Most police officers consider human remains handling and death scene
investigation routine. These tasks are laden with emotional significance and are
often accompanied by sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and touch sensations of the
most unpleasant kind. Both young and older officers are vulnerable to the
emotional and sensory aspects of body handling and death scene investigation.
Young police officers often have little life experience. Older officers may have
been traumatized by military combat. Officers of any age may struggle with
issues of depression, suicidal ideation, anger, aggression, separation issues,
relationship problems, or childhood physical or sexual abuse. Officers with much
life and street experience are much more resistant to the psychosensory effects
of body handling and death investigation, but even they are not immune to them.
Most police officers eventually develop tolerance for “routine” death on the
street, and most death events would barely rate on their “Richter scale” of
emotion. During years on the street, they develop mature coping strategies and
responses, that allow them to shrug off all but the most vivid of death scene
and dead body experiences. Some death events, however, by virtue of their
magnitude, horror, bizarreness, or pathos, leave indelible impressions upon the
psyche of even the most experienced and mature police officer. He may show no
outward emotional response, develop transient responses to those events, or
experience long-term psychological sequelae, with significant impairment and
disability.
This paper concerns the transient psychological responses that may develop in
police officers in response to the handling of human remains and death
investigation. It is based on my 28-year study of human tragedy, as pathologist
and then police psychiatrist. It is a summary of personal observations made
during 3900+ tragedy-related medicolegal autopsies, over 3200 associated death
scene investigations, and 15 years of long-term informal follow-up of many
hundreds of police officers with whom I worked those death scenes. This paper
describes, in a totally anonymous way, thoughts, feelings, fantasies, and fears
shared with me by these police officers. Private moments of extreme grief,
horror, and rage- at what man can do to fellow man, man can do to himself, and
natural and man-made disaster and disease can do to the innocent and vulnerable-
make up the body of this paper. All of these feelings were shared during the
heat of the investigation, or in private conversations some time (even years)
later.
Over the last twenty-eight years, I have worked with and come to know well
over a thousand police officers in the field. This is their story, in their own
words. Most contributed only one or two pieces to the puzzle of transient death
scene and body response. Those who contributed more usually entered psychiatric
treatment and recovered, or retired on medical disability. Their stories are
recorded in a companion paper. This study is a subjective and practical
formulation, not a rigorous academic one. It is a synthesis of every sort of
symptom that these men and women have shared with me over the years. Most
officers had only one or two of these symptoms for very short times. None had
all of these transient symptoms at one time. I want to make it clear that these
officers by and large were, and continue to be, very high functioning, both on
the job and at home.
Mental health professionals (MHPs) deal with life, not death. They exist in a
world of theory and practical application thereof in a pristine office setting.
They usually have absolutely no experience with the unpleasant physical
realities of death, much less experience responding to those realities. Yet
these same MHPs may be called upon to speak with an officer acutely experiencing
them. This paper demonstrates, therefore, the amazing array of possible
transient psychological responses to “bad scenes” and “bad bodies”. The purpose
of recording these responses here is to help MHPs understand that these symptoms
usually are not pathological, and usually do not progress to diagnosable
psychiatric disorder. In my view, they are premonitory of a condition that I
call “street fatigue”, similar to military “combat fatigue”. (My
conceptualization of that condition is discussed in another paper.) With that
understanding, we begin their story.
“Police Officers Don't Cry”
All living beings and systems have fail-safe mechanisms that can malfunction
under stressful circumstances and eventually collapse when conditions are
intense enough. Anyone (police officer, emergency responder, or an actual or
vicarious witness of a death scene) can reach and exceed saturation point when
exposed to the highly inflammatory emotional and sensory stimuli associated with
dead bodies and death scenes. No one is immune. Each police officer, like any
human being, can be pushed beyond the limit of his psychological experience and
endurance, to a point at which he becomes overwhelmed. Even officers of the
highest caliber training, and greatest spiritual, physical, cognitive, and
emotional strength and experience can become over saturated at some point, in
the right milieu, and with the right intensity of stimulation. Which specific
individual death scene, body, or investigation leads to over-saturation in a
given officer is idiosyncratic. That which is devastating to one officer may
have little effect on another. Most police officers are prepared by their daily
work on the street for a single body or a few bodies at “routine” death calls.
