I came across something that really hit me this

morning and I thought it might be kind of a good frame for this episode.

This is a special episode of Heroes Behind the Badge, and here's the

story that I came across this morning that kind of got to me.

It's 2:00 AM a patrol car rolls quietly through the dark city streets.

The officer answers a dispatch for what should be the last call of

his shift, a routine end to another routine night serving the community.

And you know that community may never, ever know his or her name.

He jokes with a coworker, files his last report.

He grabs his coffee, he masks the exhaustion and the pain behind

a practiced smile to his team.

He seems steady, maybe even invincible, but when the locker closes and the

badge comes off, the weight of unspoken burdens finally settles in by sunrise.

Another family is changed forever, blindsided by a tragedy that no

one saw coming, and the thin blue line grows thinner and thinner in

a way the headlines rarely mention.

Every year, this scenario is heartbreakingly real for more law

enforcement families than those touched by the line-of-duty deaths.

That

struck me, guys.

That struck me — and today is a special episode of Heroes Behind the Badge.

We have not one, but two subject matter expert guests.

I know usually here we talk about the badge, we talk about the

uniform, we talk about our heroes.

But you know what?

We never forget our heroes.

But now imagine those silent battles.

Are happening right now behind closed doors.

The sirens are off.

The station grows quiet every single year.

Believe this or not, I found it hard to believe I did the homework on this.

More law enforcement officers die by suicide than from every other

line-of-duty incident combined.

Gunfire, car crashes, assaults.

This isn't just a number, guys.

It's a cascade.

A cascade of heartbreak for families, partners blindsided, entire departments

grieving a loss they never saw coming.

Yeah, this is a hard topic to talk about.

In fact, sometimes, you know, I've never been a sworn law enforcement

officer, but I have been around law enforcement my whole life.

I have a daughter who is a lieutenant in law enforcement and, I know

this is a hard topic to talk about.

In fact, it's been a taboo topic.

A taboo topic for many, many years.

But you know what?

It can't be a taboo topic anymore.

Okay?

184 officers take their lives on average every year, which is more

than all the officers call the, killed in line-of-duty fatalities.

So, uh, not to, I, I, I want to set the tone and the reason we're doing

this show, one of the key core beliefs.

Of Citizens Behind the Badge that sponsors this podcast is that we have to

stop being silent about something that needs to be talked about in the open.

And we have made a decision as a board to put this issue forefront,

to put it front and center.

And today we are blessed with two subject matter experts on these topics today.

Two guests instead of one.

We haven't done that before.

Uh, one new guest and one returning guest.

Uh, our new guest is Dave Howe.

He's a retired army lieutenant Colonel today.

He's representing the comfort, peace and Freedom Foundation supporting

America's heroes and beside.

Dave Howe, we have our own David Berez.

David is a returning guest, a valued member of our law enforcement advisory

council for Citizens Behind the Badge.

He is the author of the book, A Resilient Life, A Cops

Journey, and Pursuit of Purpose.

Uh, we talked about David.

We had David as a guest months ago.

If you haven't got the book yet.

Get it.

Okay.

I got multiple copies.

I passed them to all my law enforcement friends here in the Florida area.

It is a great read.

It is a must read for the times that we're in right now.

It is a must read.

David also is a frequent op-ed contributor to our Citizens Behind

the Badge, uh, blogs and posts.

Uh, I am delighted to have the David's.

Here today.

and there, uh, David, of course, David Berez is a subject matter

expert in positive psychology.

Uh, I don't wanna take any of their thunder because they are the experts

and we're just gonna be asking, hopefully some intelligent questions.

But, let me start with Dave Howe.

I mean, we had a great discussion off, uh, line yesterday, Dave, and

I ask you point blank, I think, why do we need to talk about this?

This is not a comfortable subject.

It's not a subject that maybe we'd like to be talking about, but why the hell do

we need to be talking about this, Dave?

your description of that horrible night and how that impacted

the family, is, is certainly a great place to start the conversation

and to answer your question.

Clearly, uh, the program that I'm going to, uh, introduce, and by the way, thank

you for giving me this opportunity to present this new tool that's available

to the law enforcement community to not just address the suicide issue

that you described in the opening, but it's actually something that all

people, not just in law enforcement can benefit from, and that is to create a

written plan, to have a joyful life.

And so.

That kind of program, that is a new tool to put in our toolbox to help deal with

the stresses of the job, which then is a contributing factor to the suicide, sure.

