Officer Recruitment & Resiliency with Ben Haiman

In this episode, Katie Wrigley interviews Ben Haiman, the executive director for public safety and justice with the University of Virginia and former chief of staff for the Washington DC Metropolitan Police Department. They discuss the challenges of police recruitment and the importance of officer resiliency. 

Ben highlights the need for a shift in the recruitment process, focusing on critical thinking and a service mindset. He also emphasizes the importance of wellness programs and the need to address the stigma around seeking help. They discuss the impact of trauma on officers and the need for structural changes in the policing profession.

Takeaways:

• Police recruitment is facing challenges, with a decrease in qualified candidates and a smaller labor pool.
• The current recruitment process does not always select the most qualified candidates, but rather those who have not been eliminated.
• Officer resiliency is crucial in dealing with the high levels of stress and trauma in the policing profession.
• Wellness programs and support for mental health are essential for officers, but there is still a stigma around seeking help.
• Structural changes are needed in the policing profession to address recruitment and resiliency issues.

Resources:

• Master of Public Safety | UVA SCPS (virginia.edu)
• Training Descriptions - VALOR for Blue
• Metropolitan Police Employee Assistance Program (mpeap.com)
• Ben Haiman on LinkedIn
• Future Policing Institute
• The Catapult Effect Program for First Responders

Credit: Tom Giovingo, Intro & Outro, Random Voice Guy, Professional ‘Cat‘ Herder

Mixed & Managed: JohnRavenscraft.com

Disclaimer: Katie is not a medical professional and she is not qualified to diagnose any conditions. The advice and information she gives is based on her own experience and research. It does not take the place of medical advice. Always consult a medical professional first before you try anything new.

Transcript

Katie Wrigley (00:00.664)
Welcome back to the Catapult Effect podcast. Today I have with me is another fellow, part of the Future Policing Institute. I haven't talked about it too much on the show yet, but I'm definitely gonna drop a link in there. It is an amazing organization focused on future policing, named aptly, right? So I have with me Ben Haiman today. Am I saying that right, Ben? Okay, great. I should have checked with you before I dove in.

Ben Haiman (00:21.954)
You are.

Katie Wrigley (00:25.858)
Ben serves as the executive director for public safety and justice with the University of Virginia and most recently served as chief of staff for the Washington DC Metropolitan Police Department. That is no joke policing. Wow. His background has focused on policing operations, recruitment, education and technology. Welcome to the Catapult Effect podcast, Ben. I'm so excited to have this opportunity to talk with you like this.

Ben Haiman (00:49.486)
Katie, likewise, thank you so much for having me here today. Look forward to the conversation.

Katie Wrigley (00:54.114)
Me too. So Ben and I were talking ahead of time as far as what we wanted to focus on and we want to really bring to light the issues with police recruitment. So you may or may not have read a headline that I am going to say I'm not qualified to speak to what happened on a professional level there. But there was a woman in Illinois that was killed in July and it was a police involved shooting and there was a lot that went down there. Again, I'm not qualified to speak to it but

there are a lot of cops that are cringing over that because it was not handled the way that police officers should handle it. And this really led me to the two places we want to talk about today is police recruitment and how this is playing into offer resiliency. And so Ben is perfectly positioned to be an expert on this subject and be able to talk to them. So if you want to speak directly to what you saw within the Sonia Massey

Ben Haiman (01:40.924)
Katie Wrigley (01:46.688)
shooting Ben you're welcome to, but I just want to kind of open it up and say like what are some of problems we're seeing in recruitment these days with police officers?