However, a particularly poignant or awful tableau of sights, sounds, smells,
tastes, and touch experiences can assault an officer's emotional Achilles heel.
Most police officers are bound by the emotional cultures of their
departments. Many departments have historically subscribed to the idea that
police officers should always be free of emotion. Any acknowledgment of emotion
was considered “weak”, “unmanly”, or “unprofessional”. This philosophy is in
part related to the myth that “soldiers” or “grown men” “don't cry”. The advent
of modern warfare and the rise of military psychiatry have debunked this myth.
Professional soldiers with the most advanced training and experience do
express emotion about their combat and war experiences, albeit usually in very
private circumstances. Their sharing is generally limited to colleagues who
“have been there”. The myth that “soldiers don't cry” was shattered with Barbara
Walters' American television interview of General Norman Schwarzkopf, by in his
command tent during Operation Desert Storm. The general admitted publicly that
he cried with homesickness, and showed the teddy bear from his family that he
kept on his cot for comfort. This interview gave many soldiers the tacit
“permission” and courage to acknowledge their feelings about their military
duty, and even share them with their families.
In the my experience, highly professional police officers of great experience
also feel strong emotion about their varied street experiences, especially body
handling and death. These officers are willing to share their feelings under
safe circumstance. Police officers do cry, and many told me that they
cried for the first time while watching General Schwarzkopf's interview on
television. However, like war-fighters, police officers shed tears only with
those who can be trusted truly to understand- those who have actually shared
similar street experiences. “Bad scenes” and “bad bodies” are responsible for
many of these strong police officer responses.
Types of Police Officer Responses
I have found that the transient responses to “bad bodies” and
“bad scenes” fall into several groups: 1) no outward emotional response, 2)
awakening of core emotion, fantasies, and fears, 3) dissociative symptoms, 4)
sensory symptoms, 5) arousal symptoms, 6) mood symptoms, 7) behavioral symptoms,
8) personal boundary symptoms, 9) secondary symptoms, associated with substance
use, 10) re-awakening or exacerbation of major psychiatric disorders, and 11)
symptoms related to the psychological struggles of fellow police officers
(“contagious” symptoms). Civilians and members of the military may have similar
groups of symptoms under situations of extreme stress. However, I have found
that police officers have characteristic expression of specific symptoms within
each group.
The American Psychiatric Association did not officially recognize these
transient symptoms in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual until 1994. In that
year, trauma responses the first eight groups listed above were consolidated
into a constellation of symptoms called acute stress disorder. To qualify for
this diagnosis, the symptoms had to be present for a minimum of two days and a
maximum of four weeks, with onset within four weeks of the event. No provision
was made for the diagnosis of incomplete syndromes. Cultural allowances were
only briefly addressed and concerned immigrants with histories of political and
war-related torture (just as in the criteria for post-traumatic stress disorder
[PTSD]). No mention was made of work-related allowances for police officers,
members of the fire and ambulance services, paramedics, or medical death
investigators. The 1994 criteria for acute stress disorder still stand
today.
In my experience, symptom clusters not meeting full criteria for acute stress
disorder, and symptom clusters defined as acute stress disorder in civilians,
are quite common in police officers handling human remains and personal effects.
“Acute stress disorder” is so common in psychologically healthy police officers
that I believe that separate, culturally bound criteria should be established
for law enforcement. If civilian criteria are applied to this population, a
stigmatizing label of a psychiatric disorder will be attached to otherwise
healthy and highly functioning professionals. This labeling induces further
iatrogenic psychological injury, with its associated psychiatric morbidity and
mortality.
I conceptualize these transient job-related symptoms as “street fatigue”
(discussed in a companion paper), analogous to “combat fatigue”. I have found
that “street fatigued” police officers respond to a different type of
intervention from that used for PTSD. I have also found that “street fatigue”
can progress to full-blown psychiatric morbidity, if the officer is treated as a
psychiatric patient. He recovers much more quickly if he is treated like the
high functioning human being that he is. “Street fatigue” is a normal and
culturally related response to repeated exposure to extraordinary death
scenes and human remains. If the situation is really extraordinary, or laden
with extreme psychological significance to the officer, “street fatigue” can
occur upon a single exposure. In my experience, “street fatigue is also common
among members of the fire service, paramedics, emergency medical technicians,
and medical death investigators, especially after mass fatality disaster events.