Uh, crisis that's facing law enforcement today.

And it, unfortunately, it's getting worse.

So this is a great, forum to share, a way to help bend that horrible statistic

into a favorable, uh, direction.

Absolutely.

David Berez.

I know, you are, the book documents how you feel about this whole topic.

You documented it well on our podcast.

I think I got the number right.

Law enforcement, officers are 54% more likely to commit suicide

than the average population.

Did I get that right?

That is absolutely correct, and I think when we have

these conversations, it's really important to set the stage and set the

tone for, why this is so important.

And so, yes, you hit on a lot of those numbers already.

In, you're in, you're opening your intro.

And again, thank you for having me back.

Thank you for letting me be part of this community, uh, the community

that you guys have built, uh, for.

Bringing, light on the issues in law enforcement, specifically, this one

that means so much to me, uh, of, uh, self-harm and self-destructive

behaviors and ultimately suicide.

So I'm grateful to share that platform with you.

But yeah, three times, 3.8 times more likely to die by suicide

than killed in the line-of-duty.

You mentioned that.

Wow, 54% more likely to die by suicide than the general public.

These numbers are are staggering.

Uh, one thing that's been interesting too, actually two points have been

interesting for me of recent is police.

O the average person lives in about 85 years, is what the statistics say.

30 years beyond the age of 50 is actually have the scientists break that down.

Police officers are 7.8 years expected lifespan beyond the age of 50.

Huh?

So those of us here have surpassed those odds, which is awesome.

I'm not quite there yet.

Uh, I've got seven.

Well, we're trying, I've got 7.2 years to go according to those numbers.

But the, um, but yeah, it, it's, incredible to think the amount of stress

that this job puts on our bodies and our minds, that these are the numbers.

With programs like that, that Dave is gonna be talking about and programs

that I've been involved with and, and I have on my own, there is mitigating

factors that can extend that lifespan, that can take us out of that rut,

that can do all of these things.

So yeah, let's, push these ideas forward.

Absolutely.

I know, uh, the Daves have had a chance to talk, uh, before this podcast, right?

The two of you.

And, uh, I'd love to hear, and I, I know, uh, my colleagues Bill Erfurth.

Morning, sir. And Craig Floyd, our fearless leader, our

president, of Citizens Behind the Badge, founder and president.

I know they're gonna have a lot of questions.

I would love to hear myself what you guys talked about when you spoke

and what the synergies are that you see between what Dave Howe is

doing and what Dave Berez is doing.

Okay, let me, uh, let me throw it to our, our fearless leader, Craig Floyd

and, uh, uh, guide us from here, sir.

Well, my first question really is, uh, to David Berez, and that

is, 40 years ago, uh, when I started the National Law Enforcement Officers

Memorial Fund, the only discussion anybody was having regarding police

suicide was our criteria for when a name goes on the National Memorial.

And it very clearly stated as the Department of Justice had

already clearly established that.

Officers who died by suicide would not be eligible, uh, to

have their names on the memorial.

Their families would not get death benefits from the federal government as

those that die in the line-of-duty would.

Today, it seems like every organization, everywhere you go, people are

talking about how we can bolster the mental health of officers.

and I'm, I'm incredibly proud and pleased that we've been a part of that discussion

and that we've gotten to this point.

But I'd like you to just maybe, uh, briefly talk about what it was like when

you entered your law enforcement career.

And what it's like today.

I mean, you're a master resiliency trainer.

you, you've got all these great ideas about how officers can, uh,

deal with the stress of the job.

But you wrote in your book very courageously by the way

that you had suicidal thoughts, uh, at the end of your career.

And I'm just, uh, interested in, the evolution, uh, the beginning and what

it's like today as we deal with the issue of mental health and police suicide.

So I think, so I started in 1999, my career.

And back then, just like you mentioned, mental health and suicide was not even

part of the conversation, not in a good or bad way, it just wasn't there at all.

so the, i, if you were struggling, if you were having a bad day, the

response was tighten your bootstraps, pull your belt up a little bit, uh,

straighten up your uniform, keep moving forward, you'll be fine.

I don't know that we had the right data and the right science

back then to understand what was actually happening in our brains.

So in the year 2000, which is the year that I, at, the year after I started

in policing, Dr. Marty Seligman started the idea of positive psychology.

So as that science has moved forward in the last 25 years,

or almost 26 years, the.