Ben Haiman (01:55.198)
Absolutely, Katie. You know, and without being in actual investigating authority on that, you know, I'm only able to really speak to what I observe, which is what I think a lot of the public observed as well. You know, and the expectation from the public for law enforcement is very high and rightfully so. Police officers in our country have a tremendous amount of autonomy.

authority and ability to perform their duties, which can have pretty dire consequences depending what outcomes are kind of achieved. Obviously, I think that there's a lot of challenging circumstances that police officers face every single day. The unpredictable nature of policing. Today, in today's era, a lot of police officers, their news cycle that they get

is informed by their peer networks in the era of social media. They're seeing over and over again instances of police officers being the victims of assaults, know, various ambushes and so forth. And so that's part of the mindset that officers encounter in every situation that they go into. know, looking at that particular, you know, video at least from a

you know, my advantage, there were a lot of missed opportunities, opportunities to, you know, change the environmental context, opportunities for intervention and de -escalation, opportunities, you know, to really kind of change the dynamic of how law enforcement showed up in that particular scene. I think it's yet again a tragic, you know, kind of outcome, not only for

the family, the community, but the law enforcement profession overall. I am interested in the lessons that we learn from it and ways that we can, again, not repeat again and again encounters that law enforcement has with the.

Katie Wrigley (04:06.158)
Thank you.

being so gracious with your position on there and what you're able to deduce from that situation. And like I said, I'm not qualified to speak to it at all. what would you say some of the underlying factors are around recruitment that are playing into creating these tragic situations? Because these are the ones that we want to reduce, obviously. These are the situations that lead to mistrust with police, that lead to this anti -police sentiment that ultimately led to all the defunding of

that's really hurting all of us across the country now.

Ben Haiman (04:44.071)
Police recruitment has always been a challenge and in the last four or five years nationally, we've seen a huge increase in that challenge, in particular within major city environments. Small sheriff departments, in particular sheriff offices that are run by elected leaders, are not experiencing the same challenges as major cities are today.

But what I'm seeing and hearing as I work with departments all across the country is real challenges around finding sufficient qualified candidates. And let me break that down a little bit further. know, 10 years ago where you'd have, you know, 10, 15 applicants putting in for a few positions, now you're having a few positions and a few candidates putting in for those same roles.

That's not true everywhere. know, as I talked to police chiefs and executives around the country, there are still agencies that have a competitive hiring environment. But more often than not, what I'm hearing right now is that there's frankly more positions than interest. And that's in big cities and small alike, where we're simply, you know, the money, you know, while they're offering hiring bonuses, they're offering additional compensation and take -home vehicles and all these incentives they're layering on.

You know, they're really trying to recruit from a very limited pool. Now that comes from a few different aspects. One, the national labor pool is smaller than it has been. With that, the economy has rebounded in many ways, so people have options. While departments across the country have reduced educational standards, that necessarily hasn't achieved the outcome that a lot of places were hoping that it have. And so you're...

You're still finding shortages of qualified folks. you know, police hiring, you know, it's interesting. You think in most hiring environments in the corporate world, you try to identify the skill sets you need. You reach out to that kind of talent and you try to recruit them in to those positions. Police hiring is very different. Police hiring, and this is pretty consistent across the country, is done through a series of cuts. You start with people that express interest.

Ben Haiman (06:57.716)
and then you administer, let's say, a written examination. You cut a certain number of candidates, then you administer a physical ability test, and you cut a certain number of candidates, a background, a polygraph, a medical, a psychological. And let's say you started with a thousand candidates, and at the end you're left with ten people that have not been cut through any other part of the process. There's a false pretense there that those candidates that are left are the most qualified people.

They're not, they're just the ones that didn't get eliminated. and, and, and, know, hopefully they're the best qualified candidates, but they also might be the candidates that just simply haven't had theft issues, never used drugs, you know, didn't have any medical issues and so forth, but it might be totally an uninspiring, candidate for the policing profession. And so I think as police leaders, we also have to rethink the paradigm. And I'm not saying we should start hiring.

know, individuals with less than stellar backgrounds or who have, have been on the wrong side of the law. But what I'm saying is we have to think about how we intentionally recruit police officers into the profession and people that have a service mindset who understand that that moment, between guardian and warrior policing, it's a split second decision, right? If, if the situation calls for a warrior and you're coming in with the mindset of a guardian, that time to get yourself.

escalated to the appropriate level is just as much of a failure as the reverse of that, right? You come in at a point expecting a tumultuous situation, but it's really a false call. And the situation's down here. That time for a police officer to go up or down is really their success or failure. You know, we need in the policing profession, critical thinkers that have a service mindset that really not only care about the community,

but care about the upholding our constitutional protections. And this is a lot to ask someone for $50 ,000 a year, or $55 ,000 a year, or some West Coast departments closer to $80 or $90 ,000 a year. But this is a lot of different expectations to put on someone. And so just to pivot the conversation a little bit in this, but I've been studying through my doctoral work.

