 

to deal with stress as veterans. PASS works to 

make sure they get the support they need.

Conclusion

Dr. Carol Harp, BHS manager, related a day she 

will always remember that demonstrates both the 

investment and commitment of the entire agency 

to BHS programs and the power of being there for 

each other in times of need. “When something 

happens to an officer, it happens to everyone who 

is connected to them. We were holding debriefings 

after a critical incident (death of an officer in the 

line of duty). The chief arranged a meeting to ask 

how we (PASS) were doing. He ended up staying 

and participated in a debriefing. We all needed the 

chance to process what had happened.” 

10. San Antonio Police Department

The San Antonio Police Department (SAPD) has 

served San Antonio, Texas, since the early 20th 

century. Totaling 495 square miles, San Antonio is 

a diverse city of approximately 1.5 million people. 

The population is 63 percent Hispanic or Latino, 27 

percent White, and 7 percent Black.59 The SAPD 

operates in six service areas, with continuous 

coverage throughout 115 patrol districts. The most 

commonly reported crime in San Antonio is larceny 

theft, with 55,090 incidents reported in 2017, followed 

by burglary and aggravated assault, with 11,722 and 

7,067 incidents reported in 2017 respectively.60

The department currently employs 2,445 sworn 

officers and 667 civilian support personnel. Fiftythree percent of SAPD employees are Hispanic 

or Latino, followed by 39 percent of employees 

who are White and 5 percent of employees who 

are Black. There are 295 volunteers supporting the 

work of the department. Currently, according to 

department data, 34 percent of sworn employees 

in the SAPD have completed a bachelor’s degree, 

nearly 5 percent have completed a master’s 

degree, and 15 percent have completed an 

associate’s degree.

59. “San Antonio, Texas, Population 2018,” World Population Review, accessed November 15, 2018, http://worldpopulationreview.com/us-cities/sanantonio-population/.

60. Federal Bureau of Investigation, “Table 8. Texas Offenses Known to Law Enforcement by City, 2017” (see note 24).

Overview of SAPD mental health 

programs

The SAPD has a long history of providing officer 

mental health and wellness programs, with inhouse psychological services dating back to the 

early 1980s. At their inception, mental health 

services in the SAPD consisted of an in-house 

psychologist providing counseling and referrals. 

Since then, the SAPD’s mental health programming 

has evolved into a robust and holistic set of 

services available to sworn officers, to nonsworn 

employees, and to the families of officers.

The SAPD now has three in-house staff 

psychologists who provide counseling and referrals. 

In addition to in-house counseling, the SAPD has 

a mental health unit (MHU) comprising trained 

officers who handle critical and urgent cases of 

officer mental health crises, a long-standing peer 

support program led by trained officers, a family 

assistance program to support the families of 

injured or deceased officers, and several external 

partnerships with organizations such as the 

VA, local universities, and the IACP. While these 

programs are exemplary in and of themselves, 

the SAPD’s signature program is known as 

Performance and Recovery Optimization (PRO). 

This program was developed and is led by staff 

psychologist Dr. Brandi Burque in collaboration with 

officers at every level. PRO is an integrated stress 

management program that aims to teach officers 

to recognize stress, manage and reduce stress 

through healthy coping mechanisms, achieve 

resiliency, and return to high performance in a 

holistically healthy manner. 

The SAPD uses a “Cop and Doc” approach in 

the design and implementation of its wellness 

programs. This approach is based on a collaboration 

between Dr. Deloria Wilson of the U.S. Air Force 

and officers of various ranks and the psychologists 

on staff, resulting in programs that combine 
6 6 L AW E N F O R C E M E N T M E N TA L H E A LT H A N D W E L L N E S S A C T

the expertise, real-life experiences, and needs 

of officers with the scientific and theoretical 

knowledge of the staff psychologists. Such an 

approach not only ensures that programs are 

designed to best serve the needs of officers but 

also creates buy-in throughout the department and 

a sense of trust in the programs. It also generates 

trust in the staff psychologists, as it conveys to 

officers that the psychologists believe that the 

officers know best what they need and that they 

have the critical knowledge to create programs 

designed to serve their needs. 

Performance and Recovery Optimization

PRO is the flagship wellness program of the SAPD. 

In following with the “Cop and Doc” programming 

approach, PRO was written collaboratively by 

SAPD’s staff psychologist Dr. Burque and several 

officers. While PRO has stand-alone components, 

the theory and practice of the model is integrated 

with other programs in the agency and even into 

the training academy. The program was initially 

developed in 2010 and has continuously evolved 

over time. 

PRO is designed with a twofold purpose: (1) to 

improve decision-making and performance in 

the field and (2) to improve and ensure optimal 

performance and wellness in the aftermath of 

critical incidents. PRO reframes thinking about 

stress management to thinking about performance 

enhancement. This reframing reduces the stigma 

attached to stress and increases buy-in among 

officers. The program takes a holistic and integrated 

approach to officer wellness—addressing stress, 

resilience, recovery, and performance—and is 

based on scientific evidence developed in the 

military and with elite athletes. The Air Force’s 

Defender’s Edge Program was the first program 

created using concepts later adopted by Dr. 

Burque for PRO, and it was designed to address 

the unique context and mental health needs of 

service members.61

61. Craig J. Bryan and Chad E. Morrow, “Circumventing Mental Health Stigma by Embracing the Warrior Culture: Lessons Learned from the Defender’s 

Edge Program,” Professional Psychology: Research and Practice 42, no. 1 (2011), 16–23, http://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2Fa0022290.

According to Burque, many 

of the core concepts are also used in the training 

of professional athletes. PRO holds that resilience 

alone is not enough but that basic wellness and 

positive performance outcomes are necessary to 

achieve optimal performance, both personally and 

professionally, during and after stressful events. 