Understanding of how our brains change after its exposure to

trauma has really been realized.

And I don't know that we knew that before and we're not talking about that long ago.

This science is not that old.

So today, now understanding that, I think we're looking at

it differently and, and for good reason and with good a good results.

We've lowered a lot of those rates over the years.

We're lowering the barriers to getting the support and the help,

which by the way is much stronger of an issue than stigma itself.

Stigma used to be the problem.

Stigma used to be the issue.

Years ago if you asked for help, they just took your bag and gun and you were gone.

But now we're not seeing stigma.

It's still there, but it's not as much of the problem.

The access to the care is the problem.

And we're finding ways to, to break down those barriers as well.

So I, I think now that we're talking about it, now that it's more prominent

and we have the tools to address it, it's becoming more acceptable

because we can do something about it.

And you're not just crazy.

So you have a medical problem.

Same thing if you break your leg.

If you break your leg on the job, we're not throwing you to the wolves

and telling you to take a hike.

can't do that with a broken leg anyway.

But the um.

If we have a mental problem or an emotional problem as a result

of the job, it's an injury.

That's why we've gone from post-traumatic stress disorder

to post-traumatic stress injury.

'cause that's exactly what it is.

And I, at some point, if you want me to, you can get deeper into the neuroscience

of why we've made that change.

But the change is legitimate and I think we need to address it as an injury and

not as a disorder, 'cause it can be fixed.

And Dave Howe.

Okay, so David Berez is starting his police career, and he's got

a lot of stress ahead of him.

Obviously he is dealt with a lot of traumatic events.

I think the, number is what roughly 400 to 600 traumatic events are experienced

by a police officer in their career, the average citizen, maybe two or three

traumatic events in their lifetime.

So right away we see that the stress of the job is tremendous.

So Dave Howe, tell me about this life plan that you'd like to see officers engage in.

What, what are the components and what would you like officers to do

at the beginning, middle, and end of their careers to better adjust to that

stress and those traumatic events?

Yeah, the, the life planning program is really for everybody.

It's not just for law enforcement or in my case, uh, I got into this to try and bring

it to the military community that is also suffering from serious, uh, mental health

and, and, uh, horrible suicide stats.

In fact, 22 members of the military community kill themselves every day.

So that's over 8,000 a year and 200,000 since the War on Terror began.

So,

The program was never designed to be a mental health program or to, you know,

reverse the, terrible trend in suicides.

That just happens to be another way that the program can be very beneficial.

So, directly to your question, if you get people on a joyful path through

life early, well then they're never gonna come to the fork in the road.

That puts them into danger that David has.

Uh, so, uh.

detailed, uh, in his book, for example.

So, by having a program that focuses on just how are you gonna optimize your

life, and it's a very simple program in that it starts with, you envision

what that future is gonna look like.

And I have people begin by looking at the end of their lives and having them

document, what do you wanna be known for?

What do you want your obituary to say?

What do you want your friends and family at your funeral to say?

And then you start backward planning from the things that you wanna

achieve in your life to make sure that you accomplish those things

in the course of your journey.

And by putting the negative stressors that you've, you've so, brilliantly,

described today, you use that negative energy, flip it into positive energy.

Put that energy into creating and sticking with and achieving the goals of the plan,

designed to get you to having a absolutely wonderful, uh, experience throughout

your entire, uh, time on this earth.

David, that, that ties in nicely and is very consistent

with what you've always said on this podcast and, and privately.

And that is instead of focusing on all the, the negative, uh, aspects

of your life, uh, whether it be stressful, uh, day on the job as a

police officer, or whatever it might be, focus on what you're grateful for.

Gratitude is such an important part of the resiliency program that, that you espouse.

touch on that a little bit if you would.

Yeah, absolutely.

So looking through the lens of positive psychology, we need, we, can build

our lives from a strengths-based perspective on what is good, how do we

build from a solid foundation beyond just ameliorating our problems from a

psychological perspective, which is I think what Dave is talking about as well.

We don't just need to focus on what our problems are and how do we solve those?

Because when we solve them, what do we do?

So using things like gratitude and seeing the good parts of our

lives, we can build on those.

That foundation that, you know, Barbara, Dr. Barbara Frederickson talks

about her broaden and build model.

If we build a solid foundation, a wide solid foundation, we can

build up from that and use our strengths to keep moving forward.

I often like to describe it as growing grass.

To be honest with you.