I have worked with many officers who experienced “street fatigue” associated the
Delta Airlines crashes in Dallas, Texas (in the 1980s) and the Branch Davidian
episode at Waco, Texas, and the bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma (in the 1990s).
No Outward Emotional Response.
Some police officers never outwardly
manifest an apparent immediate, short-, or long-term emotional response to human
remains, personal effects, the death scene, the forensic morgue, medicolegal
autopsy, or (at mass fatality disasters) the personal effects warehouse. This
“non-response” is actually a response. These police officers usually are older,
have great life experience, and have come to a personal conclusion and
philosophy about the roles of good and evil in life and death. They have
examined the purpose of man, and his role in the universe. They may have spent
much time in spiritual contemplation and deciding whether or not there is a
power higher than themselves. Such officers are often profound “sidewalk
philosophers”, and/or active in spiritual, religious, or political affairs. They
often pursue intellectual avenues (advanced degrees, often in the social
sciences, or psychology) or creative outlets (poetry, music, art). Most have had
earlier experience with death, through farming, ranching, hunting, fishing, or
military combat. Some officers have come to similar understanding by more
rigorous means, having survived early childhood physical or sexual assault or
abuse, and in rare cases, even homicide attempts by a parent or other family
member. Repeated exposure to aggression and death (potential and actual), leads
to fine honing of successful, mature psychological coping mechanisms. The
officer can thus defend himself against psychosensory and physical overload at
“bad scenes” with “bad bodies”.
In unusual circumstances, a police officer does not care about or acknowledge
psychosensory experiences during body handling and scene investigation because
of his personality structure, psychopathology, or psychiatric illness. The
officer may lack empathy, as in antisocial or narcissistic personality
disorders. Or, he may actually enjoy death, destruction, and carnage, as in
sado-masochism and sociopathy. His enjoyment is similar to that of some
arsonists and some who commit serial (especially sexual) homicide.
Transient and Long-term Psychosensory Responses.
Many police
officers have a temporary response to “bad scenes” and “bad bodies”. These
responses may be limited to the their time at the death scene, forensic morgue,
or personal effects warehouse (in a mass fatality disaster), or duty time.
Conversely, these responses may temporarily travel home with the officer in
off-hours. His responses may be mild, not bother him, not cause any interference
with his work assignments, duty, or home-life, and require only temporary
respite to resolve. Or, his response to the body or the scene may be so
overwhelming that he must leave his post. He may or may not be able
psychologically to return. If he does leave (temporarily or permanently), his
symptoms may subside to a tolerable level over the next few days and weeks, and
disappear rapidly thereafter.
Much less often, the officer's symptoms persist for weeks, months, and even
years. He may eventually integrate the psychosensory memories into his life
experience. If this occurs, his daily and long-term functioning will not be
impaired. This officer has found some sort of greater emotional, spiritual,
and/or philosophical meaning in the incident, its associated memories, his role
in it, his own survival, the fact, circumstances, cause, manner, mechanism(s),
magnitude, and pathos or horror of the deaths of others. If he is unable to
master his experiences, and bring some meaning to them, his symptoms may persist
and interfere with his usual functioning. He is less able to function at work
and home, with loss of quality of life, and inability to find or appreciate
meaning in life, or its “golden moments”. He may subsequently develop mental,
emotional, and physical illness, and even die (by his own hand, others,
accident, or stress-related natural disease).
Awakening of Core Emotion, Fantasies, and Fears
Police officers pride themselves on being unflappable and un-shockable. They
have “seen it all”. Over time, officers develop great “street confidence”, and
rightfully feel that they can handle “almost anything”. They develop a practical
sense of invincibility, which is supported by their departmental and fraternal
cultures. With this great confidence comes a comfortable sense of control and
“ownership” of a situation. This mind-set accounts for the saying that, when a
police officer arrives on the scene, it becomes “his scene”, under his total
control. He can structure the scene and its participants in any way that enables
him legally to gain control over it, with the goal of limiting further
destruction and protecting the evidence. With practice and tutelage from more
experienced peers, he quickly learn how to bring stability and control to the
most chaotic of “routine” situations. The most common and effective technique is
to set strict limits on his own (via standard operating procedure) and others'
(via directions or commands) behaviors.