According to the SAPD, the goals of its PRO 

program are to

• make policy that is based on science, not 

politics;

• enhance officer performance on the job;

• enhance officer wellness at home;

• prevent or mitigate officer burnout;

• create a culture based on performance 

enhancement where byproducts include PTSD 

prevention, suicide prevention, and mental 

wellness.

According to several officers, leadership’s 

increasing support of PRO and other programs 

and policies that support officer wellness can be 

sensed by the rank and file and has increased 

officer morale.

PRO teaches officers about the science behind 

stress—the functioning of the nervous system and 

stress hormones—and the potential for resulting 

stress injuries. With a basic understanding of 

the stress function, officers learn practical and 

scientifically based optimal stress response 
San Antonio Police Department 6 7

techniques. Officers are trained in tactical breathing 

and muscle control techniques, performance selftalk, mental practice techniques, and attention 

management techniques that can be used both in 

the field and following critical incidents. The science 

behind PRO suggests that if an officer can identify 

stress early, he or she can employ techniques to 

maintain the optimal performance zone. This early 

identification means that decision-making and 

overall wellness will not be impaired by stress 

but rather will be optimized. As officers learn to 

understand their individual bodies’ indicators of 

stress through changes in breathing, heart rate, and 

vision and hearing impairment, they can monitor 

and implement stress management tactics. 

Performance self-talk is a technique in which an 

individual walks him- or herself through each step 

of a task to improve tactical focus and decisionmaking. Mental practice techniques include 

visualizing both the optimal behavioral and optimal 

emotional response to a situation. Also included 

in the core concepts of PRO is the importance 

of sleep, nutrition, physical fitness, and mental 

recharging through mindfulness practices, social 

support, or journaling. Framing journaling as the 

writing of a personal after-action report at the end 

of each day has increased buy-in to this technique. 

According to Dr. Burque, this is one of the most 

impactful and successful techniques of the 

PRO program, with officers reporting improved 

sleep and response to stress when consistently 

practicing journaling.

PRO is intentionally integrated throughout the 

department. Currently, cadets receive 10 hours 

of lecture-style training on the survival stress 

response system and techniques for modulating 

the stress response. Further, as of 2016, all officers 

in the department have completed a six-hour inservice training on these same topics. 

Additional PRO training is provided through 

professional development programs and in a 

unique Return-to-Duty program. A major concern 

for agencies across the nation is the traditional 

approach to post–critical incident procedures 

for officers. Many procedures following critical 

incidents such as OISs leave officers in a vulnerable 

and potentially dangerous state, trying to cope 

with feelings of isolation, loss of identity, and an 

increased likelihood of mental health challenges. 

The PRO approach recognizes the period following 

a critical incident as crucial in ensuring an officer’s 

ability to achieve optimal performance once returned 

to duty. Therefore, the Return-to-Duty program 

provides the opportunity for officers to begin 

temporarily assisting at the academy following a 

critical incident. This program exposes officers to 

potential triggers prior to returning to the field and 

reduces the risk of isolation and loss of identity. 

Dr. Burque and other SAPD PRO leadership 

are also using the program as a way to shape 

community perception and support for officers by 

working with the media, the District Attorney, and 

local groups. Teaching community stakeholders 

about the stress response in a law enforcement 

context has increased understanding toward 

officers. In addition, Burque is working to establish 

a PRO family academy to train families on how to 

support both their officers and themselves. 

Dr. Burque has also partnered with the Human 

Performance Laboratory at the University of 

Texas at San Antonio to develop evidence-based, 

empirical research on the impact of PRO 

programming in the context of law enforcement. 

Two research projects are in the start-up phase: 

(1) Psychological Skills Inventory for Law Enforcement, with the purpose of understanding officers’ 

use of PRO skills, and (2) Optimal Psychophysiological States during Police Officer Use of Force 
6 8 LAW ENFORCEMENT M E N TA L H E A LT H A N D W E L L N E S S A C T

Scenarios—a pilot study aimed at defining the 

optimal performance state for law enforcement 

officers. The findings of these studies will inform 

future training curriculum. PRO’s integrated and 

holistic approach has been key to establishing a 

culture of wellness in the SAPD. 

Peer support

The SAPD’s Peer Support Program began in 2001. 

Initially, about 15 officers joined the program as 

peer support officers. That number has grown to 

65 in 2018. To join the program, officers participate 

in an initial 16-hour training, followed by quarterly 

eight-hour trainings that cover a variety of concepts 

and topics. A quarterly debriefing is also required 

to ensure that the peer support officers are coping 

with the role in a healthy manner. 

The Peer Support Program aims to pair officers 

based on shared experiences and compatibility. 

This strategy increases buy-in and allows the 

officers to increase comfort with the process. In 

addition, the program has created a partnership 

with the fire department’s peer support team to 

provide an option for officers who would prefer 

a more external peer supporter. Team members 

aim to establish initial contact with officers in 

need of support for both personal and professional 

situation. They pay close attention so as not to overcontact and create adverse effects. Further, team 

members engage in long-term follow-up to ensure 

that support remains available for officers beyond 

the initial period post-critical incident. 

Information regarding the availability of peer 

support is disseminated via announcements at roll 

call, during in-service trainings, at the academy, via 

email, and on the wellness bulletin boards. Largely 

because of efforts to maintain confidentiality, no 

reporting of data has been completed. Therefore, 

beyond anecdotal evidence, the impact of peer 

support is difficult to measure. However, it is 

widely believed throughout the agency that the 

peer support program has been essential in 

establishing the culture of wellness that the SAPD 

has achieved. 

