Does Regulation Enforcement Want Psychological Well being Care?
Discuss with us the basic fundamentals of law enforcement and how Gabriel believes the profession needs to evolve to keep up with the times.
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Guest information for the podcast episode "Gabriel Nathan – Police MH"
Gabriel Nathan is a author, editor, actorand a mental health and Suicide Awareness Lawyer. He is editor-in-chief of OC87 recovery diaries, an online publication that contains stories about mental health, empowerment, and change. Recently, OC87 Recovery Diaries produced a unique series of films entitled “Under the vest: Mental health first responders“Containing honest and moving recovery stories from firefighters, rescue workers, law enforcement, dispatchers, and a crisis intervention specialist instructor. These films are used by first responder agencies in the United States and by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
Regardless of his work at OC87 Recovery Diaries, Gabe raises mental health awareness, talks about suicide and its prevention, and spreads a message of hope with his 1963 Volkswagen Beetle, Herbie the Love Bug replica, which is numbered on the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline carries on the rear window. Gabriel lives in suburban Philadelphia with his wife, twins, a Basset Hound named Tennessee, a long-haired German Shepherd named Sadie, and his Herbie. You can watch Gabriel's TEDx talk on his approach to suicide awareness Here. Gabriel and Herbie have teamed up
produce a documentary about their suicide investigation mission; You can watch the entire film and learn more about Gabriel, Herbie, and Suicide Awareness Here. You can also follow Gabriel and Herbie on IG @lovebugtrumpshate.
Via the Psych Central Podcast Host
Gabe Howard is an award-winning writer and public speaker living with bipolar disorder. He is the author of the popular book, Insanity is an asshole and other observations, available from Amazon; signed copies are also available directly from the author. To learn more about Gabe, please visit his website gabehoward.com.
Computer generated transcript for "Gabriel Nathan – Police MH" episode
Editor's note: Please note that this transcript was computer generated and therefore may contain inaccuracies and grammatical errors. Thank you.
Announcer: they listen The Psych Central Podcast, where guest experts in the fields of psychology and mental health share thought-provoking information in simple everyday language. Here is your host, Gabe Howard.
Gabe Howard: Hello everyone and welcome to this week's episode of The Psych Central Podcast. I'm your host, Gabe Howard, and we're calling the show today, we've got Gabriel Nathan. Gabriel is the managing director of OC87 recovery diariesand they produced a series of films called Under the vest: Mental health first responders. And there are police officers, rescue workers, dispatchers, fire departments, anyone who talks about trauma and complex PTSD. Gabriel, welcome to the show.
Gabriel Nathan: Hello and thanks for having me It's nice to be here.
Gabe Howard: Gabriel, today we are going to be talking about law enforcement reform and I know you have a lot of thoughts on this.
Gabriel Nathan: Before I really get into the weeds of the question, I realized that whenever you take a position that is vital to law enforcement, or try to ask questions, even about how law enforcement is doing something. It is extremely important to have a good faith of your own. Because anyone who speaks out against law enforcement is immediately viewed with suspicion, paranoia is dismissed as quotation, libard, troll, anti-cop-antifa, whatever. I am none of these things. I am someone who has campaigned for killed police officers and their families through editorials and newspaper comments for the past 20 years. I have attended over 10 police burials in Philadelphia as far as Maryland. I have done a lot of legal work for law enforcement regarding the mental health of first responders. I am very well aware of the suicide rate among police officers. I am someone who knows the culture of law enforcement. I am someone who has respect for cops and what they do. So, I just want people to know that I am doing this from a place of love and concern, and from a position that firmly believes there is a need for change and a radical redesign of law enforcement across the board.
Gabe Howard: Thank you Gabriel for saying all of this and I agree with many of your points and I would like to point out that you recently appeared on another podcast that I enjoy moderating. Not crazy. And you had so much to say that it turned into a second podcast. I strongly encourage all of our listeners to go to them PsychCentral.com/NotCrazy and watch the interview. All right Gabriel, to get started, you believe that in many ways we are recruiting the wrong people and that a lot of our problems start early, even before cops enter the academy.