The officer is usually in both physical and emotional control of the scene
and its elements. However, sometimes the circumstances of the death are such
that routine structuring techniques do not bring immediate physical control of
the scene. In these situations, the officer may feel an acute loss of both
physical and emotional control. Mature coping strategies honed on the street can
no longer quash previously unconscious fantasies that flare in the face of “bad
scenes”, “bad bodies”, violence, mass destruction, or catastrophe. Primitive
fears of annihilation, castration, mutilation, unrestrained aggression and rage,
homicide, abandonment, humiliation, shame, betrayal, and inability to trust come
rushing to the fore. The officer's fantasies, fears, and sense of loss of
control grow at a given event, as the nature of the scene becomes more
discordant with the expectations of reality, circumstances of the death become
more violent, bizarre, or tragic, and/or the magnitude of fatalities increases.
At ordinary death scenes, the officer may use intellectual defenses and
bothersome aspects of the event to others. Intellectual defenses frequently fail
at “bad scenes” with “bad bodies”, especially during mass fatality disasters.
Mere words are found to be inadequate- “indescribable terror”, “unspeakable
carnage”, and “sorrowful horror”. The officer normally expects and experiences
an unusually high level of control at the scene. When he loses command of an
extraordinary scene, the accompanying fear and horror magnify the overwhelming
sense of helplessness, powerlessness, and sense of loss of control. The police
officer no longer “owns the scene”; it owns him.
Symptoms
Dissociative Symptoms.
By definition, dissociative responses to
trauma involve uncoupling of the usually well-integrated functions of
consciousness, memory, perception, an/or identity. These symptoms appear
primarily in the various dissociative disorders, but they also occur secondarily
in acute stress disorder, PTSD, and somatization disorder. However, in my
experience, isolated, paired, and clustered dissociative symptoms are common in
otherwise healthy police officers exposed to extraordinary death scenes and
human remains conditions. They also occur in similar circumstance in police
officers with pre-existing psychopathology.
Police officers do not speak voluntarily of dissociative amnesia, but
its presence is made known when groups of officers meet to discuss the event,
informally or during formal debriefing. In my experience, selective
amnesia occurs the most commonly. For example, I once met with a group of
ten highly trained, high functioning surveillance officers who had suddenly
witnessed explosion of a drug house and incineration of its occupants. Each
officer had several points of observation that the others could not recall, but
which were later verified on videotape of the event. Sounds, colors, textures,
location of movable objects, relative positions of both landmarks and officers,
and time sequences and intervals were all points of disagreement.
Similar disparities in recall of event details occurred with federal law
enforcement agents who were in their offices in Fort Worth, Texas, when they
were hit directly by a Force Three tornado. Disagreement on event details also
occurred with officers who assisted in body search and recovery and general
clean-up operations following the conflagration at the Branch Davidian compound
in Waco, Texas. These observations were shared with me after the formal critical
incident stress debriefings.
Localized amnesia is less common. An example comes to mind of a police
officer who specialized in white-collar and cyber-crime in a large department.
His academic background was in finance, computer science, law, and accounting.
He had little experience in street-oriented policing, other than his requisite
rookie year in a very quiet suburban jurisdiction, and had extremely limited
exposure to urban violence. He had recently been transferred to a multi-city
task force unit that assisted a nearby urban violent crime team, and had
occasion to interrogate a suspect in a drug-related torture-homicide. He had
been with the search and recovery team when the body was found. It had suffered
massive antemortem blunt force injury with a shovel. The officer was “stunned”,
when during interrogation, the suspect began smiling and laughing, while
describing the means of torture in great detail. The suspect then related with
great glee how much he had enjoyed seeing the young woman “plead and bleed”. The
officer readily recalled the beginning of the interrogation and the interchange
up to that point. However, he was very concerned that he could not recall what
questions he had asked the suspect during the middle and end of the
interrogation, until several days later. He had been amazed to hear his own
voice, and that of the suspect, on the audiotape made at the time.