Family Assistance Program

The Family Assistance Program provides support 

and assistance to the families of officers who have 

died in the line of duty or have suffered serious 

injuries or illnesses. In addition, the program is 

available to support families of retired officers who 

have died. Volunteer family assistance officers act 

as a liaison between families and the department. 

They lead the provision of support and coordinate 

SAPD funerals. Family support officers make death 

notifications to next of kin if death occurs on duty, 

transport family members to the hospital, notify 

SAPD chaplains for deployment, assist in arranging 

financial aid, assist in advisement on benefits and 

paperwork completion, and provide counseling for 

family members. 

Currently there are between 25 and 30 members 

of the family assistance team. Officers who wish 

to volunteer complete a thorough application 

and interview process. Once accepted, family 

assistance officers are on call at least once per 

month, and the program aims to have three officers 

on call at all times. With three people on call, one 

officer takes the lead on supporting the victim, one 

on supporting the family, and one on supporting 

the department and dealing with any logistical 

issues that may arise. Far beyond these critical 

incidents, the family assistance team continues to 

engage the families of injured or fallen officers. The 

team hosts a Christmas dinner for the families each 

year as well as an annual memorial service. 

Mental health unit

The SAPD MHU was designed to provide support 

and address the needs of officers experiencing a 

mental health crisis. When such a crisis occurs, 

two members of the MHU deploy to assess the 
San Antonio Police Department 6 9

situation and determine the appropriate course of 

action. This may include an emergency detention 

if the officer does not voluntarily elect to receive 

mental health support. 

Currently, 10 officers make up the MHU team, 

supervised by a sergeant. Members of the team 

receive rigorous initial and ongoing training. All 

team members are trained in crisis intervention, 

CISD, and children’s crisis intervention. In addition, 

members attend quarterly trainings hosted by 

community mental health partners and spend 

numerous hours working with clinicians. Working 

in two-person teams, three teams are always 

available throughout the day and two teams at 

night. The MHU team works diligently to maintain 

privacy and confidentiality, so officers on the 

team operate in plain clothes and drive unmarked 

vehicles to protect officers’ privacy when deploying 

to a mental health crisis. In the mid-2010s, the 

MHU has handled approximately 10 cases per year. 

As with the other wellness programs in the SAPD, 

the MHU team has noticed that as communication 

about the program and available resources have 

increased, the stigma around seeking help has 

seemed to soften and more officers are reaching 

out for assistance. 

In-house psychological services

The SAPD established in-house psychological 

services in the 1980s when they recognized 

mental health needs as critical to officer wellness 

and job performance. Currently, the psychological 

services unit has three staff psychologists serving 

the department. Their core responsibilities include 

conducting assessments, providing counseling 

services, providing consultation and training, and 

integrating themselves into the department. The 

unit is housed in a separate location from the SAPD 

to increase privacy and encourage officer access to 

counseling services when needed.

Counseling services are free and unlimited for 

officers, allowing officers to bypass common 

insurance barriers. Currently, 90 percent of those 

officers receiving counseling services are selfreferred. The remaining 10 percent are mandated 

to attend counseling by department leadership. 

The psychological services unit also provides 

counseling to cadets and family members. The 

psychologists provide services for a range of 

issues from anxiety and depression to career 

counseling and performance issues to marriage 

and family counseling. 

One staff psychologist is on call at all times to 

respond to OISs and other critical incidents. After 

an OIS, an immediate debrief is conducted for 

those involved, and the officer is provided with 

resources about available services and what to 

expect in the coming days both procedurally and 

emotionally. A follow-up assessment is conducted 

for clearance for duty. The unit works closely and 

collaboratively with chaplains, peer support, and 

family assistance officers. In addition, the unit 

provides training to the peer support and family 

assistance teams, critical incident training, 

training for cadets, and hostage negotiation 

training. The unit also provides retirement 

seminars to upcoming retirees on how to 

psychologically prepare for retirement. The staff 

psychologists are working to expand this program 

to include more in-depth retirement consultation 

and post-retirement services.

The SAPD psychological services unit has built 

important local and national partnerships with 

agencies such as the VA, the IACP, and the 

University of Texas Health Science Center. These 

partnerships increase the level of support available 

to officers, inform and strengthen programming, 

and provide a law enforcement context to external 

community groups and organizations. 
7 0 LAW E N F O R C E M E N T M E N TA L H E A LT H A N D W E L L N E S S A C T

Persistent challenges to officer 

wellness programming

While the SAPD is progressive and innovative in 

its approach to holistic wellness, challenges and 

barriers to advancing programs still exist. The most 

critical challenge at this point is a lack of evidence 

and data, limiting understanding of program impact 

and inhibiting programmatic decision-making. While 

the PRO program is working diligently to collect 

data in the coming year, the remaining programs 

have very little data and reporting available. This 

lack of evidence also limits accessibility to essential 

services and alignment of programs to officer 

needs. Positive anecdotal evidence is important 

but cannot stand alone in providing evidence on 

promising practices and programs to enhance 

officer wellness at a national level. 

While feedback suggests that buy-in to programs 

has increased tremendously over time in the 

SAPD, this is a slow process that requires ongoing 

attention. The SAPD recognizes this fact and 

continues to work diligently to increase buy-in for 

each of the wellness programs. One officer noted 

that the positive impacts of creating a supportive 

and open culture internally have spilled over into 

community-police relations. The key to successful 

buy-in to date for the SAPD has been collaboration 

across ranks and across expertise. These 

collaborations have built the trust and credibility 

necessary for continued success in establishing a 

holistic wellness culture for officers.

Key learnings for replication

• Integrating wellness models throughout 

academies and agencies is crucial to creating a 

holistic culture of wellness.

• Collaboration between law enforcement 

professionals and mental health professionals is 

key for creating contextually adequate wellness 

programming that is based in theory and science.

