The challenges facing cops returning from battle with PTSD

Coming home, part 2: The challenges facing cops returning from battle


Part 2 of a 3-part exclusive PoliceOne series

Note: This series deals with the potential problems of LEOs attempting to reintegrate into domestic policing after serving military combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. Our reporting is based on the presentations of experts at a unique, invitation-only symposium for law enforcement and mental health professionals at the Washington (D.C.) Metropolitan Police Academy, organized by Dr. Beverly Anderson, clinical director and administrator of the Metropolitan Police Employee Assistance Program. PoliceOne was the only communications agency permitted to attend.

In Part 1, we explored the battlefield culture, the mental injuries war commonly inflicts, and the fact that returning veterans will inevitably be changed, sometimes in negative ways, by what they have experienced.


Once a law officer—or any returning soldier, for that matter—begins the process of reintegrating to home and job, “the road is likely to be longer, steeper and tougher than getting ready for combat,” said Capt. Aaron Krenz, a criminal justice-trained reintegration operations officer and Iraq veteran with the Minnesota National Guard. Often the men and women involved “don’t anticipate this.”

Hyper-vigilant, quick-trigger mentalities that helped an officer survive for months in a combat zone “don’t just go away, there’s no switch to turn this off,” Krenz said. And that’s the core of the reintegration struggle. Explains Maj. David Englert, chief of the Behavioral Analysis Division of the Air Force Office of Special Investigations: “Everything that made sense over there doesn’t make sense here.”

A simple example is driving style. In Iraq, Englert said, you’d swerve if you saw a water bottle on the roadway because it might be an IED, the greatest cause of injury and death in the war zone. You’d run cars off the road to get to your destination as fast as possible. You’d shoot any unknown vehicle that got too close to you for fear of an ambush.

He told of one returning vet who slipped behind the wheel of his family’s car after his wife and kids met him at the airport. “His wife stopped him even before they got to the ticket booth in the parking lot, and she took over” because his driving was so scary.

When an officer leaves for military deployment, “he takes a mental snapshot of how it’s going to be when he comes back,” Krenz says. But after the hugs and kisses of a brief honeymoon period—sometimes amazingly brief—a different reality often sets in.

Here are just a few of the reentry challenges that can impact an officer’s life back on the job and at home, according to the seminar faculty. Bear in mind that not all returning officer/veterans will experience these symptoms or be impaired by them. Just as with critical incidents in law enforcement, the lingering consequences of having been in combat will vary in nature and intensity from one individual to another.
click post title for more

Reset? How do you reset when you know you will be heading right back within a year? The figures we had from Vietnam were due to most tours lasting just one year and then that was it. While some went back, most did not. The redeployments increase the risk of PTSD and this has been documented, but what has not been discussed enough is the depth of the wound the sending back in to the traumatic environment of combat is causing. Many have been sent back to Iraq and Afghanistan, already diagnosed with PTSD and TBI. This should cause alarm bells to sound off across the nation as to what will come.

Police officers have the same issue when they are back on the streets. If they do not deal with what they face, it cuts into them. We do a better job with police officers than we do with soldiers. We know what to do, we know how to do it, but when it comes to the soldiers, we don't do it.