Ben Haiman (09:18.306)
different models of police education and looking at different mindsets that other countries apply to the policing profession. And U .S. I think is an outlier with some in terms of the path into the policing profession. You can take someone who's really not worked or worked very kind of basic entry -level jobs and in some places as few as nine weeks now has a badge and a gun and the authority to enforce.

you know, the laws in that jurisdiction. Policing is a profession that's gained through years and years and years of experience. And while there's a lot of ways that I think you can kind of shorten the experience, we're putting a tremendous amount of responsibility on individuals with very little kind of background education and training to do that work. So we keep seeing these tragedies occur nationally. And we keep commissioning, you know, critical reviews and considering.

But we have to really look at, know, fundamentally, how do we select the candidates into the profession? How do we prepare them to do that work? How do we supervise them once they were in? And how do we remove people from the profession proactively that were not fitting? And I'm touching on many different taboo subjects in law enforcement, but they're all really relevant for how we end up with tragedy after tragedy after tragedy across the profession.

Katie Wrigley (10:47.406)
Thank you for that. You had a lot of wisdom packed in there. As you were talking, you suddenly helped me draw a parallel to skydiving. So used to be a skydiver. That was the short story of how I was disabled. The longer story involved childhood trauma.

The first time you go out of the plane after ground school, you barely know enough not to die. And they send you with other instructors that are holding on to you. They don't let go until you pull your shoe. They make sure you pull your shoe. They radio you to the ground. They do everything they possibly can to make sure that you're okay. And you have no idea until you are further along in skydiving how little you knew and how dangerous that first jump really was. And it sounds like that's the same thing with policing is they get nine weeks, they're in the academy.

I know it's very rigorous training. One of my police officer friends here is one of the academy trainers out there and I know how rigorous it is for all of them, for the instructors, for the attendees going through, for everybody. But you're right, there's also that real world experience. You can't cover every single situation you're gonna come across in the course of your career in nine weeks. It's not possible.

Ben Haiman (11:56.878)
That's right.

Katie Wrigley (11:58.554)
And part of what you're talking about there is that having that nervous system at an appropriate level between the warrior or the guardian. And a lot of police officers, the other thing that's happening that's a part of these tragedies we keep seeing is that nervous system has decided that it is safer to stay in warrior mode all the time. And so there's, it feels safer.

Which makes the person feel less less stressed less less vulnerable. But what it's doing is it's wreaking havoc on the body. And it's going to have that officer blind to cases where they can be the guardian. In a lot of times. So it is possible I'm not making any excuses for anybody. But it is possible that the officers that were involved that night. Their nervous systems could not read the situation accurately.

Ben Haiman (12:37.314)
That's right.

Katie Wrigley (12:51.564)
for whatever reasons. It doesn't make it okay. But there can be physiological reasons that these things happen. And then this directly ties into resiliency. So how important do you think it has been once we get these officers in to quickly start to encourage some sort of wellness program? And we'll get into the stigma in a moment about that because I know there's still lot of resistance to that and feeling like if you're engaging in a wellness practice that there's something wrong with you.

Versus taking it as something proactive to counter the ridiculously high levels of stress that any police officer is going to encounter over the course of their career.

Ben Haiman (13:31.468)
Yeah, I mean, you just also touched on a ton of different topics that if we had five hours, I would love to dive into. But, you know, I mean, I think the reality from any police officers experience and this obviously depends on where people are from, the types of calls they experience, the frequency of calls they experience. But there can be life altering calls.

Katie Wrigley (13:35.555)
Yeah.