• Buy-in is critical for all wellness programs and 

must begin from the top down.

• Providing support to families should be an 

essential component of creating a culture of 

wellness within an agency.

• Providing in-house counseling services free 

of charge and in a discreet location increases 

voluntary access by officers and mitigates 

insurance barriers.

Conclusion

The SAPD’s mental wellness services are 

exemplary given their holistic and collaborative 

nature and can serve as an example to other 

agencies across the country. Officers feel a 

strong sense of pride and ownership in these 

services because of the role that they have played, 

alongside staff psychologists, in both the provision 

of services and the development of programs 

and curricula. Staff psychologists have developed 

strong partnerships with members of the 

department. These partnerships encourage officers 

to get involved in programs and to seek assistance 

when necessary. As one officer reflected, “In the 

past it was not acceptable to discuss personal 

issues. Now it is expected, and it is expected that 

you are looking out for one another.”

The department’s determination for continued 

forward movement in addressing issues around 

mental wellness has allowed programming to 

continue to evolve and expand, increasing accessibility 

to vital services and further addressing the complex 

needs of officers. The department has made great 

efforts to combine the expertise of law enforcement 

officers with the theoretical and scientific knowledge 

of talented psychologists to move closer to achieving 

truly evidence-based programming. 
11. Tucson Police Department 

Tucson is the second-largest city in Arizona with 

a city population of 535,677,62 which makes it the 

33rd-largest city in the United States.63 Located 

60 miles from the Mexican border, Tucson is also 

home to the University of Arizona. The Tucson 

Police Department (TPD) serves the city of Tucson 

with approximately 800 deployable officers 

and approximately 242 nonsworn employees. 

The department is seeking to add 10 officers a 

year through 2023 to reach a sworn strength of 

916 officers. The TPD operates its own training 

academy and provides training for 30 to 40 other 

law enforcement agencies in the region as well.

62. American FactFinder, “Tucson city, Arizona: 2017 Population Estimate,” U.S. Census Bureau, accessed November 15, 2018, 

https://factfinder.census.gov/faces/nav/jsf/pages/community_facts.xhtml.

63. American FactFinder, “Total Population: All Places within the United States, 2017” (see note 25).

Overview of the Behavioral 

Sciences Unit

The TPD had a psychologist on staff who 

conducted pre-hire evaluations as early as the 

1980s. This psychologist and staff were called 

the Behavioral Sciences Unit (BSU). The BSU 

made the TPD one of the first departments in the 

country to form a separate unit to address sworn 

and nonsworn wellness services covering mental 

health and related support services. In 1990, the 

TPD added mental health training to the training 

academy curriculum, bringing in Dr. Kevin Gilmartin, 

a Pima County deputy doing his research on officer 

resilience, to augment the BSU. Through the 

1990s, the TPD continued to strengthen the BSU 

by adding stronger peer support and expanding 

access to mental health services to better assist 

TPD members.

Today the BSU is part of the Human Resources 

Section within the Administrative Resources Division. 

Three full-time employees—a police psychologist 

who functions as the clinical director (and is a 

licensed psychologist) and two sergeants who serve

as peer support supervisors—staff it. The BSU is 

on call 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. The TPD and 

the City of Tucson have maintained a high level of 

commitment to the BSU. They have protected unit 

funding even during major budget cutbacks because 

it is key to the health of the agency.

Structure of the BSU

The BSU combines a staff psychologist providing 

mental health services with peer support. The 

director of the BSU has specialized training and 

experience in standards of practice in the fields 

of law enforcement psychology, psychopathology, 

and clinical intervention and psychotherapy. The 

department psychologist is available to provide 

individual or couples counseling to all department 

personnel, their significant others, and their 

families in a private and confidential setting and 

coordinates outside referrals and contracts. 

The department psychologist also consults with 

agency supervisors and commanders on personnel 

issues warranting behavioral intervention or 

wellness issues and coordinates fitness-for-duty 

psychological evaluations conducted by contracted 

experts in police psychology assessment. The 

department psychologist responds to critical or 

traumatic incidents involving agency personnel 

and assists, whenever possible, with making 

notifications following serious injury or death of an 

agency member or his or her family. 

The department psychologist conducts training 

and mental health wellness visits as a proactive 

strategy aimed at maintaining or enhancing 
7 2 LAW ENFORCEMENT MENTA L H E A LT H A N D W E L L N E S S A C T

the wellness of detectives working specialized 

assignments. These psychoeducational visits are 

also important to build familiarity and trust and 

that the sworn and professional staff must feel 

comfortable with the BSU. The wellness checks 

help to break down stigma and establish familiarity 

in a nonthreatening environment. It is believed 

that familiarity with the department psychologist 

will, when needed, make it somewhat easier for a 

detective to seek BSU resources. The department 

psychologist provides resources as needed in any 

number of areas including sleep hygiene, family 

issues, health issues, and any areas of concern 

raised by the employee. 

The department psychologist provides a summary 

overview of the pre-employment reports to the 

training academy staff four to five weeks into 

the academy and identifies specific areas where 

recruits need help to address weaknesses and 

strengths. This step aims to maximize the value of 

the psychological profile and provides opportunities 

for early interventions to increase the success and 

retention of recruits.

The two sergeants assigned to the BSU act as peer 

supporters. This role includes handling requests 

from employees and initiating their own outreach, 

creating relationships of trust, and responding to 

referrals from peers and supervisors as well as 

formal disciplinary referrals. BSU sergeants are 

not mental health professionals but have training 

in various areas including crisis intervention, 

suicide awareness and prevention, active listening 

and resiliency skills. They work closely with the 

department psychologist and address everything 

from ordinary work-related socialization problems 

to more significant issues like substance abuse, 

family life discord, crisis intervention, OISs, incustody deaths, and other traumatic events 

impacting employees and their families.