Depersonalization is also a common response to overwhelming death
scenes and grotesque body conditions. The police officer with depersonalization
describes himself as a “robot” or “an actor in a play”. He is “just going
through the motions”. Some officers describe themselves as videographers,
watching themselves in the viewfinder of the camera. One officer described
feeling “like a marionette, walking weightless on the moon”. Another officer,
who assisted in the collection of fragmented body parts from a high speed, high
impact, two car crash site, recalled watching his gloved hands (seemingly
unattached to his body) “picking up the pieces, like it was on TV”. A third
officer recalled gathering up body fragments at a bomb site, but he could not
recall any feeling in his hands as he did so. Yet another officer saw himself on
television, giving a report about a young child burned to death in a house fire.
He recalled interacting with the news reporter in front of the camera, but
thought at the time that his voice belonged to someone else. One officer, who
handled remains at the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, after the
conflagration, noted that his “mind became the S.O.P. (Standard Operating
Procedure manual). It was on autopilot. I wasn't even attached to it (his mind),
yet I knew what to do”.
Derealization is also very common. The police officer may report that
he is the only real person in a film and that others are automata. The physical
world seems “wrong”. Objects seem much bigger or smaller than they actually are.
Loud voices seem quiet and far away, while whispers sound like shouts. Colors
may appear gaudy and loudly fluorescent, when in fact they are muted. Reds seem
“redder” and purples seem more purple, especially in blood stains and puddles.
The officer may suddenly experience “comfort smells”. He may smell perfumes used
by a beloved mother, aunt, or grandmother when the officer was a child. Or, he
may smell “meatloaf and mashed potatoes” (or other “comfort food”). Another
common “comfort smell” is that of soap used by the officer as a child. Time
sense also becomes warped. Complex ballistics investigations that really take
hours may “fly by in minutes” at a particularly violent and bloody mass gang
shooting. Conversations really lasting “moments” may seemingly last hours. Total
time spent at a difficult scene or with distorted human remains may be grossly
over-estimated or under-estimated.
For the vast majority of the police officers, these symptoms disappear after
several hours at the scene or within several days of leaving the scene. However,
I have worked with many officers who experienced recurrent prominent sensory and
time distortions at a series of “bad scenes” with “bad bodies”, even though they
were symptom-free between scenes. They were not free of such symptoms during
scene investigation until they had worked five to ten such scenes. Curiously,
all of these officers reported histories of childhood physical abuse and yet
were high functioning. I also worked with several high functioning officers
without childhood abuse histories, but who served in military combat during the
Viet Nam and Desert Storm wars. They too had frequent depersonalization and
derealization symptoms at “bad scenes” with “bad bodies”, in the absence of
clinically diagnosable stress disorder symptoms. One officer had a history of
combat stress (“battle fatigue”) and childhood sexual abuse. He developed
chronic depersonalization and derealization in the context of borderline
personality disorder, and was forced to take medical retirement after serious
self-mutilation following investigation of the suicide of a neighbor in his
small town. He eventually hanged himself.
Several high functioning officers with history of childhood sexual or
physical abuse have told me that they have learned to dissociate at will
(“go into a trance, just to get the job done”) at “bad scenes” with “bad
bodies”. While “in the trance”, they report being oblivious to the sights,
sounds, smells, tastes, and touch experiences of carnage scenes. They also told
me, however, that both they and their partners thought that they were “fully in
tune” with the investigation, their colleagues, and standard operating
procedures. One officer describes willed dissociation as “a combination psychic
gas-mask and biohazard suit”. Several officers reporting this voluntary
phenomenon have received commendations for their work at catastrophic scenes.
I have also been told of volitional use of dissociation by several police
officers who handled human remains at the Branch Davidian compound, at Waco,
Texas, the bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma,
and the two crashes of Delta Airliners in Dallas, Texas. All of these officers
were high functioning before these incidents. Some of them had significant
histories of childhood physical abuse, but others did not, and just “stumbled
onto the technique”, or “learned it from a partner”. At much later dates, all of
the officers with histories of abuse, still high functioning, recalled using
voluntary dissociation techniques as children. Yet none of these officers
connected that phenomenon with their voluntary use of dissociation at “bad
scenes” with “bad bodies”. Well after the death incidents, several of the
officers (both with and without abuse histories) told me that they continued to
use their abilities, to induce “trance-like states” for relaxation, meditation,
and study of the of the martial arts.