Ben Haiman (13:57.358)
any day in a police officer's career at any jurisdiction. And yeah, while some jurisdictions are nine weeks of training, others are 30 weeks, any of that is holistically inadequate to deal with some of the realities of what we ask our police officers to do for $50 ,000. And so the concepts around resiliency are so critical. There's recently a

course that I went through and I'll put a plug because it's a free course for any police officers in the country, but the Valor series from the Bureau of Justice Assistance, know, and some will be listening to this saying, you know, why would I want to take a federal government course? But this is offered to local law enforcement agencies all around the country. And it's designed for entry level officers, mid level and senior level leaders to really think about kind of that career.

inoculation to help think through paths of resiliency. You know, we have a lot of unspoken truths of our policing profession around officer suicide, high divorce rate, alcohol usage, obesity, early death. I mean, all of these different factors are just, it doesn't matter if I'm in South Dakota or Texas or here in Washington, D .C., there's commonality in policing culture. Similarly, when I travel outside the United States,

I find these cultures exist in other policing professions as well in other cultural contexts. So this is a challenge with kind of that level of trauma. The reality for police officers is building that resiliency. Yeah, some do stay at that kind of warrior mentality all the time. Others resign and lose the desire.

to do police work and instead, you know, want to take kind of assignments that keep them away from that, you know, the fundamentals of the profession. And I think that's where leadership comes to be, to recognize where people are, to help them through and process their journeys and to be able to be supportive that, you know, sometimes when people experience traumatic events on the job.

Ben Haiman (16:14.766)
it's going to take them a period of time to recover from that. And that's part of what the profession needs to do to support healthy police officers. We're not there yet as a profession. And I have not been to a department that I feel like has really gotten that 100 % right. But I'm very encouraged recently that more are talking about this, that more are willing to.

to at least open the door for officers to have a conversation where I think in hearing from the voices of past and policing, that hasn't been the case 50 years ago or 40 years ago, but it's certainly becoming more of a case. It also fits the generational profile coming in. Gen Z coming in, millennials that are currently the bulk of most law enforcement workforces just have different expectations about that. And I can speak at least.

from the metropolitan perspective, my perspective, mental health was talked about and encouraged. Dr. Beverly Anderson with the Metropolitan Police Employee Assistance Program, you know, is a resource to all of our officers and something where supervisors and officers don't hide from saying, hey, I'm going to see Doc, right? And so, you know, that's encouraging to me, but that certainly isn't the case in a lot of departments around the country.

Katie Wrigley (17:35.724)
Right. And that leads directly into that stigma there. it's something I was I was talking to one of my friends here whose mental health liaison for one of the local agencies. And she was talking about and actually a former client that did booked a series of sessions with me. She wanted to get in half the sessions. So she donated the rest of the sessions to police officers. I was more than willing to do that. And no one used to be that. You know, we're having a conversation. She's like, well, there's resilience.

or there's resistance to this within first responders. Like absolutely, it's not just first responders, there is resistance to being well. And it's something I've noticed within myself too. Like I know that I could do different things to feel better and I don't always do that. I'm like, why?

Ben Haiman (18:09.452)
you

Katie Wrigley (18:24.044)
You know, and there is a piece there, but one of the big things that we already know the why to within law enforcement is if you are in an agency that isn't as aware around mental health, there is a huge fear of having your badge taken away from you. You're told that you're no longer fit for duty or you're forced into early retirement because of a traumatic situation that you've had to deal with.

Ben Haiman (18:39.096)
Of course.

Ben Haiman (18:48.578)
Yeah, mean, Katie, you again hit on so many key themes there. So when, you know, if you think about the trajectory for a lot of officers and just things that happen in careers, you know, no one starts off their career and says, hopefully, you know, I want to have financial issues, marital issues, whatever else, right? Like they don't start their career that way. But the reality is, you know, the days off and the scheduling for most police officers is a rat.

Right? So, you know, you have a Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday night off. Let's say that's your usual weekly nights off. Well, that's great for social life, you know, because that's really when most people are, are convenient. No, it's not. Right? So, so you start kind of building, all right, so, you know, I'm going to go out on Tuesday night. Well, who am I going to hang out with on a Tuesday night that, that's their Saturday? Right? Other police officers. Right? So now your, your friend group, and and I see this often in law enforcement.

those connections to the outside world, they start to shrink, right? People, well, do I really want to explain that I just saw someone with a knife stuck out of them or that was doing this? Well, no, because it's going to be too hard for people to under explain. So it's so much easier if I'm just around other cops, right? So that friend group kind of narrows, right? Family connections start to change, right? And the things that bring positive association from any...