Gabriel Nathan: Yeah, look at the people who go into law enforcement. OK, a lot of people decide they want to be cops when they're kids. They watch shows like cops, they watch shows like
Law & Order. You are watching Lethal Weapon movies. Even to the Hill Street Blues. I would say that this problem started with Hill Street Blues, the opening credits of Hill Street Blues. I love the music. And then the garage door opens and the Plymouth Fury is in the garage, and the red lights burst out of the garage. It's exciting, isn't it? Who is attracted to this profession? Action junkies. It's people who want that adrenaline rush. And then we put them in situations where they are in a constant state of hyper-arousal. You always look around. You turn your head. You know, will someone hurt me, will someone shoot me? In a twenty-five year career, most cops never fire their gun, never fire their gun once. Many, many police officers never pull their guns. Yet this is the kind of person that is drawn to this profession. And I've had people tell me that we attract people who are really resilient. Well is that what you do Or do you attract people who crave action and aren't necessarily the most empathetic people? Because a law enforcement agency can't function when a cop responds to a call and then falls apart emotionally because they can't process what they saw. Perhaps, consciously or unconsciously, law enforcement is trying to attract people who may not be as empathic. This is not the one I want to drive around in a patrol car with a gun and the power of arrest.
Gabe Howard: People interested in law enforcement are mostly white men. Do you think it would help attract women and people of color as police officers and diversify the police force?
Gabriel Nathan: It's a start, but there are even problems with it. There are women in law enforcement and there are minorities in law enforcement. But what I hear about people who identify as female or who are minorities is that they have to work twice as hard and be twice as aggressive on the streets in order for them to prove that they belong to that culture, that they prove themselves can use their FTOs. This is Field Training Officer who, by the way, was Derek Chauvin who killed George Floyd, an FTO.
Gabe Howard: Oh, I didn't notice.
Gabriel Nathan: Yes. To prove to their peers and veterans that they can be there and that black officers are saying they are even harder on black members of their community so that they can show that I am really blue, I really am with you. So there are all these kind of cops ** t going on in the law enforcement culture even when you are recruiting minorities. Even if you have black commanders, there is still racist acts, racist acts committed against officers, not just the public. Correct. So that's still happening. Yes, law enforcement has a reputation for traditionally being a white Catholic boys club. That is changing, but it is still changing very slowly. The police forces are still not representative of the racial and ethnic makeup of most of their communities. We still live in a situation where police officers can live in many places outside of the community where they are police officers. So you have police officers monitoring really impoverished areas, but they live in nicer suburbs. So you can go home. They don't really have an investment in their community. They don't really know the specifics of their community. Over and over again they see the criminal element of the community, but they don't interact with the law abiding citizens. I find that incredibly problematic.
Gabe Howard: Gabriel, we hear a lot about police defusing. Can you talk about what this is means? Because I think a lot of people believe that this just means the police will go away and it will be the Wild West.
Gabriel Nathan: It's never like no one is available, is it? And that's what anyone who freaks out about all that stuff on the cops and places those absurd commercials where a phone rings, rings, rings continuously. Yes, 911. What's your emergency? We are sorry. With all the liberals trying to disappoint the police, there is no one here to respond to your questions. Horses ** t. That's not the reality. And it's not a reality now, and it won't be, if we radically rethink law enforcement. No one in the Black Lives Matter movement or in any advocacy movement wants someone to be hurt because they have no help available.
Gabe Howard: Gabriel, I really want to spin around now and talk about the cops' mental health. Society we have been told from the start that policing is a dangerous job. It's a job full of worry, trauma, and stress. So the thought would occur to me or I would think that mental health training for police officers to deal with their own mental health would begin at the academy. If this is the case?
Gabriel Nathan: Most of the training at the academy is focused on learning about laws and local regulations. You focus on going to the shooting range. You are doing EVOC, a training course for emergency vehicle drivers. That's really what it's about. It's about self defense and seeing your six and watching all these videos over and over again of cops getting killed in traffic stops and really terrifying you the Bejesus. OK, so is the academic education. You are not addressing the trauma that police officers will experience at all. You do not deal with police suicide. You don't address everything. And they don't really deal with de-escalating situations either. It's all about control. How do you control a suspect? How do you take control of a situation? How do you command a scene? The Police College curriculum is very, very busy. And we know that it takes three years to become a police officer in Germany. In other places it takes two or a year and a half. My curriculum for the Police Academy was full-time, and it was nine months. But nowhere in that nine month curriculum was there room for crisis intervention, de-escalation, signs and symptoms of mental illness, all of those things. This is all taught later.
Gabe Howard: I just want to point out that every state is different and in many communities it takes longer to become a hairdresser than a cop.
Gabriel Nathan: Right, yes.
Gabe Howard: You said there isn't a lot of mental health training at the academy level, is that because there is so much more going on?