While the specific dissociative phenomena of amnesia, depersonalization, and
derealization are common at overwhelming scenes, general dissociative
phenomena are even more common. Most police officers recall their first
death scenes, whether an unexpected natural death, high-profile mass fatality
disaster, or something in between. In my experience, most police officers,
immediately upon entering their first death scene, make some sort of remark
indicating their state of extreme cognitive discomfort (dissonance). Many
describe their first death scenes as a “dream state”, associated with tremendous
slowing of both their thoughts and actions. “I was wading through gelatin”, as
one officer put it. All of their senses feel muted, and there is also a sense of
being “in a fog” or “in a daze”. Thought processes no longer seem to shift from
one idea to the next with alacrity. Most officers comment upon a perceptible
delay between stimulus and response, particularly with respect to sounds. Some
perceive a profound lag between a thought and its final utterance. One officer
describes the sensation as “wearing a translucent blindfold for all the senses”.
Another describes “a large wad of fuzz” intervening between his thoughts and
their expression. Many officers known for their quick study described “fuzzy”
thinking when I worked with them at their first death scenes. Fifteen to twenty
five years later, these officers still recall those perceived sudden changes in
mental acuity. Officers who worked the Delta crashes and the Branch Davidian
affair tell me that their “dazed” feeling was present for the first two to three
days, and then began to wear off rapidly. They were completely “connected” again
by the end of the first week. All of these officers remain high functioning
today.
By my observation, the most common dissociative response at a “bad scene”
with “bad bodies” is a total lack of feeling of emotion. While the
literature uses terms like “numbness”, “flatness”, or “detachment”, police
officers tell me that the experience is much more profound. “It's like your
being and self are encased in concrete”. “Everything is black, white, or shades
of gray in your thinking and experience”. “It is being in a hyper-analytical
state, with thinking so crystal clear and rigid that you think it might break”.
Many officers liken this state to “becoming a computer-brain. Everything is a
data bit keyed in. Nothing has any meaning. It's just facts and observations.
They're all sterile and unconnected, except that they are in my brain”.
Associated with this state, many officers report increased rigidity of thinking
and decision making, strict and obsessive reliance upon the letter of the
standard operating procedure, and over-attention to detail. As one officer put
it, “The worse the body and the worse the scene, the more computerized I become.
Keeping it in RAM (random access memory) means I can download it and get rid of
it as soon as I leave the scene”.
Sensory Symptoms.
Almost all police officers who have a strongly
negative psychological response to body handling and “bad” death scenes have
intrusive and recurrent images, sounds, smells, tastes, and touch memories of
the event. These symptoms can occur singly or in clusters, as well as
spontaneously or in response to reminders (triggers) of the event. When clusters
of sensory memories occur, the officer re-experiences or re-lives the event. At
times, he can identify the symptoms as being just that. At other times, the
symptoms are so convincing that he cannot tell them from reality. A dissociative
response combined with sensory re-experiencing results in a full-blown
flashback.
At other times, the sensory events become entwined with dreams or nightmares.
Officers mistakenly, but descriptively, call this combination of symptoms “night
terrors”. The significant other is usually the first to know of (and report)
this phenomenon, when her flailing, yelling, but quite asleep partner kicks her
out of bed. When awakened, the officer is quite convinced that the event he
dreamed about really recurred. Similar events can occur waking hours; locally,
they are known as “daymares”. They are as equally frightening as their nocturnal
counterparts. Poignantly, one officer, whose small son suffered from true night
terrors, found comfort when he was offered a well-loved and bedraggled teddy
bear, which had already seen similar duty.