Many people, holidays, right? Well, you know, that for many police officers, they remember tragedies that they went to on that. Even driving around the community, and I have this driving around DC, I can think of horrific incidents that I've seen on many different street corners, right? People's lives that were ended or upended, you know, and those are kind of living memories that live with me, just the same way that it lives with a lot of different people, right? That builds to that. You know, if you don't have...

healthy and thoughtful ways to process these experiences, they cumulatively build. So if you look at that, that kind of trajectory that builds in many police officers, they, you know, they're working a lot of overtime, right? And that overtime is good. The money is great. They're able to now get into, you know, an economic kind of purchasing power they didn't have before they buy that house, they buy that boat, they bar whatever it was that was probably above their base means.

Ben Haiman (21:09.496)
that overtime dries up for whatever reason, maybe they get hurt or injured, maybe it's just no longer offered. Now those payments start coming in, right, and they are not able to afford those various things. Now they have debt issues that are stacking on that, right, and you start seeing the stress build. Coping mechanisms are very real in law enforcement and they're not often talked about, whether it's alcohol, gambling, sex addictions, any of those kind of components. Those are very real kind of coping mechanisms that come to play.

and any psychologist in the policing profession will talk about gambling. I know many police officers that use that as a coping mechanism and alcohol is an unwritten piece, right? In a lot of policing professions, it's often excused. Police officers who get DUIs, they'll get a minor suspension, continue at it. Why? Because it's just a part of the job. It shouldn't be, right? We have to change that paradigm, right? We have to have healthier ways.

to cope. A little bit of your introduction to the question guilt -tripped me about not going to the gym this morning. But maybe I'll get there this afternoon as motivation to this. But we know that for officers, being able to get healthy lifestyles, which includes eating right, that's a barrier challenge, right? I mean, in the middle of the night, having something that's comfortable and soothing to eat.

Katie Wrigley (22:12.492)
Ben Haiman (22:30.99)
a hamburger with some fries, that's a lot better than making a salad and bringing that with. Plus, you're in a car eating. So there's all these barriers, but there's ways that structurally we can think about policing differently. One of the barriers to recruitment and retention as well is for folks to have family balance, right? We should have the ability in the policing profession to have.

a part -time basis. So maybe for a period of two or three years you can drop from 40 hours a week to 20 hours a week. Maybe it's for birth of a child, maybe it's because you're pursuing education or whatever, but giving, know, rethinking some of the structural bases to how policing is done, you know, is just going to be a fundamental challenge for leaders in the next chapter of this book.

Katie Wrigley (23:18.006)
You know and the other piece about that isolation it's not only that wanting to connect with people who get it and Being able to speak freely and talk about these things like you came across someone with a knife sticking out of them today like Your family's gonna look at you with shock your friends are gonna be like But cops are gonna get it and the other piece of that is when you are experiencing a lot of trauma the the the tendency is to withdraw to isolate because People are no longer safe

So we lose a lot of prefrontal, we actually are prefrontal cortex, which is our executive reasoning center goes offline when we experience a traumatic event and it's not meant to come back online quickly. It takes a lot longer for the nervous system to down regulate than it does to spin up. And that's by design to make sure that we're safe. We have these other complexities as human beings that make us hold on to it, which is a whole other conversation, but just that piece in there, we start to isolate more and that isolation on its

own is so dangerous. Especially if you're starting to hang out with other officers who are just doing coping skills and aren't doing anything to balance that with a better diet. And no one is gonna want a salad when you're dealing with a lot of emotional crap. Myself included. Like that's where those I like to call them the very tasty edible food like substances come in. The highly addictive ones that are really bad for us that lead to a lot of other

diseases later in life those actually give our brain a little bit of peace in those moments. But that doesn't mean that we can't balance it and okay maybe on days off we do have a salad because things are a little better and even if it's not what we really want we figure out a way to have a salad like one of the ways I eased in is I put taco meat in it and then it was delicious and I've got my protein and I've got my my healthy greens but it's again

The other piece in there that comes in is when you're dealing with all these things, you start to look at and notice what you haven't been able to do. And we start to focus more on the shortcomings versus all the wins that we've accumulated over these years, over these calls, all the people we've been able to help. The brain isn't going to call those to mind as quickly as it is, all the failures, all the screech corners like you talked about Ben, where someone's life ended or was upended.