We can pull weeds all day long, but we're just leaving space

for we for more weeds to grow.

It doesn't do anything for the grass when we pull our weeds, but if we

fertilize and strengthen our grass, the weeds themselves will naturally die out.

Those weeds are a metaphor for our problems and the things

that are ill being in our lives.

So if we strengthen and grow that grass.

We don't get more weeds, we get more grass and strong grass.

So gratitude is certainly one of those ways that we can do that.

When we focus on the things that are good for us, we'll see more.

Good.

I equate that often to like if you're driving down the highway, when was

the last time you saw a purple truck?

They don't really, there's not a lot of them out there.

But if you think to yourself for the next 30 seconds about purple trucks,

guess what you're gonna see the next time you drive down the highway.

A purple truck and gratitude is the same thing.

If we focus on all the good things in our lives and not just the good

things that people are doing for us and our contributions to others,

the more we give to others, the better we feel about ourselves, the

more good we're going to do, the more good we're gonna feel and see.

So gratitude is a great way to, to build those strengths.

Could I interject and, and ask Biller for us to get involved here?

Uh, those of you who are frequent, flyers on our podcast, you know that Bill Erfurth

is a 26 year veteran of the Miami-Dade Police Department now Sheriff's office,

but it was police department back then.

He retired as a lieutenant, highly decorated and ran one of the,

uh, top units, the TNT Unit for years inside of, uh, Miami-Dade.

I want you to reflect Billy Boy on what.

The David's both said, okay, that Dave Howe is talking about

starting when you begin as a cop on this positive life thing.

And of course we all know David Ez, positive psychology.

We know what he's all about.

What would you be thinking as a new 21-year-old Metro dad cop?

If that was part of the curriculum?

yeah, I, I think what you guys are talking about,

and first and foremost is, is how is this going to be implemented?

Because what goes on, on the job day in and day out, it's.

Pretty difficult to change what you are going to see and what

you're going to experience.

You hear a lot of cops say, you know, after 25, after 30 years, I'll never be

able to unsee the mayhem that I've seen.

And you know, you carry that.

Forever.

I, can honestly say, so you're asking me at 21 years old?

I can remember when I was 21 and 22 years old, and I can vividly see it right now of

this tiny little 6-year-old girl that was.

Hit by a a, a hit and run driver.

Her arms and her legs were twisted and contorted in every quick,

crazy way that you could see.

She's laying on her back in the middle of the street, her big brown eyes, wide open.

Never blinked.

Never blinked once as I was kneeling over her.

I can still see that today and I'm sitting there as a young cop thinking.

Holy shit, what do I do for this kid?

I don't know what the fuck I'm doing here.

You know?

And I'm getting on the radio like several times.

I'm getting on the radio.

What's the ETA on rescue?

What's the ETA on rescue?

Because you're not trained for that.

I mean, yeah, you can do a little simple first aid and stuff, but you

know, I still see that today and that was how many years ago now?

Does that haunt me?

No, not, not really have I ever lost any sleep.

You know, you hear cops talk about, you know, they, they, they

have insomnia, they can't sleep.

They have nightmares.

I don't know.

I never had that, honestly.

You know why that is?

Perhaps it's your upbringing.

It's the way that you're raised.

But, you know, we'll get into this more of this imple implement

implementation of, of these programs with the, with both Dave's here.

but what if, but you know, what if those programs had been available

to you at 21, the program that Dave Howe has and the program that Dave Breez had,

how would you have responded to that?

Would you have said, are you, this is all fluffy, this is all bs.

I don't need this.

I, I don't, I'm just asking your, your opinion.

Yeah.

You know, my opinion and honestly, yeah, you'd be like.

Screw that, you know, because back then though, I think that, like what David

would say, and you know, the mentality has changed now and, and it's not

quite as taboo, but it's also, you've gotta understand the police culture.

The police culture, just like the military culture where, where Dave comes, you know,

Dave was a colonel, he was, you know, involved with those folks all the time.

It's a very macho thing and no one wants to kind of.

You know, show they're less than macho side because it's, it's almost like

you're, it's perceived as a weakness.

I can tell you, you know, it's interesting when, you know, we're

in the police academy and, and you gotta go to the morgue, so

everybody's gotta go to the morgue.

And, and, and in some respects it's probably a good thing because

it did weed out some people.

But you know, you go to the morgue.

You walk in the place, it wreaks like hell.

There's dead people everywhere.