Gabriel Nathan: It's so busy but I also think there is a problem. I think there is a divide between the governing bodies that create these police academy curricula and the realities of what actually happens on the streets. This is how much police time is spent on mental health calls and psychiatric emergencies. When cops across the nation say it does
What we spend so much time on is changing. The academy's curriculum remains unchanged, however. They fail to realize that we really need to realign and postpone the majority of what we spend our time teaching these officers. We have to be more responsive. Unfortunately, in my experience, the police culture is like the military like religion, and I really see the police as a religion. The police have deep Catholic roots. It is one of those institutions that is changing very, very slowly. If like the Catholic Church you have priests who act maliciously, hide them. Sometimes in police stations or in a large police station you move a problem officer to another district or to another task. It is like that too. They are both full of rituals. So when you have a culture that is so closed and insular and so paranoid about attempts to change it, you will be very, very resilient to evolution. And when you have a society that is developing and changing, the police have to change with it. And it's not about them, and especially the governing bodies that create curricula for academies that change very, very, very slowly.
Gabe Howard: If you now say that the police culture shows these characteristics, they are very island-shaped and protected from outside criticism. Why do you think that is the case?
Gabriel Nathan: First off I'm just saying that this is my personal opinion based on things I know and I'm speaking from my own experience and blah, blah, blah. OK, other than that, here's why I believe law enforcement is resilient to change and to outside influences. This is a classic situation between us and them. Any time you criticize a cop or try to ask a question, the answer is you don't know what it is like. They don't know what it's like to walk in my shoes. They don't know what it's like to be on a dark street behind a car with tinted windows at 3:00 a.m. The backup takes 20 minutes. I've heard this from cops many times, and they're right. I don't know what that is like and I can't know what that is like. Nobody can know what it's like to be me. We can have empathy and try to understand, but we don't know what it's like to be a cop. OK, that's just a fact. That doesn't mean that we have no right to question and that we have no right to say, do we believe that this could be done differently or perhaps better?
Gabriel Nathan: You hear about the blue wall all the time. So the blue wall is a very symbolic metaphor. It is really meant to be ranks and we protect our own. You are not us and you do not understand. It's not really the police against the criminals. It's the police against the civilian population. Anyone who doesn't wear blue is the enemy because we can't get it. Because of this, there has been opposition to civilian gunfire review bodies. That is why there is resistance to any politician who raises an issue. They are anti-blue. You are against us. If you are not in step with the FOP and all that stuff, you are the enemy. And I saw the police turn on me. You don't care about the twenty years of legal work I've done. They don't care about the mental health videos I made, the voice I gave to law enforcement officers who are having problems. They don't matter because once you get out of line, you are history.
Gabe Howard: I was really surprised to learn that the suicide rate among law enforcement officers is just frighteningly high. I recently had the opportunity to host an event with a police captain. He has been a police officer for over 25 years and has been running these training courses where he talks about how we provide non-mental health care cops. And one of the things he points out is that we are always training
them how to be in a high level shootout like a war zone in their own town where the majority of the cops will never be. The majority of police officers never draw their guns. But we spend so much time training them to do it. But the reality is that pretty much every cop has to inform someone at some point that their loved one has died. They are constantly reacting to traffic accidents and accidents in general. You have seen deceased people in the wild. And we don't give them anything for that. There is no psychological follow-up. We don't ask them if they are okay. At the end of the day, when they go home after seeing a dead child who was killed in a car accident, they are looking at their own children. They look at their own families. They look at their own spouses. One of your big stakeholders is law enforcement psychological care. Do you think police officers are becoming increasingly receptive to the idea that they themselves need psychological help?
Gabriel Nathan: I think we are making progress, and I believe there is an older generation of law enforcement officers who just need to retire so we can take on more evolved and emotionally conscious people. This older generation of cops is sucking up, buttercup. Be a man. You are okay. We all have to see this. This is part of the job. What ever. There's a newer generation of emotionally smarter cops out there who have a better understanding of, oh my god, yes we have to see things like that, but we have to deal with them too. We also have to process it emotionally. We don't just swallow it and then go to the bar and drink with our friends and try to wash it all away with alcohol so we can get up and do it the next morning. We have to be able to talk about this stuff. And there are crisis interventions, stress management teams and trauma debriefings. And I'm not trying to criticize what you just said, but it's not just dead children. You see all sorts of things that are unimaginable.