Ben Haiman (25:39.82)
That's right.

Katie Wrigley (25:45.73)
That's going to be what your mind remembers. as that builds up, shame builds up more and more. And shame makes us quiet. And that is the most dangerous emotion because that is directly leading to that suicide rate that we need to change.

Ben Haiman (25:48.216)
That's right.

Ben Haiman (25:59.32)
That's right. You know, and it's interesting in the Valor program, and I swear I'm not just trying to plug it, but I do think it's really beneficial for a lot of officers. You know, they talk about the path for suicide and policing, and not everyone follows the same trajectory, but everyone who ended up at that end -life decision, you know, had a lot of the indicators along the way. And they give a very interesting visual of what that is.

And you see the cycles, but you also see the opportunity to disrupt those cycles. And you see the opportunity for those that care about those that are in law enforcement to disrupt those cycles, right? You see, I saw the opportunity for police leaders to rethink their approaches, to rethink that their strategies and their role to be benefiting their officers' wellness and future health, right? Exposing them to opportunities, allowing them to connect.

more broadly outside the profession, challenging them and pushing them to have part -time jobs, to have things that are not just policing in their life, and to spend time with family. I think effective leaders in that space do those things and demonstrate balance at a personal level. And ineffective leaders are quite the opposite, where they role model all the worst kind of behaviors that are in existence there. And I think

As we look forward in the policing profession, there's going to be a lot of challenges, not only to get more people willing to serve in these capacities, but we also have to fundamentally think about the structures of how this is being done. You I draw a lot of my inspiration from my travel, and I've had the fortune to see many different departments in many different contexts, from departments where you spend four years studying to hybrids of work and study to come on the job.

You know, to agencies that really think about policing differently, recently I was in the Netherlands and in Spain, both of which the retirement age for officers is considerably higher than here in the US. Most officers serve 40, almost 50 years before they retire, and that's just standard until they get to, you know, to age of pension. But, you know, in that, what their service looks like is different. I was so impressed with the national police in Spain.

Ben Haiman (28:20.994)
just around public sentiment, you and you could feel the pride of being a police officer, municipal, you know, public servant. You could feel it from everyone you talked to and it was genuine. You could also feel that from the public and the support that they shared to their law enforcement. And that leads, I think, to a lot of the psyche, you know, in a lot of American policing, it's mystified in movies, right? And the reality on the street of what the experience is.

It's not only challenging in the dynamics that officers encounter every day, but even the systems that they deal with are not designed to work for them, right? They're in some jurisdictions, they're arresting people over and over again, the same people, right? And I hear stories and see stories of, know, officers who arrest someone for a violent felony, the person is then released, commits another violent felony, right? And that also weighs on the officer, because they're told that they're here to keep the community safe.

and they realize that they're not able to do that in the way that their profession allows them to do that. I think, you know, holistically, you know, and this is going to be a difficult conversation for many communities because we have 18 ,000, well, we don't actually know how many law enforcement agencies, around 18 ,000 law enforcement agencies in our country, and they're all attacking this differently. There's different challenges in each of those communities, and that's part of what makes the American, you know, fabric so unique around this.

But it also leads to the challenges where any bad action from any law enforcement officer in any of those agencies, even if the standards are wildly different, affects all of them. And, you know, as I think, as we think about this, you know, increasing the baseline, the national of, know, what officer resiliency looks like, access to resources and so forth. You know, it can't be just, you know, for one agency here, one agency there. You know, we have to think about

Katie Wrigley (30:01.174)
I hope so.

Ben Haiman (30:15.026)
of that because an action that happens in Minneapolis affects every police officer in the country and similarly you know we all dread you know that that national news story you know if the officer was in wrong we all dread it because it has an impact on every officer's service.

