Law Enforcement and Police Stress Essay

Law enforcement officers have encountered some very deadly days. The life of a law enforcement officer is one of constantly being aware of your surroundings, dealing with the uncertainty of not knowing the individuals you have to approach, and being able to cope with the visual images seen after vicious crimes. The life of a law enforcement officer, who protects and serves, is both challenging and rewarding. The first law enforcement system was established in Boston, Massachusetts over 350 years ago. During this time in the Colonies that were not heavily populated, the sheriff served as the main law enforcement officer. During the 1800’s, 24-hour law enforcement service and systems similar to what is used today began to emerge (NLEMI). Law enforcement officers face incredible dangers. With over 900,000 law enforcement officers nationwide the Federal Bureau of Investigations reported approximately 1,165,383 violent crimes in 2014. Approximately one law enforcement officer dies every 61 hours (NLEMI).The law enforcement profession is the most challenging and dangerous career, because officers must be aware of every law and action they take at all times, manage constant training and stress, and protecting others as well as themselves in the line of duty.

One of the ways in which I can address stress is by utilizing the institutional support systems that help law enforcement officers cope with work-related anxiety. For instance, Donnelly, Valentine, and Oehme (2015) found in their study of relationships between officers and Employee Assistant Programs (EAP) concerning domestic violence that sixteen-percent of the respondents report to their EAP's, fifty-percent know about and how to access them, and thirty-percent would not utilize the resource for family matters. Regardless of the subject criteria, Employee Assistant Programs are provided to law enforcement officers in order to help with any level of concern. By

Chapter 11 and focusing on the stress that each police officer is enduring while on duty and how it affects their personal life during and after their police career. There are multiple different tables and figures in Chapter 11. The first Figure is listed on page 380, talks about quid pro quo harassment. That usually occurs in a workplace and involved sexual act. When one individual is forced to engage into sexual contact in fear of losing their job or other consequences. Figure 11.2 on page 381 discusses hostile work environment. Hostile environment can be created by multiple different behavior like sexual advances, unwelcome attitude, and harassment. Often in a hostile situation, employees feel offended and most events continue to reoccur on daily basis. Figure 11.3 explains that Attorney General Reno has made hostile situations in workplace illegal and anyone who is subject to hostile situation at work, should report it. Figure 11.4 showed a response letter from Governor Carlie Chris to a community in Miami. The community felt that the police officers who lives in their community and parked his vehicle in the driveway, doesn’t comply with their homeowner association which states that none of the owner’s commercial vehicles should be parks in the driveway. However governor explained the community that the police officer cars are not commercial vehicles. Figure 11.5 and figure 11.6 stating that police officers have rights for their information, like pictures, address,

Normal people encounter stress every day, it’s something you can’t avoid. Law Enforcement personnel experiences a different type of stress. Imagine getting invited out to eat, Now, add anxiety, flashbacks, sweaty hands and frightening thoughts. Doesn’t sound like much fun, so you decide to order in instead. This is me, every day. This type of stress is called PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder) which is an anxiety disorder that can develop after exposure to a terrifying event or a situation in which physical harm occurred or was threatened. I have a lot of experience in that field, from being a Detention officer till now as a Police dispatcher. My issues began January of 2011, I was only Twenty-one years old, after I began my employment with Craven County Sheriff’s Department.

An individual may think a police officers job is easy but in comparison to various jobs in today’s society police officers face many difficulties that occur in line of duty. Majority of their difficulties are caused by stress leading to numerous amounts of disorders or more sever suicide, religion and cultural differences between a police officer and a citizen and discrimination or racism against police officers. In order for police officers to avoid such challenges there are solutions to help cope with different feelings and situations they face daily.

The history of policing can be traced back to the beginning of time. When looking at the subject of police work there is a large culture and history that follows along with it. There are many topics that can be analyzed when identifying, and describing the elements and the significances that are associated with policing. A large element of the police job that plays a large factor in the work and attributes to the policing culture is the amount of stress that an office will face while performing on the job. Another part of the job that plays a large part in the culture

Everyone has stress from time to time, whether it be work related or at home. Stress can affect your health and even affect your relationships with others. Law enforcement careers can bring on other stress to officers. Officers are faced with long hours and intervening on someone else’s troubles (Bohm & Haley, 2014). If several people were suffering job related stress on my job, I would need to determine what was the root cause of this. It could be related to long hours, management, lack of communication, or sometimes hostile work environments (Noblet, Rodwell, & Allisey, 2009). I would read the policy of the department to see what I could do within policy to make necessary changes if it was found that the source of the problems were more

Hello, Christopher. I enjoyed reading your post. First, I agree with your point that “living and working for God and the community, we can be a shining light to set an example for others to live by.” If police officers around the world used their training skillset with God’s message, then they could have more of a positive impact on the community they serve. Furthermore, I do believe that law enforcement officers deal with a great deal of inner stress. Today, this stress comes from pressure from the public. For instance, there has been a lot of focus on how the law enforcement officer interact with black men. This is due to the recent deaths of minorities at the hands of law enforcement. Although, police officers risk their lives every day

will make it hard for the violator to see where you are and get a good shot in.

Some chronic stressors can occur in any organization, and a police department is no different. Some of these common stressors include: having to work weekends and holidays, having to work rotating shifts and odd hours, as well as there being internal conflict between two co-workers or between an employee and a supervisor (Hess, Orthmann, & LaDue, 2016). In addition to these stressors, there are also those that relate mostly to just law enforcement. One of the big chronic stressors in law enforcement is being in physical danger at times, as well as the constant fear and mental preparation of being in danger. Stress can also come from officers knowing that the well-being of others in on them (South University, 2016).

These cases make the media and involve everyone in the world to toss out political opinions. Interest and lobby groups take access. And it could all be solved by continuing further education and mandatory mental health checks weekly. The stressors that law enforcement deal with on a daily basis is profound in comparison to most jobs. Most of the stress is psychological. Mental health needs to be observed better on both sides of the spectrum. Officers need more training to deal with the mentally unstable and they need to offered a confidential situation that they can vent their stressors, unjudged by their peers(mandatory for everyone) and allowed the ability to decompress. The mental health issue is never going to be an easy situation

Stress is a common factor among law enforcement. Although the men and women who work in law enforcement are expected to handle extreme circumstances while being on the job many are affected. Contributing influences such as violence, cruelty, and killing someone in the line of duty are some of the situations faced on a routine basis. It is not customary for people to witness and be involved in traumatic violence on a frequent basis.

There has been a lot of research on the negative effects of stress on people in general. I am sure you know that police work is one of the top rated professions for job stress next to air traffic controllers and dentists. A good way to start this presentation, I think, is to give a good working definition of police stress I have seen the following definition around enough to realize that many who are reading this are already familiar with this excellent definition. What I like about the following definition is that it is not just

About 20% of the variance between officers was based on what the researchers noted was stressor effect, meaning generally it was agreed that a certain stressor was indeed stressful. Finally, about 38% of variance depended on which officer was looking at which situation. Essentially, these results all showed that stress among police officers is not only affected by what work they are doing, but also their personal demographics. However, this research is limited because convenience sampling was done, so there is low generalizability and also the survey was conducted online whenever the officer wanted to complete it so there is no way to guarantee that it was the officer that actually took the

Law Enforcement has been listed as one of most stressful jobs in the United States. These high levels of stress can compromise the safety and well-being of not only the officers themselves, but also that of those who interact with the officers outside of the job (Van Hasselt et al. , 2008). Some health concerns surrounding this form of stress may include post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), alcohol and drug use, domestic disputes, and other forms of mental illness.