Gabriel Nathan: And yes, nobody tells them how that will affect them. Nobody tells them, hey, by the way, did you know that having constant access to lethal drugs on your hip 24 hours a day puts you at extreme risk of killing yourself? Nobody talks about such things. When I hear people say that cops are there to protect and serve, I laugh because they can't even protect themselves. You don't even get the tools to help yourself. Yet we live in this fantasy world in which they are here to help and protect us. They are all falling apart and where are the resources to help them? And that really burns me when we have these hiring practices that are ineffective and then they're not given the tools to deal emotionally with the things they see. We know that alcoholism and drug use are common. We know that in the last three years of statistics, they kill each other more than are killed or die in accidents. So we know all of these things. And yet we live in this fantasy world in which we are fine. Aren't you criticizing us? Don't you come to us Your whole job is full of problems, really systemic problems.
Gabe Howard: We'll be right back after hearing from our sponsors.
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Gabe Howard: And we're talking to Gabriel Nathan again about cops and mental health. I don't think the public knows that every year more police officers die from suicide than from crime. And our culture is very pro law enforcement. We want to help law enforcement agencies. We want to protect law enforcement. This really leads me to my question of whether we as a society are doing enough to protect cops from suicide. Are the police doing enough to protect their police officers from suicide? Because I don't think the general public knows that cops are in danger. You don't protect yourself from it.
Gabriel Nathan: Right, I think there are changes in this area. My friend and colleague Michelle Monzo who works at MCES is one of those change agents when it comes to training law enforcement officers, not just on de-escalation and crisis intervention, but on their own mental health and like their own mental health Health runs from the things they see and do to be influenced and encourage them to seek help. Sunny Provetto in Vermont, where he is a change agent. There are little pockets of things that are good, but systematic in terms of law enforcement culture, no. This change does not take place. And I think it's a big black eye for police culture that these organizational changes don't happen from day one at the academy or even from day one when we come in terms of screening and whoever applies to be a cop. And it's really inexcusable.
Gabe Howard: You know Gabriel, you talk a lot about action junkies and I understand what you are saying and I either disagree or disagree and I just keep thinking about the fire department. Aren't they action junkies too? We have movies like Backdraft and we have a TV show, Chicago Fire. And it's kind of a pop culture version too. Does the fire department have the same problems when it comes to the mental health of fire fighters? They respond to emergency calls. You see people lose their homes and their lives. You have to deal with death. Is there anything we can learn from dealing with the fire department, or are they not doing a good job either?
Gabriel Nathan: Of course, they are the first responder culture I'm talking about. I feel like it includes cops, firefighters, paramedics and paramedics. So, yes, all people in these cultures have many common points of attraction for their job. And they also share many common elements when it comes to their own mental health, and also many common stigmas that are related to mental health. There's a lot of it that you know, oh, you're picky, you're blah blah blah. Things like that in these cultures too. And that's slowly changing. But that's still part of that culture. We also lose more firefighters to suicide than to service fires. So this situation happens. Absolutely. The difference is that firefighters don't have a gun on their waist. They don't have constant access to deadly resources. So you don't have the means to take your own life. You don't hear from firefighters killing themselves in their fire truck, but you hear from police officers killing themselves in their radio vans parked in front of the squad house. But yes, there is the same problem when firefighters and other first responders have trouble processing things they see and experience and also have relationship problems.
Gabriel Nathan: Much suicide. It's not just about quoting the things we see. And I think that's a Stereotype about first responder culture. A lot has to do with relationship problems, including the thing between us and them when a first responder has a civilian spouse. And that's why many first responders prefer first responders as romantic partners. The civil spouse, you don't understand me. You do not understand. Do not know what I am seeing. You don't know how it is. Well, but the first responders are also partially responsible for this problem because they don't talk about it and believe they are protecting their spouse by not talking about all the things they see and experience when they are really doing what they are doing intentionally widening this gap between you and your romantic partner by not sharing, not opening up. Correct. I think this problem is endemic to all types of first responders, not just the police.
Gabe Howard: Gabriel, while researching this show, I looked up the number of police officers killed on duty, and I am only assuming that all of them died while committing a crime. I literally conjured up this idea of a shootout, but I was surprised to learn that there was a decent percentage of people who died in a car accident.
Gabriel Nathan: Yes / Yes.
Gabe Howard: And it was higher. The number of police officers killed in a car accident compared to committing a violent crime was higher.