Katie Wrigley (30:33.87)
Absolutely and the impact of those negative events is way way way stronger than the impact of positive ones like we like we already talked about

gosh, we could probably talk for hours. Because I was thinking like, as you were saying that, was thinking about an officer that I currently work with who's in another country in Europe. And I don't want to list the country because I want to keep him as anonymous as possible. They do not have a stigma around wellness in that country. And he realized he was really like, really feeling high levels of stress. And so he's taken some leave that he is 100 %

allowed to take there was no stigma about it. There's no like there's no secrecy of like officer so and so had like there's no shame in it whatsoever. I was like, my gosh, we need that in the US so bad. This this support of each other and hey, like I just need to step back for a little bit. Let my nervous system calm down and get regulated again and then come back into the job again as a better person and

Ben Haiman (31:14.946)
Yep. Yep.

Ben Haiman (31:21.688)
Yeah.

Katie Wrigley (31:40.6)
There are so many pieces we need to fix within this and that's a lot of what we talk about with future policing as well. To get to that level of pride, the system has to be fixed because that's part of it is the system is broken. So even if a police officer does everything that they're supposed to do, it does not mean that they have saved the day. They can do everything by the book and the system can still fail and it does all the time.

I know people this has personally happened to on the police side and on the civilian side of where the system has failed. And that's part of the angst that's part of the pressure.

Ben Haiman (32:24.557)
Thank

Katie Wrigley (32:25.548)
doing out there by protecting the public.

Ben Haiman (32:28.462)
Absolutely. mean, Katie, it's so true where, you know, the experience from individual officers, and I think that's what you see, you know, the optimism. you I had the pleasure of speaking to every graduating recruit class, you know, for many years, right? You see the optimism, the hope, and the excitement, right?

You know, with Georgetown University, we built a program called the Police for Tomorrow program and working with new officers just that saw opportunity and a way for the profession. then kind of watching over time as that optimism, you know, changed to reality. And then, you know, at least through my experience, you know, really tumultuous years from riots in 2020 to, the insurrection January 6th to trucker protests, to all of those things.

that unfolded, know, officers become very hardened to the world around them. Rightfully so because they've been through a tremendous amount, you know, watching, you know, their profession be politicized nationally, you know, their experience, you know, and what happened to them be doubted or, you know, are essentially relabeled that, you know, you weren't actually attacked, fire extinguishers weren't actually thrown at you, you never were hit with that.

you know, for then officers to come in, put in the same uniform to deal with, you know, the same traumas over and over again. And while those are kind of DC examples, those examples exist in every city, every jurisdiction across the country, right? You know, and so, yeah, I think we have to fundamentally think about this differently. You know, part of the challenge, frankly, in U .S. policing is legacy of leadership.

You you have in most major cities the expectancy of the chief is two to three years. It was a little bit higher. Now that's kind of the rolling average. And, you know, again, that's not a lot of time to actually shift and stabilize, you know, the things we're talking about. Some places they have a much stronger legacy, you know, and that's helpful. But if we really want to be committed to some of these systematic kind of changes, first of all,

Ben Haiman (34:39.854)
You know, I think you have to pay police officers a salary that attracts it consistent with other pieces. I think you have to reward education. You know, I don't believe that you need higher education to be a police officer. I don't. You know, that's one of the criticisms I always get is, well, you know, people need, no. I mean, I think you can, it is a job about communication. And if you're an effective communicator, whether you have education or not, do I think continued education helps you be more effective? I do.

Right? And I think, you know, every officer should strive to continue learning, whether that's through formal education, training, you know, connections to other community organizations. You have to have that spirit to continue to better yourself. Right? Because that gives you the drive, you know, and I can tell you from my personal experience, like, yeah, you know, some of the times you're making an arrest, you're like, yeah, this is not going to go anywhere in the system. But this is my part in the puzzle and my job isn't to change the system.

