NYPD:Worried About Stigma, Officers Often Opt Out of Police Counseling

Worried About Stigma, Officers Often Opt Out of Police Counseling

By MICHAEL WILSON and CARA BUCKLEY
Published: October 2, 2008

The posters are hung throughout police headquarters, beside cheerful announcements of retirements and reminders of blood drives.

“Cops rid the streets of murderers, drug dealers, thieves, and all too often themselves,” the posters read. “If you’re a cop in need of help, call the N.Y.P.D. Early Intervention Hotline.”

Counseling within the Police Department is offered as a voluntary option for troubled officers and, in some cases, is mandatory, said Paul J. Browne, a police spokesman. But counseling remains among the most underused tools in a police officer’s arsenal, the result of an age-old stigma within the department against psychiatry in general.

Lt. Michael W. Pigott, who killed himself on Thursday morning after having ordered the fatal Taser shooting of a man on a ledge Sept. 24, was required to receive counseling within the Police Department, said Philip E. Karasyk, a lawyer for the Lieutenants Benevolent Association. He did so, and took some time off work last week, returning to one single shift at Fleet Services, where the department’s vehicles are serviced, he said.

“He had been transferred out of his unit. That’s always very disconcerting to these guys,” Mr. Karasyk said, especially in a case compounded by heavy media coverage. “No one takes into consideration the human being behind the cop.”

Other officers who were deemed to have made mistakes in the past dealt with their pain — be it anger or humiliation or fear of repercussions — in different ways.

Lt. Gary Napoli, 50, was the commanding officer of the team of officers who shot and killed Sean Bell in a hail of 50 bullets in Queens in 2006. While he was not among the three officers charged, and later acquitted, in the shooting, he was removed from his regular duty and suspended. In an interview on Thursday, he said he did not visit police counselors, although he credited the department for offering their services.

“I’ve developed many friendships on the job in 25 years. I received hundreds of phone calls in support,” he said. “The department was there for myself and my family and my kids. My superiors, my peers and my subordinates, they all were supportive of me.”

Likewise, Detective Gescard F. Isnora, one of the detectives acquitted in the shooting, did not visit counselors, said his lawyer, Anthony L. Ricco. “Jesse is a member of a very small but strong church, and they surrounded him with love and encouragement in the case,” Mr. Ricco said.

Kenneth Boss, one of the officers involved in the shooting death nine years ago of Amadou Diallo, an unarmed African immigrant, spoke with bitterness toward the department counseling. He said he internalized his grief over Mr. Diallo’s death and was so overwhelmed by the sharp turn his own life had taken, and the abandonment that he felt from the department, that he had suicidal thoughts at times.

“That mandatory counseling, it’s a mandatory visit. They don’t counsel you,” said Officer Boss, who remains on modified duty at Floyd Bennett Field.

“Never once in nine years did someone call to see if I was standing on a bridge or holding a gun to my head,” he said.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/03/nyregion/03cops.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Just one more reason I do what I do. When will these tough guys stop letting someone's ignorant attitude keep them from help? PTSD is a wound. Trauma is Greek for wound. All it means is that they are a thinking, feeling human exposed to abnormal events.

The Chicago Police department along with many others are addressing this right now and working to inform their officers what PTSD is, not just for their sake but for the sake of the communities they serve. They need to know so they can address the unique circumstances of members of the National Guard and Reservists coming back from combat so they are brought to treatment they need instead of jail, or worse, killed because they want to die. All cities and towns across this country need to do all that is humanly possible to save the lives and careers of the men and women who are willing to risk their lives for the rest of us. This is not an option.