Gabriel Nathan: Yes, that's exactly right. There are mutliple reasons for this. What do cops do all day? They drive around in their radio-controlled cars. The more you do this, the more likely you will be killed in a car accident. Who makes police cars? American automaker. OK, the Chevy Caprice, which was the most popular law enforcement vehicle from the late 1970s to the mid 1990s. The Ford Crown Victoria, which has been a major staple in the police force since the 1980s, discontinued the Crown Vic Police Package in 2018. These were very unsafe vehicles. The last generation Crown Victoria had a design flaw where the fuel tank would ignite if hit from behind.
Gabe Howard: Wow really?
Gabriel Nathan: And Ford came up with this particular fire extinguishing system embedded in the trunk to solve this problem, and law enforcement agencies had to change the way they conduct traffic stops to position the police vehicle. They changed the way traffic stops were carried out to prevent police cars from being hit from behind when vehicles stopped on the side of the road. Because police officers were killed in car accidents that landed them in the back of their Crown Vics and exploded.
Gabe Howard: Oh, that's awful.
Gabriel Nathan: So there are much, much safer cars out there. But who gets offers from police authorities? It's Ford and General Motors and they honestly make fucking cars. The Chevrolet Caprice had seat belts on the door in the early 1990s. The shoulder strap was mounted on the door of
the car, not on the doorstep. So police cars would crash, the door would open and the seat belt would not hold the officers back. The officer would be blown out or, in some cases, beheaded from the seat belt. So you have those cars again designed for law enforcement when they're not safe.
Gabe Howard: This is unacceptable.
Gabriel Nathan: This is just another example of police agencies not taking the lives of their own officers seriously. We only buy the car that is cheapest to buy. Whatever the Michigan State Police doing the test on police cars, whatever they tell us to buy. There are so many problems in law enforcement culture, right down to what drives it and up.
Gabe Howard: When the general public hears she was killed on duty, they think shoot, they don't think about a car accident. And I was also surprised to learn of the majority of the police officers who were killed in car accidents and who weren't wearing seat belts.
Gabriel Nathan: Yes / Yes.
Gabe Howard: It seems avoidable to just wear a seat belt. I think it should come as no surprise to me that law enforcement doesn't care about their sanity if they aren't even buckled up. Seat belts are well known to save lives, and mental health is a nebulous concept.
Gabriel Nathan: Yes, it's the stereotypical macho culture again. You know my father, a veteran in the Israeli army, fought two wars. He's a very macho guy. I had to sit in the back seat of his car and cry until he fastened his seat belt because he thought it wasn't macho. Well, well Gabriel, what do I need a seat belt for? What will happen to me Correct. The same culture that just has to go away.
Gabe Howard: Gabriel, that was an incredible discussion. Thank you hanging out with me and thank you for coming off the website Not crazy Podcast. Which, by the way, everyone can learn from Gabriel Nathan PsychCentral.com/NotCrazy. Or just look up Not crazy on your favorite podcast player. Gabriel, tell us about it OC87 recovery diaries.
Gabriel Nathan: For sure. So I'm the editor-in-chief of OC87 recovery diariesIt is a non-profit publication on mental health. We tell stories about mental health, empowerment and change in two ways. Essays on Mental Health Restoration First Person. We publish a brand new personal essay every week. We also produce short, professionally produced documentaries about people with mental health problems. You can see all of our mental health films and read all of our mental health essays at OC87RecoveryDiaries.org. And if you want to follow me, the only place you can do that is on Instagram. I am at Lovebug Trump's hatred And I would like, I would like to be your friend
Gabe Howard: Lovebug Trump's hatred it's all about Gabriel driving around in his Herbie replica. It's a replica of a love's mistake. The pictures are amazing and the suicide prevention that Gabriel is doing is amazing. Look, I just love Herbie, but check out that too OC87 recovery diaries Website because there is where you can Find Under the vest. The whole series is completely free there. And Gabriel isn't actually there. It's all about actual first responders.
Gabriel Nathan: Right, I'm not there at all. There are police officers, a dispatcher, firefighters, rescue workers and my friend Michelle Monzo, who is the crisis intervention specialist at MCES.
Gabe Howard: Gabriel, thank you. Thanks again.
Gabriel Nathan: It's a privilege. Thanks for having me with you.
Gabe Howard: And thank you listener. Remember, you can get free, convenient, affordable, and private advice online anytime, anywhere for a week by simply visiting BetterHelp.com/PsychCentral. We meet next week.
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