role. My job is to do this effectively, to leave people in the best outcome that I can for this interaction, which is the scope of my responsibility. In time, as people rise through ranks of organizations, they can have better and more impactful change. But similarly, I think we have an obligation as a policing profession to unveil that curtain a little bit more. We've been a very closed profession for a long period of time. We have to be more committed to transparency, and part of that means

getting input from those that are outside. know, I'm not talking about just experts who are self -claimed experts overnight, but truly experts, you know, in the mental health space, in the resiliency space, that can help put in place programs within agencies working with police leadership to be more effective in outcome. And I could change that to any area of policing, but to get outside expertise to work. And what I saw in 2020 play out in a lot of parts of the country,

all of sudden there was this expert industry that came to be to say, here's what policing should do. And police did what they usually do and put up the guardrails to say, okay, well, we'll listen, we'll listen. But then not much changed, right? We need to be fundamentally committed to continuing to innovate and move the profession forward. And that comes with some critical costs. It comes to acknowledging things that we're doing that we need to change. It comes to being open to saying,

Ben Haiman (37:03.618)
I'm going to commit some of that bandwidth that I don't have to that process of innovation. And that's challenging to a lot of policing. But I think if we really want to retain the generation coming into policing, if we really want to produce better outcomes, if we want to have officers that have critical thought and capacity, then all of this comes to fundamentally rethinking some of the basic principles of policing today.

Katie Wrigley (37:34.67)
That was such a great way to start to wrap up. was gonna actually ask for an action item, but you just gave a few of them in there, so that was perfect, Ben. Thank you so much. I'm gonna make sure that we have a link to the Valor series in there because that's really important and I've read about them. They're an amazing organization. Please check them out. And I wanna leave you with the idea that there is no stigma. You have no shame.

in needing help for wellness. Like I was never an officer and I needed a shit ton of help to get my head on right. And initially yeah, there was shame around that. Now there isn't. Now I fully own that because I understand just how many people were in and are in the same boat that I was in when I needed to have my head put on straight again. There is no shame in it. Life is gonna screw you up.

And as a police officer, that's going to happen and fast forward because you are dealing with the worst that we have to deal with as humans day in and day out. And this is exactly why I have so much respect for police officers, for all first responders, because you guys are out there doing this stuff I'm not built to do. Please.

Ben Haiman (38:41.038)
Okay, if I can chime in just and say, you know, one of the things where I see hope and optimism is where I sit in a roll call, whether, you know, in any agency and you have a sergeant or a lieutenant that starts the roll call and says, hey, if you need help, remember this resource is out there. And I've heard that more in the last five years than I ever heard where you have officials that are actually making reference to it say, go on duty, whatever, or even just saying,

I went, right? And that kind of ability for leaders to open up and that it opens a new door in this conversation. know, no one wants to see names added to the wall, you know, and in particular, you know, names added to a wall for suicide, which is now, you know, nationally recognized. That is something that we as law enforcement professionals can do.

whether it's to help our friends, whether it's to help other colleagues, or just to make the profession better, but to talk about wellness resiliency, to tack some of the underpinnings of culture. And I certainly invite anyone who's listening to this who cares about the issues as well to connect. I know a lot of the leaders at the University of Virginia that we're working with, both on education programs and more broadly at the school and center.

know carol about this will be happy to connect for agencies that are thinking about these issues

Katie Wrigley (40:07.614)
Absolutely and just to chime in as well is I've also created a program with that in mind of so it's a five -week program for officers for wellness I've been able to offer it at a very low price to make it affordable and it actually helps you work through a lot of the things that Ben and I talked about so we're gonna put those resources in the show notes please make sure to check them out if you are an officer who is struggling right now

sure where to look. There are so many resources out there. There is no shame in going for it. Especially if you are listening. If your chief is telling you in the morning, I've done this. Or reminding you where those resources are. You are in a safe organization. Let them know that you need some help and go find help. And if you aren't comfortable to let them know, then go find help on your own. You can keep it private. You can keep it confidential. Just do something to help build up your wellness. Build up your mental resiliency to counter

what you're dealing with on a daily basis with your job.

Ben Haiman (41:05.762)
Katie, thank you so much.

Katie Wrigley (41:07.586)
Thank you, Ben, I appreciate you for coming on and spending your time with us today. And thank you also, audience. I know you have a lot that you can listen to out there and I really appreciate you taking your valuable time and spending it with us. I will be back again next week with another episode and until then, please be well.