Along with or under the guidance of the 

department psychologist, the BSU sergeants 

respond after serious injury or death of a 

department member, critical or traumatic 

incidents, internal investigation, and members 

seeking assistance with a family matter. The BSU 

sergeants follow up with officers throughout the 

investigative phase and post-incident period and 

provide resources and referrals as warranted. 

They will see if they need anything, help answer 

questions, assist with paperwork, provide a 

listening ear, or help consider various aspects of 

an issue. The sergeants are well versed in what 

internal and external services are available and 

how a TPD employee may access them. Often 

employees that are experiencing critical, stressful, 

or traumatic events feel as if they are battling it 

all by themselves, but the BSU sergeants assure 

them that they are not alone and have someone 

that is there for them ready to provide support. 

The sergeants also provide career guidance 

to employees to help them enhance their job 

satisfaction and productivity. This support helps 

make employees healthier, benefiting not only the 

employees themselves but also their family, the 

agency, and the public they serve. 

BSU staff members educate both sworn and 

nonsworn employees on the regular wellness 

resources available as benefits to employees 

and their household members. Among them 

are providers within the city’s EAP as well as 

contracted providers with expertise in working with 

first responders. The EAP provides a wide range 

of services to all city employees, including access 

to mental health providers, substance abuse, 

and other wellness services including financial 

planning. In addition, the City of Tucson vetted and 

contracted several mental health providers with 

expertise in treating law enforcement personnel 

who specialize in areas including trauma, sleep 

disorders, addiction, anxiety, depression and PTSD. 

The department psychologist coordinates and 

manages these contracts. 
Tucson Police Department 7 3

The BSU provides organizational support to work 

groups within the department. The staff members 

facilitate confidential information gathering 

projects in various units at the request of chains of 

command. These types of projects allow the BSU 

to provide information to appropriate departmental 

command personnel to determine any areas 

of concern and a help set a clear direction for 

leadership in the future. 

The BSU plays a lead role in all department-related 

funerals and memorial services as well as assisting 

other police agencies with funeral planning needs. 

A line-of-duty or off-duty death or the death of a 

retiree is a significant loss to family and agency 

members. Funeral planning is of major importance 

and requires the full support and resources of the 

department. Often, this is seen as a one-day event 

when in fact BSU staff members work with the 

family well before and often well after the day of 

a funeral to ensure that support and assistance is 

provided appropriately. 

BSU staffers assist the next of kin and other 

family members through what they desire for their 

loved ones. They are a liaison between the family 

wishes and the funeral home to make sure the 

services appropriately honor the deceased. After 

next of kin has authorized the dissemination of 

information, the BSU sergeants, using the agency’s 

internet communication portal, provide ongoing 

communication to agency personnel including the 

notification that the death occurred and updates 

regarding service times and information. They work 

with various other members to provide department 

honors such as honor guard, flag presentation, 

escorts, and traffic control. BSU staff members 

also provide assistance to families as they deal 

with numerous entities that require paperwork 

to be filled out and submitted so that the family 

receives any benefits that are due to them. 

The majority of employees access the BSU through 

their own voluntary outreach or self-referrals to 

the unit. The department psychologist provides 

psychotherapy sessions, psycho-educational 

meetings, or referral to external resources. BSU 

sergeants often get calls to meet either at or away 

from the BSU office to discuss coping strategies, 

career decisions, family situations, or other issues 

faced by agency members. The BSU also gets 

referrals from peers or directed referrals from 

supervisors if there are performance deficiencies 

or disciplinary actions or if the employee is having 

a critical personal challenge. The referring party 

is informed that a meeting was conducted but 

the content of the discussion with the employee 

directed to the BSU is confidential within limits 

dictated by state or federal statutes. 

Confidentiality is extremely important to retain 

the trust of employees and is a high priority of the 

BSU. The BSU has worked tirelessly to maintain 

this confidentiality with their clients, thus allowing 

for employees to feel comfortable when seeking 

assistance. All conversations with BSU staff 

members are confidential within limits set by 

state and federal statutes. Most things are strictly 

private and will never be shared. TPD leadership 

recognizes the importance of confidentiality to 

the unit’s effectiveness. But confidentiality can 

also cause problems for BSU staffers by putting 

them in difficult situations when dealing with 

other members of the department or command 

staff. The BSU staff will not confirm or deny that a 

person is working with the BSU or their connected 

resources. Only individuals using BSU resources 

can divulge, or give permission to divulge, their 

protected health information. 

BSU functions

The Office of Professional Standards (OPS) and 

the BSU staff work collaboratively but with distinct 

goals. The OPS role is primarily investigative 
7 4 LAW ENFORCEMENT MENTAL H E A LT H A N D W E L L N E S S A C T

while the BSU’s role is to provide support and 

resources to maintain or enhance resiliency by 

providing support to officers or employees going 

through investigative or disciplinary proceedings. 

Regardless of whether the results of the 

investigation are reintegration or termination of 

the employee, the aim of the BSU is to prepare 

officers for whatever happens as a result of the 

OPS investigation including helping them prepare 

for unfavorable findings or disciplinary sanctions.

The Arizona Peace Officer Standards and Training 

academy has 40 hours of mental health training 

in the basic academy. Beyond the Family Day 

experience, the BSU makes sure immediate family 

members understand they are able to access BSU 

and EAP support services through self-referral. 

A pre-trauma inoculation class is taught by BSU 

staff members at the Southern Arizona Law 

Enforcement Training Center (SALETC) during basic 

training. This class is provided not only to Tucson 

police recruits but also to recruits from several 

agencies receiving their training from SALETC. 