The images and smell memories of the human remains, personal effects, and
death scene especially haunt new police officers, those inexperienced in body
recovery or transport, and those who have never witnessed a medicolegal autopsy
or visited a forensic morgue. Smell memories are usually the main response to
mass fatality death scenes. These memories may be strong or weak, transient,
lingering, or overwhelming. Smell memories are also the sensory responses that
last the longest after the event. Illusions are also frequent, as are changes
and distortions in interpretation of other sensory stimuli.
Some officers report that the vividness of visual memories of a death event
can reawaken sounds, smells, tastes, and touch memories of the body and scene.
One officer likened this experience to his response to seeing a television
advertisement for fried chicken. He developed a subsequent image in his mind of
dinners at his grandmother's house, associated with smells, tastes (even
watering of his mouth), sounds of family laughter, and memories of the feel of
juices from the chicken leg running down his chin. Other officers noted that a
visual image strongly reminiscent of the body or scene could re-ignite “the
slowing down of time”, and mute or magnify real-time sounds, reproducing the
experiences that he had at his first death scene. The changes in sound are more
likely, and the more intense, at mass fatality death scenes. However, they can
also occur with “routine and regular” death scenes, with one or a few
bodies.
Arousal Symptoms.
Physical and emotional exhaustion based on
sleeplessness is one of the biggest physical and psychological dangers to
police officers working a death scene and handling bodies, especially, during
mass fatality disasters. At a “bad” scene with a “bad” body, or a disaster
scene, the associated adrenaline surge makes it difficult for the officer to
remember or want to sleep. If his partner intervenes and insists that he take a
break, he may find it impossible to fall asleep. Many things may keep the
officer awake. He may be 1) replaying the events in his mind, 2) critically
reviewing and assessing the actions of the responses agencies, the individual
responders, and his own actions, inaction, or omissions, 3) incessantly berating
himself and others for not doing more, or being unable to do more, 4) ruminating
about why he is alive and others are not, 5) consumed or overwhelmed by survivor
guilt, 6) worrying about the deceased and their families, his own mortality, and
that of his own family, 7) bombarded by images, sounds, smells, or nightmares of
his experiences, 8) refusing to fall asleep, for fear of dying in his sleep, 9)
pondering the need to be on call twenty four hours a day, seven days a week,
three hundred and sixty five days of the year, to prevent potentially fatal
emergencies in his own home, 10) planning, and experiencing in fantasy or dream,
his own funeral, and 11) having hallucinations upon awaking or falling asleep of
his funeral's reality. He may do anything to avoid sleep. Even when
over-saturated emotionally and physically by the death event, he may watch its
television coverage, or return to the scene to volunteer for a double or triple
shift. Frequent attempted contact by media representatives, continual
stimulation by repetitive media accounts, and constant questions from
voyeuristic, well-meaning, and fearful family and friends can also keep him
awake. It may not be possible for the officer to escape from or to “turn off”
the death event, its body, and the scene.
Lack of sleep and intrusive psychosensory symptoms combine forces to
interrupt the officer's attention and concentration. Officers who are normally
highly focused describe their faculties as “going to mush”, “scattering like
feathers in the wind”, or “going from a laser beam to a flashlight beam”.
Distractibility also plays a role. Their short-term memory is impaired, and they
“lose” patrol car keys, forget orders unless they are repeated, and rely
increasingly upon pocket calendars and note cards to recall important dates and
facts. In one extreme case, an officer who had not slept for seventy-two hours
following a mass disaster, and who was having strong smell memories, repeatedly
misplaced firearms and ammunition.
The exhausted officer's usual “high alert” status and “street paranoia” are
enhanced by his constant hypervigilance and scanning for specific psychosensory
reminders of the event. As the “paranoia” and scanning increase, he develops
increasing physical (muscle) and emotional (psychic) tension. He feels “wired”,
“tightly wound”, or “keyed up”. His physical and psychological agitation are
reflected in marked motor restlessness and thoughts bouncing from one to another
in no particular fashion. Some officers suddenly increase their workout routine
frequencies and intensities after “bad scenes” with “bad bodies”, but they may
or may not consciously make the connection between the case and the need to “let
off steam”.
Some officers are on such high states of alert after a “bad scene” that they
develop “hair trigger” reflexes, associated with a marked startle response. When
the officer has access to his duty weapon, this combination of symptoms can be
deadly. Unfortunately, innocent family members have been accidentally shot, when
they have unwittingly surprised such an officer, who misperceived their actions
and intent, and reacted spontaneously.