It's, like worse than Halloween.

There

are, yeah.

Yeah.

And so you walk in this place and, of course the, uh, the medical examiner.

Looks forward to this day because he wants to see how many people he

can cause to pass out, you know?

And so now they're sawing the head open and cracking the chest open and they're,

and they, and they want you to hand you, uh, you know, body organs to hold

in your hands and all this crazy shit.

And I'm looking at this and I'm thinking.

This is horrendous.

But you know, like several people fell to the sides and passed out and other people

were nauseous and some people actually quit the academy after that because

they were like, I can't deal with this.

Wow.

So maybe that's a good thing because you weeded some of those people out because

lemme tell you something, you know, you, you kind of hinted on it earlier about how

all these traumatic incidents, you know, I have this conversation once in a while,

and your average person, maybe you see.

11 dead people your entire life, right?

And those 11 dead people, they got makeup on and their lips

are so closed and they're in the coffin laying there at a wake.

Uh, maybe you've seen a traffic accident or a violent crime, perhaps,

you know, you're talking 11 people.

Give or take in your entire life.

Yeah.

you know, a big city cop in an urban area where there's a lot more crime.

I'd see 20 dead people in a month,

right?

So

20 dead people in a month, times 27.

I mean, do the math.

So there's a lot crazy stuff.

I'll just say this and then we'll move on.

I think that I was never affected.

Like a number of people because I had not only good upbringing as a kid, so

I was solid in, in my, my thinking, but also because I was into sports.

Ah, so the police job wasn't my world.

It wasn't my number one be all.

Interesting end all kind of thing, because I can tell you there's a lot of people,

that's their whole life, their whole identity, that's all they care about.

That's all that they associate with.

They marry other cops.

They never get away from the lunacy.

And I was, I had a lot of outside interests.

I had media stuff going on.

I had, I had sports going on.

I had a lot of different things that.

Took me away from the daily grind of death, destruction, and despair, which

is what that job brings you every day.

Hey Dave.

How, okay, so Bill has just described how he's adjusted to his.

Police career and how he wasn't affected.

He is not, he never had suicidal thoughts.

He did.

He's not a heavy drinker.

I've been with him many times.

I've about, I out drink him every time.

And bottom line is he seemed so well adjusted.

Now, he didn't have a written life plan as you're suggesting

maybe officers should do.

But you had an interesting take on, on Bill's situation when

we had a private discussion.

I'd like you to share.

Why you thank Bill, even though he didn't have a written life plan, maybe

he still, um, uh, dealt with some of the same principles of what you're proposing.

full disclosure, whatever the relationship is, bill is the

brother of my brother-in-law.

there's a family, connection there and that's how I got to know.

We haven't figured out what that

is.

Yes, that's a hard, what the name of that is.

And as a result, you know, and, and my wife is a retired deputy chief

of investigations for the DuPage County State's Attorney's Office.

so I've been exposed to the law enforcement community for a long

period of time, and obviously getting to know someone, with bill's resume,

He really was at the tip of the tip of the spear for the law enforcement community.

So his stories are just so rich, so authentic, um, and so compelling.

you know, that he's a really remarkable guy.

But the thing I really want to emphasize about, what Bill just said, um, and

hopefully it'll answer your question, if not, you know, fill in the blanks, but,

Bill describes exactly why the program that I'm presenting to everyone

today is, really so important is he had a holistic view of his life.

Mm-hmm.

It wasn't 1000% tunnel focused on his, Mel, his, police career.

He had all these outside interests, all these outside relationships.

So he had lots of places that he could sort of dissipate some of the stress,

some of that, oh my God, I can't believe what I just saw in my last shift.

He had other places to, to sort of spread that out as opposed to he was

in a very narrow group and everybody was almost one-upping each other as

to how bad of a day they had or what.

Horrific event they had just had to deal with.

That's the purpose of the program is to actually come up with a written plan

for how you're gonna have a joyful life.

Exactly Like, Lieutenant Erfurth, was able to achieve without

committing it to, to writing or anything, but he had it in his mind.

Lots of people can have successful lives.

I mean, it's not a requirement.

I mean, Bill Gates didn't have a written plan.

Steve Jobs, you know, think of any famous successful person.

If you looked into their lives, I'll be willing to bat bet their

corporate plan was very detailed.

There were parts of their life that was very well documented, written

down, followed, goal achievement, uh, was, was job number one for their day.

you don't have to do this kind of program.