The class is an introduction to what they may 

experience on the job during their careers as law 

enforcement officers. Many guest speakers come 

and share their critical incident experiences with 

the recruits. Those critical incidents may include 

their exposure to officers being killed in the line 

of duty, career injuries, an OIS, motor vehicle 

accidents, fight-for-your-life incidents, and career 

accumulated job stress. The BSU sergeants and 

the speakers talk about the effect these incidents 

have on them not only when it is happening 

but also well after the event as the realization 

of what happens starts to replay in their mind. 

They talk about the impact these events had on 

them personally and with their families as well 

as professionally and with their peers. They often 

discuss the importance of recognizing stress and 

the coping skills they lacked or used to deal with 

the experience. The stigma of seeking assistance 

and the importance and effectiveness of using 

those available resources is also discussed. This 

class has also been adapted and used for new 

civilian crime scene personnel as they also will 

experience these types of trauma through the lens 

of a camera.

The Family Day Presentation is a class taught to 

the family members of graduates of the SALETC. 

During the presentation, the BSU staff members 

discuss the effects a career in law enforcement 

might have on their loved ones and ways for 

them to minimize that impact. They also discuss 

resources that are available to them as family 

members of a law enforcement officer. The BSU 

Basics course presented post-academy to the 

TPD’s new officers makes them aware of the 

available confidential resources for them and their 

families. The course presents the mission of the 

BSU along with the various ways officers can 

access both in-house and external assistance. The 

Surviving a Career in Law Enforcement course is 

sometimes taught in conjunction in with the BSU 

Basics class. The class covers stumbling blocks that 

have negatively affected others’ careers. Personnel 

are taught about ways they can improve their 

outlook of the job, setting goals for their careers, 

and being the example to others of how to do it the 

right way at work. 

The Suicide Awareness and Prevention course 

was taught to all sworn personnel during annual 

officer training in order to help officers recognize 

that suicide is a very real problem in the law 

enforcement community. It also provided valuable 

information regarding risk factors that officers 

should be aware of in their own lives, ways to 

identify others that may be thinking of suicide, and 

ways to intervene and secure assistance. Another 

important part of the training consists of giving 

the officers ways to find treatment and self-care 

resources for themselves or others within the 

department and the availability of the BSU to assist 
Tucson Police Department 7 5

them while they work through the situation. The 

Resiliency course is taught in smaller settings both 

with sworn and nonsworn personnel. Its focus is 

on how an employee can be changed by the effects 

of a specific critical incident or by years of working 

in the law enforcement field and seeing the 

carnage around them. The class explains that the 

employee can rise above negative experiences and 

have a healthy outlook about the job and their lives. 

Specific resiliency enhancing coping strategies 

are discussed and available internal and external 

agency resources are reviewed. 

The TPD recently revised its FTO program to 

incorporate a presentation from the department 

psychologist regarding strategies for coping with 

anxiety and uncertainty during the field training 

experience. BSU staff members are sometimes 

asked to monitor recruit progress, review the 

officers’ strengths, monitor stressors, and attempt 

to determine if trainees are intimidated by their 

training officer or having trouble with decisionmaking. The BSU sergeants also work with trainees 

who appear to be struggling by facilitating additional 

scenario training, working on the management 

of specific stressors, creating a positive learning 

environment, and generally building their capacity 

to perform as solo officers in the field. This shift is 

seen as an important step in preparing officers to 

better manage stress and decision-making as they 

transition from a controlled training environment to 

a fully functioning field officer.

BSU staff members typically respond to critical 

incidents as a team, which includes the director 

and sergeants. Shortly after the incident, they 

meet with the involved focus or witness officers 

and employees and provide written materials 

and educational information about the range of 

possible responses following a critical incident that 

they can take home and review. Focus officers 

are scheduled to meet with the department 

psychologist, and witness officers are encouraged 

to meet with someone from the BSU. The BSU 

follows up several times during the weeks and 

months after the incident to make sure the posttrauma impact is properly assessed. BSU also 

provides support to personnel scheduled to 

have investigative and administrative interviews 

regarding the incident or who review body-worn 

video of the incident and who attend the Critical 

Incident Review Board process.

The BSU is currently hoping for approval for the 

implementation of an auxiliary team to provide 

additional personnel with specialized training and 

resources to support and supplement the unit 

as needed during critical incidents specifically 

relating to officer wellness, prevention, and other 

specialties. The goals and objectives of the BSU 

Auxiliary Team will be consistent with those 

established for the TPD BSU as a whole. The 

highest priorities of the team are to provide support 

and psycho-educational information to agency 

members, maintain confidentiality and respect the 

responses of the individuals involved. 

There are a number of other topics the BSU ties 

into that might not be perceived as related to 

behavioral health but which the TPD has recognized 

as having a contributing role in stressors and risks 

that employees and the organization deal with. 

These include the following:

Officer reintegration after OIS. This protocol aims 

to ensure that officers are fully ready to resume 

the full scope of their duties following an OIS. 

In addition to meeting with the department 

psychologist for a psycho-educational meeting 

to discuss the range of responses the officer 

may experience after a critical incident and the 

importance of self-monitoring and accessing 

of psychotherapy when warranted, the training 

academy has expanded the protocol from a 

30-minute process to a more involved four-hour 

process. This process still includes having the 

officer discharge their firearm at the firing range. 

The officer also participates in multiple scenarios 
7 6 L AW E N F O R C E M E N T M E N TA L H E A LT H A N D W E L L N E S S A C T

using the virtual training use of force simulator and 

de-escalation scenario training and decision-making 

simulation and tactical firearms training system. 

The officer then meets with one or more agency 

personnel who have also been involved in an OIS 

to discuss their experiences and to encourage selfmonitoring and use of resources. 

