Stress In Law Enforcement

Police officer’s that serve and protect the community are challenged on a daily basis when it comes to using the correct amount of force during an arrest or detention of a person. These officers are critiqued and questioned regularly when they use force, whether it is deadly force or less lethal force. Police officers are put in positions where they have to use the amount of force to control the situation and they do so by following a guideline such as the Force Continuum or other policies and procedures the department has set in place. Regardless of the amount of force an officer uses they are put through extensive training to learn how to handle certain situations. The lack of training or rehearsing scenarios can cause a situation to

Being in Law Enforcement is a 24/7/365 lifestyle that not only affects the officer by never being able to put down his guard (except maybe for when they are at home), but their family as well. It affects everything from missed holidays, anniversaries to birthday celebrations and can even affect the simplest thing as holding hands with your significant other in public (that gun hand has to stay empty at all times). An officer continuously checks his surroundings for danger, which affects where you can sit in a restaurant, where you park your car, how you dress, and where you shop. What most people do not understand is “the job” affects every single second of a police officer’s and their family’s life. They have to plan everything around

Police brutality is becoming a continuing problem in the United States, which needs to be solved. The police academies need to teach their candidates better methods on addressing stressful situations. There are many cases where the police have gone too far with the civilians. For example, Of all 1,575 officers involved in reported excessive force complaints, 897 (56.9%) were involved in cases of physical use of force complaints which include fist strikes, throws, chokeholds, baton strikes, and other physical attacks(Packman,1). These numbers need to change.

Stress is a broad disease that can cause a lot of harm to the human body, leading to depression, suicidal thoughts, sleep deprivation, substance abuse, obesity, heart disease, and many other things. One big problem in police departments is how often they are exposed to so many emotionally damaging situations: “They ride an emotional and biochemical roller coaster. They experience moments of intense action and alertness, followed by emotional crashes marked by exhaustion, and isolation. They become hypervigilant. Surrounded by crime all day, some come to perceive that society is more threatening than it really is (“The Cop Mind”). This rollercoaster of emotions can tear somebody apart, and unfortunately, in most officers’ cases, it

Various qualitative research methods were examined to indentify which approach would best meet the aims and objectives of this study including phenomenology, case study, grounded theory and ethnography.

Police subculture, personality, and stress play a huge role in police officers everyday lives. Putting their safety at constant risk in order to protect and serve can cause high levels of stress. However, stress doesn’t always come from the danger posing in the streets. It can also come within the police department subculture. Officers are expected to conduct themselves and have certain characteristics. They are held to a high standard where they must conduct themselves with honor, loyalty, and secrecy. Loyalty to the department and their fellow officers, can lead to officers covering for one another, also known as “The Blue Wall Of Silence”. The police departments have adopted these characteristic and culture to normalcy.

Eyewitnesses that witness a crime, especially violent crime, commonly experience stress. Stress is a negative emotional state that causes both physiological changes and cognitive changes. High stress causes increased arousal, increase in heart rate, blood pressure and muscle tone. A person feels stress when encountering a threat and that causes high anxiety. High levels of stress can leads to holes in memory of eyewitnesses when asked to recall details such the persons involved. (Aharonian & Brian)

A career in law enforcement is a rewarding one, yet it can also be extremely mentally and physically

Throughout the past decades, every time you turn on CNN or your local news channel, they’re talking about shootings involving police. Police use of deadly force is the amount of force that could cause injury or bodily harm to a person. Police use of deadly force is a controversial topic that has been towering over the news stations and radios lately with different shooting insistences. Many concerns have been brought up as to why this topic is controversial and problematic. In result, many court cases have addressed this issue.

There is definitely more stress, both good and bad, in the criminal justice field than most other fields. The good stress is the excitement of catching criminals and helping the public, which is like the good stress of scoring a touchdown in football or hitting a homerun in baseball. The bad stress come from things that those in other fields do not see such as “exposure to murders, numerous car accidents, seeing hurt kids, and other types of secondhand trauma” (Herships, 2015, par. 2). On the job bad stress also comes from the tough administrative policies and procedures that accompany the criminal justice field (Cronkhite, 2013). These stresses can lead to suicide if not kept under control as police officers have a higher suicide

While police officers are faced with many challenging, and threatening circumstances every day, they have the more

Working in Law enforcement is not like any other job out there. Now some people can argue with that and say well what about the military? They learn similar things but they don’t protect people back home. That’s what sets law enforcement apart. They are required to do more interacting with people in the community. Law enforcement officers deserve more when it comes to the job they do, bad police officers are bad representation of police in general, and Americas violence problem i9s not getting better it is actually getting worse.

In today's society the police and other law enforcement agencies that are employed to protect and serve the people of the United States are constantly under fire for their lack of training as well as lack of empathy towards the general public. The media today only seem to care about ratings and public servants doing the opposite of their job description. However the reasons behind their behavior is never rationalized through the most obvious scope. Yes officers in law enforcement encounter different type of people, situations and neighborhoods. These variables are not all the same, however they are similar in outcome. The purpose of this paper is to provide an explanation of why the police behave the way they do.

The term Research Methodology refers to a set of procedures, methods & techniques that are put together by the researchers to obtain a solution to the problems they confront during the collection of data. The researchers look for the most crucial data which is inevitable for the research. Generally there are three kinds of approaches or research methods namely Qualitative, Quantitative and Mixed. These methods are used to gather data and resolve issues that emerge during the process of data gathering. The researcher can bring forward his findings either in the form of quantitative or qualitative or mixed research methodologies only when the data is collected based on the preliminary data gathering process and the secondary data gathering process.