Mood Symptoms.
Rage is a common underlying theme in the police
emotional response to body handling and grotesque or tragic death scenes and
circumstances. Most officers mask the rage well, allowing only anger or
irritability to emerge. This anger or irritability may flicker, erupt
sporadically, or develop into long-lasting and externalized rage.
The anger and rage are merely masks for the deeply hidden roiling core
emotions that occur in almost every officer exposed to death scenes of any
intensity. These emotions come bubbling to the surface in even the most
experienced and mature officers after “bad scenes” with “bad bodies”. The degree
of anger and rage increases in proportion to the magnitude of the officer's
sense of loss of control, fears (of annihilation, castration, uncontrollable
aggression, homicidal impulses, humiliation, shame, abandonment, and betrayal),
and his increasing inability to trust. The irritability that accompanies the
anger also has a physiological component; it is associated with the general
state of arousal at and after the scene.
The anger also masks a sense of helplessness, which further fuels the rage.
The officer develops a heightened need to do things for himself, so as to regain
a feeling of some degree of control in his life and over the death situation. It
is very difficult for him to be immersed in brutal and often grotesque death at
work, and then suddenly be exposed to life and all of its vicissitudes
immediately upon arrival home. At home, the officer's sole focus must shift
rapidly from the darkest corners of human existence, to the mundane routines of
everyday life. He must relinquish his psychological armor that he dons daily to
confront and protect himself from the horror of violent death on the street. He
must instantly be able to relate in the usual way to the lives of those he
loves, but who cannot possibly understand- spouses, children, parents, and
civilian friends. (The latter are scarce for many law enforcement professionals
and their families, for that very reason.) All of these people demand his full
attention and his full appreciation of the events of their lives. These events
are of greatest importance and significance to them, but only of small or little
significance to him, compared to the events from which he has just returned.
Repeated exposure to “bad bodies” and “bad scenes” changes the officer's view
of life. What he sees as important and of priority may be radically different
from what his family considers important and of priority. Over due bills and
mechanical difficulties in the family car headline the “family news bulletin”
given the officer when he returns home from work. A supper grown cold, while the
family waits [again] for the officer to return home (when he has forgotten to
call, to say that he will be late), is an urgent event. A child's illness
constitutes a crisis of greatest significance to the family. However, after
immersion in a tragic death scene, the officer has different thoughts of
importance. He contemplates and ruminates about many issues of deep personal
significance- the sanctity and fragility of human life; the suddenness and
capriciousness of death; the ubiquitous opportunities for catastrophic injury
and death for family, friends, and self. He experiences great irritation at the
stupidity of things that otherwise intelligent people do to put themselves at
un-necessary risk. He feels the urgency to savor the “insignificant' things in
life. He desperately searches for “golden moments”, to help restore his rapidly
waning faith, confidence, and trust in his fellow man.
Suddenly, the police officer and the ones he loves are on two widely
divergent roads. If the officer and his family are far enough apart, and if his
family has not been educated and prepared as to what to expect and how to react,
a great schism can develop between them. If not addressed in time, even the
strongest personal, marital, and filial bonds can snap. The resulting failed
relationships and divorce are especially common among homicide detectives,
tactical and gang unit members, youth division and high risk patrol officers,
and members of dive, search and recovery, disaster, and dog teams. (Similar high
rates of failed relationships and marriages are also seen among other emergency
responders, members of the fire service, and medical death investigators.)
Police officers who handle human remains and/or personal effects directly and/or
on a regular basis are at even greater risk. Even officers frequently exposed to
human remains in a virtual way (by photographs or graphic written reports) are
also at risk.
References
This article is referenced only from my personal and professional
observations and experiences working with the men and women of law enforcement.
Copyright
Claudia L. Greene,
M.D. © 2001. The author assigns to SpiritoftheLaw.org a non-exclusive license to use this document for personal use and in courses of instruction
provided that the article is used in full and this copyright statement is
reproduced. The author also grants a non-exclusive license to SpiritoftheLaw.org
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without the express permission of the author.