Mental health counseling for traumatic events. In 

August 2018, Arizona enacted legislation that 

provides police officers and other first responders 

exposed to calls involving the death or threat of 

death or serious injury to children or others up 

to 36 paid visits to a licensed psychologist or 

psychiatrist. This legislation creates a window of 

opportunity to destigmatize mental health services 

and make access to treatment easier and more 

accepted.64 This program is currently administrated 

by human resources, and BSU offers assistance to 

employees interested in obtaining these resources.

Individual first aid kit (IFAK). The use of the IFAK 

has shifted from only using it to save the lives of 

officers to using it with the public and offenders 

as well. The goal is to save lives and reduce the 

trauma inflicted and experienced by sworn staff.

Fleet safety. Motor vehicle accidents are the major 

cause of death for officers. The TPD has 200 

marked units with a Verizon monitoring unit with 

speed reporting. The monitoring unit is not used 

in a disciplinary fashion right now but rather as an 

education, learning, and behavior change tool. 

The TPD Military Reintegration Program. When an 

officer returns from deployment, he or she initially 

reports to the training academy to review the 

updates to general orders and procedures that 

occurred during their absence from the agency. He 

or she also gets the opportunity to refresh job 

64. Ariz. Rev. Stat. § 38-673 (2018), https://www.azleg.gov/ars/38/00673.htm.

skills as necessary. The department psychologist 

also meets with him or her to discuss the available 

support and counseling resources for the officer or 

their family members. 

Advantages and challenges 

TPD staff members involved in the case study 

interviews discussed the value of having behavioral 

health services and some of the challenges that 

still need to be addressed. These challenges 

included the following: 

• The importance of understanding the current 

generation of recruits

• The importance of sleep

• Understanding how to conduct research to 

enhance organizational effectiveness 

• The need for resiliency training for all personnel* 

• Applying the lessons of vicarious trauma across 

the department 

• How best to deal with PTSD and other mental 

health concerns

*Resiliency training recognizes the impact of cumulative stress and seeks to equip employees with the tools to understand and manage stress; the BSU 

and the Training Division are working on updating the department’s resiliency training to expand the existing training to include all agency members. 

The training is designed to address the needs of detectives to ensure the resiliency training is relevant to their work experience.

The TPD recognizes that a part of recruiting and 

retaining new police officers is understanding the 

social, emotional, and mental health dynamics 

of the current pool of recruits. As a result, the 

TPD has adopted new recruitment and retention 

strategies to address barriers to recruitment, 

processing, and retention of new officers. 

Potential recruits are not willing to wait 6 to 12 

months to get hired and placed in the training 

academy, so the TPD has developed new ways to 

compress the hiring process and get them hired 
Tucson Police Department 7 7

before they lose interest. They are also now 

given flexibility in the testing process. Candidates 

are given options on the dates and times of the 

written and physical tests to make it convenient 

for them. They also have the option of attending 

“courtesy days” where they can experience the 

job requirements and qualification standards 

before actually engaging in the formal testing 

process. Close contact is maintained throughout 

the hiring process through orientation events and 

mentoring strategies to keep them focused on 

their employment with the agency. 

The TPD recognizes the importance of social media 

and frequently use it in conjunction with direct 

contact with applicants. Emphasis is placed on 

interpersonal communication coaching and practice. 

The TPD does an end-of-academy evaluation 

with the recruits. Recruits say they appreciate 

the changes and flexibility in testing. This is also 

bearing itself out in the numbers. TPD has seen 

a three to fourfold increase in recruitment—the 

changes have doubled the turnout from people 

who have completed everything to get into the 

initial pool of applicants.

Key learnings for replication

• When employees take advantage of the 

services offered by the BSU, they are safer and 

better equipped to handle the stressors of the 

profession. A strong officer wellness program 

increases the recruitment of strong candidates 

and improves productivity, retention, and 

career path advancement and job satisfaction. 

It affects the culture and health of the 

organization as well as the employees.

• Confidentiality is essential. 

• Be very careful about who is selected to be 

in the unit; they must have credibility with 

the troops and positive relationships in the 

field. They must understand the culture of law 

enforcement agencies.

• It is important for BSU services to be offered 

proactively. Early identification of potential 

stressors and concerns is essential to reducing 

their impact. Proactive services are positive, 

validate the BSU’s credibility, and help break 

down the stigma and increase comfort in 

BSU staff.

• A constructive relationship with police unions 

is an important part of making the BSU work. 

Both have the best interest of the officer at 

heart. The level of trust has a lot to do with the 

success of the working relationship.

• Flexibility in how the BSU works is essential. 

While there are defined programs, it is important 

to be able to respond to unique situations.

Conclusion

The BSU is an actively engaged unit that 

continues to evolve and expand the scope of 

services provided to contribute to the overall 

health and well-being of sworn and professional 

staff, their family members, and the organization. 

It is a strong example of the positive impact a 

long-term commitment to officer wellness can 

have over time.

Abbreviations, Acronyms, and Initialisms

ABPP American Board of Professional 

Psychology

AIM Administrative Investigations 

Management

BHS Behavioral Health Services

BPD Bend (Oregon) Police Department

BPI Brain Performance Institute

BSU Behavioral Sciences Unit

C2C Cop2Cop

CIRT Critical Incident Response Team

CISD critical incident stress debriefing

CISM Critical Incident Stress Management 

(Mitchell Model)

CIT crisis intervention training

CMPD Charlotte-Mecklenburg (North Carolina) 

