Traumatic Incidents
The police officers encounter various incidents in their lines of duty which are traumatic in nature. Uncontrolled stress of the police officers leads to impaired judgments. It is important to note that police handle weapons of mass destruction. With such weapons in one's hand, it is not advisable to have an impaired judgment at any single time because it can lead to wrongful killing of people. Furthermore, since it is the police officers who also involve themselves in deciding the fate of criminal cases, it is not good when their judgment is impaired while ruling on the cases before them.
The police stress also gives the affected individuals mood swings. Police who have mood swings are always violent over very small issues. There are many incidents, where the police officers have turned against their colleagues and shot them just because of the depressions that occur uncontrolled. Furthermore, even the families of police officers who have stress can be affected. There have been cases where police officers have also turned against their spouses and children and shot them just because of small domestic altercations and differences. Importantly, families of stressed police officers get adversely affected by the fact that they become less social and productive in the family. Therefore, it must be noted that police officer stress has negative effects on both their families and themselves.
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Leaders in police organizations can play a major role in alleviating the stress of police officers. It is understandable that the working conditions of police officers contribute largely to their stress and depressions. Therefore, leaders in the police institutions need to work on ways of improving the working and living conditions law enforcement officers. Currently, a lot of police officers live in pathetic camps. They cannot access some of the basic social needs in the camps. These conditions have demeaned the profession of policing. Leaders can invest more money in upgrading the infrastructure of police organizations. Proper and effective facilitation of the police officers must be implemented to cure the problem, of stress.
The officers must be well-remunerated and motivated so that they can feel happy while working. It is important to observe the fact that with better remuneration, police officers are able to support their families well hence contrite on work. What brings stress to officers is when they cannot meet the basic domestic demands of their families as a result of the minimal income. When the pressure of domestic needs is weighing heavily on them, they become stressed and get mood swings. Some of the domestic needs that disturb police officers include school fees for their children.
Riding the incident rollercoaster
A police officer experiences stress because of the numerous different tasks he or she has to handle within a day. A cop may be subjected to moving from lunch to driving a car at high speed while responding to an incident. From there, the same officer could be required to run after an escaping suspect. It is also possible for the same officer to get into a deadly situation while fighting armed criminals and attackers. Notably, the work of detectives and undercover officers is quite extensive. They are quite pivotal in the criminal investigations process. Such officers must possess traits that can enable them to work effectively and deliver good results in their job. The foremost quality of a good detective and undercover officer is high intelligence and reasoning agility (Miller, 2006). The work of a detective and an undercover officer is more of trying to connect pieces of information and unravel clear stories and information upon which logical conclusions can be made. This duty entails intensive reasoning, which requires high intelligence. The second quality is a high sense of curiosity and imagination.
Life in a fishbowl
The police are respected and expected to uphold high ethical standards. Moreover, the oath they take does not just apply to them when they are on duty. There are codes of conduct even during off-duty times. Violation of the codes of conduct attracts heavy penalties for the police (Hess, Orthmann & LaDue, 2015). In policing, it is important that every action that is taken is checked to establish its ethical bearing. The actions were taken and al processes implemented by the police officers must be within the strict confines of good ethics. Therefore, any process that is not ethically right should be avoided regardless of its beneficial and good results.
It is true that some of the best police officers are the most susceptible to the acts of noble cause corruption. In this case, the police officers are forced to bend the law in order to suit a wrong and corrupt action, which has good results. The police officers may plant or just decide to fabricate evidence against an individual, manipulate witnesses against a given person or abuse their policing power.
Daily preparation for battle
A detective and undercover officer engage in work, which involves venturing into informational areas that can lead to the real thing wanted. This requires that such officer develop a high sense of curiosity and imagination (Miller, 2006). Thirdly, the detective or undercover officer must have good communication skills. It is the good communication that can enable such an officer to get wanted information from the witnesses in a strategic manner. Fourthly, a detective or undercover officer must be able to disguise himself or herself when in public (Miller, 2006). This disguise is what enables these officers to ambush the wanted suspects while they are unaware. Finally, the detective or undercover officer must possess the quality of patience, which is what enables them to avoid making rushed conclusions.
The new police recruits are taken to a training academy where they are imparted with vital knowledge and skills for future use in the policing service. The police are taught skills such as driving and psychology reading. A police officer has to have driving skills because the nature of the policing job involves chasing after criminals or even escaping dangerous attacks using vehicles. It is imperative for an officer to gain the ability to drive all types of vehicles. Moreover, a police officer is taught psychological skills because policing involves reading a suspect's mind to try and predict the ideas running in his or her mind in advance (Stone & Travis, 2013). An officer who has developed psychological skills can easily tell the plans of the person they are in conversation with in advance. This capability is quite worthwhile in the policing service.
The responsibility of protecting the lives of citizens
In the work of policing, which is basically about protecting the lives of citizens, not all circumstances that a police deals with are light and bearable. There are cases where the police officer sees members of the public in hard situations and are forced to take responsibility of ensuring such a person is safe enough. Many are times where the police officers have had to help the fairly middle class families to bear with even hunger conditions through providing relief food to the affected people. Scary incidents include the deadly road accident scenes (Brogden & Nijhar, 2013). For the case of this company, even incidents that are private and between romantic love-mates, the police officers are allowed to intervene and take responsibility of ensuring there is sufficient peace among warring parties.
Closing Remarks
The aforementioned reasons or factors normally take a huge toll on my emotions are the biggest stressors. While working as a police officer, many times one is involved in managing scary and horrific incidents such as blood-letting road accidents where passengers are deformed as a result of the huge injuries on their bodies. The police officer is still expected to carry the dead bodies from the scenes of incident to morgues. The huge and diverse number of tasks handled by a police officer is also a source of stress. Other factors include life in the fishbowl, daily preparations and taking responsibility of overwhelming situations within the community.
References
Brogden, M., & Nijhar, P. (2013). Community policing . London: Routledge.
Ferguson, A. G. (2017). The Rise of Big Data Policing: Surveillance, Race, and the Future of Law Enforcement . NYU Press.
Hess, K. M., Orthmann, C. H., & LaDue, S. E. (2015). Management and supervision in law enforcement . Cengage Learning.
Miller, L. (2006). Undercover policing: A psychological and operational guide. Journal of Police and Criminal Psychology , 21 (2), 1-24.
Stone, C., & Travis, J. (2013). Toward a new professionalism in policing. JIJIS , 13 , 11.