But one interesting statistic is, um, studies have shown that.

Only 1% of the population in our country actually have a

written plan for their life.

Yet those people that do have a written plan are nine times more successful.

Than those that do not have a plan.

Interesting.

So you can go for forward and have a very successful like, like Bill and

many others have without a written plan.

But you can optimize and increase your odds of having a really successful journey

by doing, uh, a program similar to the one that I'm presenting to you all, uh, today.

It's very,

interesting.

I, I'd like to add one thing to that, that I think is, uh, maybe contextualize

that whole conversation, with what Bill said or what Dave said is to me it comes

down to one word and it's optimism.

And Bill has this natural, innate level of optimism where.

He, even though something bad happened to him, he turns it around

as how did that happen for him?

And it's not, he doesn't have this victimized mindset.

So there are so many people.

Negativity is twice as easy to.

conceptualize for the individual as, positivity.

So I, I think that when somebody like Bill is innately optimistic, these things don't

bother you as much or at all, even, and how you reframe them is super important.

And then the other side of that where you have the written, the concept of

the written life plan that Dave Howe is talking about is super important

because we can train optimism.

We don't all, we're not born as lucky as Bill to be that optimistic, generally

with a smile on our face all the time.

But we can learn it.

We can learn optimism through training, and I think that's what this, uh,

the, the plan that Dave was talking about is really, really good for, and

for those people that are like, bill, what that does is it, it categorizes

things for you so you can move forward with your innate already, you know,

the space you're already in naturally.

So I think it is good for both populations, but I think it serves

even better those that don't have that innate optimism that Bill has because

you can train yourself to be like that.

And if we insert this in the academies early on, as Dennis originally

asked, we're going to have less catastrophic outcomes on the other

side of your career because you're training yourself to do this over a

long period of time, and you can build up to that natural level of optimism

that Bill was already speaking to.

So I, so I

wanna jump back in and say, all right, before we really get

into the nitty gritty of how this can be implemented, how this becomes cultural

within the law enforcement culture, say.

One thing that I think is important is when you are a cop, I, I, I'm gonna use

this term, it's called being a gore whore.

And you know, a gore whore is basically somebody that just cannot

wait to go see the death and the mayhem and the dead bodies and all

this other kind of crazy shit, right?

So there got to be a point in my career, maybe it was about

eight years into the job.

Where I said, you know what, if that isn't my call, I'm not going to that.

You know, like, so if, if it was a dead body call, if you know,

and, and let me just clarify this.

If it was a dangerous call, you know, and you needed backups and

stuff, you know, everybody went.

But if it was a, if it was a traffic fatality.

I remember younger in my career, I'd drive from the other side

of my zone to go by the traffic fatality because I was a gore whore.

I wanted to see, I wanted to see how crazy this might be, And I gotta say something,

you know, like I talking about going to the morgue, you know, when you're a young

cop, at least where I worked and I, and and, and I was working the day shift.

I dreaded getting the dead body calls.

And every morning when I'd start at 7:00 AM and since I was the, the rookie

on this day shift squad, I would get all the fricking dead body calls.

And every day you would have to go, not every day, but you know what I'm saying,

you'd have to go to these nursing homes.

Hmm.

And you'd have to walk into the nursing home because that morning

the staff found another dead person.

Yeah.

And you walk in there and the place stinks like hell.

You walk in there, they've pissed themselves or they've shit themselves,

or whatever it is, it's horrendous.

You know, body purges when they die.

But you also have to inspect the body, right?

Because you have to make sure that there wasn't any wrongdoing.

And if there was something that didn't look right, then you had to call homicide.

If not, you just called the doctor, they signed off on it, whatever.

You know, I'm not gonna get into all that.

But again, every day or every other day, you're going to see some dead person and.

I don't know.

You know, you just can't get away from some of that stuff.

But at a certain point in time in my career, I decided that I was no

longer going to just randomly go and see some horrific crime scene or see

who killed their brother for the last pork chop at the dinner table and

all this other crazy nonsense, right.

And so you have to make that decision as a cop, that you have to shield yourself,

and you have to have some kind of smarts about yourself psychologically to say, I

don't need to see all that shit every day.

What we've heard so far are the unseen costs of service,

the moments that change a life and the silence that too often follows.

But awareness is only the beginning in part two will turn toward the

question every officer eventually faces.

What comes next?

That conversation continues in part two Beyond the Badge.