Police Department

COPS Office Office of Community Oriented Policing 

Services

DeVRT de-escalation and verbal resolution 

training

DMSU Deployed Military Support Unit

DoD U.S. Department of Defense 

DOJ U.S. Department of Justice

DPD Dallas (Texas) Police Department

DSPO Defense Suicide Prevention Office

DV domestic violence

EAP employee assistance program

EIP early intervention program

EMDR eye movement desensitization and 

reprocessing

ESP Employee Support Program

ESSU Employee Support Services Unit

FOP Fraternal Order of Police

FTO field training officer

I/O industrial/organizational

IA Internal Affairs

IACP International Association of Chiefs of 

Police

ICISF International Critical Incident Stress 

Foundation

IFAK individual first aid kit

IMPD Indianapolis (Indiana) Metropolitan 

Police Department

LACPD Los Angeles County Probation 

Department

LAPD Los Angeles Police Department

LASD Los Angeles County (California) Sheriff’s 

Department

LEMHWA Law Enforcement Mental Health and 

Wellness Act

LEP law enforcement psychologist

LVMPD Las Vegas (Nevada) Metropolitan Police 

Department

MHST Mental Health Support Team

MHU mental health unit

MNPD Metropolitan Nashville (Tennessee) 

Police Department

MPD Milwaukee (Wisconsin) Police 

Department

ODU organizational development unit

OIS officer-involved shooting

OPDW Office of Professional Development and 

Wellness
8 0 LAW E N F O R C E M E N T M E N TA L H E A LT H A N D W E L L N E S S A C T

OPS Office of Professional Standards

OSU operations support unit

PASS Police Advocacy and Support Services

PBA Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association

PEAP Police Employee Assistance Program

POS Performance Outcomes System

POST Police Officer Support Team 

PRO Performance and Recovery 

Optimization

PSB Psychological Services Bureau

PTSD post-traumatic stress disorder

QPR question, persuade, refer

RPS Reciprocal Peer Support

SAIF State Accident Insurance Fund

SALETC Southern Arizona Law Enforcement 

Training Center

SAPD San Antonio (Texas) Police Department

SMART Strategic Memory Advanced Reasoning 

Training

SOP standard operating procedure

TPD Tucson (Arizona) Police Department

VA U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs

VIP victim intervention program
About the Authors

21CP Solutions, LLC was created to help law 

enforcement agencies and communities 

effectively tackle the challenges of policing 

in the 21st century. We assist state and local 

governments in employing best practices for 

effective, integrity-driven policing that works 

for the whole community. We focus on building 

trust, strengthening relationships, and enhancing 

community collaboration for public safety. 

Our diverse team of consultants brings decades 

of experience in law enforcement, academia, and 

community leadership to help law enforcement 

agencies tackle the toughest issues and improve 

the quality of the relationship between the police 

and the communities they serve. As experts 

in social science, civil rights, law, psychology, 

and organizational management we can assist 

communities in navigating significant and difficult 

change—identifying opportunities, providing 

specific road maps to progress, and actively 

helping to implement new approaches. 

From Baltimore and Cleveland to Grand Rapids and 

Sacramento, large and small departments alike turn 

to 21CP. We work for and with those who need 

real-world results that work for their agencies, their 

officers, and the communities they serve.

About the COPS Office

The Office of Community Oriented Policing Services 

(COPS Office) is the component of the U.S. 

Department of Justice responsible for advancing 

the practice of community policing by the nation’s 

state, local, territorial, and tribal law enforcement 

agencies through information and grant resources.

Community policing begins with a commitment to 

building trust and mutual respect between police 

and communities. It supports public safety by 

encouraging all stakeholders to work together to 

address our nation’s crime challenges. When police 

and communities collaborate, they more effectively 

address underlying issues, change negative 

behavioral patterns, and allocate resources. 

Rather than simply responding to crime, 

community policing focuses on preventing it 

through strategic problem-solving approaches 

based on collaboration. The COPS Office awards 

grants to hire community policing officers and 

support the development and testing of innovative 

policing strategies. COPS Office funding also 

provides training and technical assistance to 

community members and local government 

leaders, as well as all levels of law enforcement. 

Since 1994, the COPS Office has invested more 

than $14 billion to add community policing officers 

to the nation’s streets, enhance crime fighting 

technology, support crime prevention initiatives, 

and provide training and technical assistance 

to help advance community policing. Other 

achievements include the following:

• To date, the COPS Office has funded the hiring 

of approximately 130,000 additional officers by 

more than 13,000 of the nation’s 18,000 law 

enforcement agencies in both small and large 

jurisdictions.

• Nearly 700,000 law enforcement personnel, 

community members, and government leaders 

have been trained through COPS Office–funded 

training organizations.

• To date, the COPS Office has distributed more 

than eight million topic-specific publications, 

training curricula, white papers, and resource 

CDs and flash drives.

• The COPS Office also sponsors conferences, 

roundtables, and other forums focused on 

issues critical to law enforcement.

COPS Office information resources, covering a wide 

range of community policing topics such as school 

and campus safety, violent crime, and officer safety 

and wellness, can be downloaded via the COPS 

Office’s home page, www.cops.usdoj.gov. This 

website is also the grant application portal, providing 

access to online application forms.

Chapter 8 5
The Law Enforcement Mental Health and Wellness Act of 2017 calls for the COPS Office to publish case 

studies of programs designed primarily to address officer psychological health and well-being. Aiming 

to focus on innovative but replicable programs in law enforcement agencies of various sizes around the 

country, the authors conducted 11 case studies of programs in 10 departments and one call-in crisis line. 

Each chapter of this publication describes agencies’ programs and their origins, focusing on elements 

that can be implemented elsewhere in the effort to protect the mental and emotional health of law 

enforcement officers, their nonsworn colleagues, and their families.

U.S. Department of Justice

Office of Community Oriented Policing Services

145 N Street NE

Washington, DC 20530

To obtain details about COPS Office programs, call 

the COPS Office Response Center at 800-421-6770.

Visit the COPS Office online at www.cops.usdoj.gov.

e121830900

Published 2019