The stoic culture of law enforcement and the persistent stigma around seeking mental health treatment has contributed to police officers engaging in self-destructive behavior. Many police officers have difficulty asking for or even admitting that they need help. Sometimes officers consciously or unconsciously engage in conduct that forces their agencies to take action to remove the officers from service, either temporarily or permanently. These self-destructive (and potentially career-damaging) behaviors exist on a continuum from the benign (e.g., failing firearm qualifications at the range to avoid being assigned to a specific work detail; putting oneself out sick or injured to escape from operational duties for a period of time) to serious (e.g., having repeated alcohol problems to be permanently relieved of duty) to severe (e.g., officers completing suicide). This article discusses self-sabotaging behaviors, the reasons why police officers engage in such behaviors, and strategies for intervention and management in these situations.
Examples of Self-Sabotaging Police Officer Behavior
Having worked clinically with police and other public safety personnel for many years in both the assessment (i.e., fitness for duty evaluations) and intervention (i.e., psychotherapy) domains, the authors have frequently encountered officers who seem to be “their own worst enemy,” and/or are “unable to get out of their own way.”1 They have, it seems, an internal saboteur that leads them to engage in behaviors that are best described as self-sabotaging. Self-sabotage can be loosely defined as engaging in counterproductive or harmful behaviors that prevent one’s own success, block one’s own goal attainment, and/or contribute to one’s own distress or functional impairment.
“Signs of emotional or psychological distress often manifest behaviorally with self-sabotaging symptoms.”
Self-sabotaging behaviors happen every day in police departments across the world, beginning in the academy and occurring throughout an officer’s career. For example, recruits who begin to doubt their self-efficacy as they near academy graduation may engage in conduct that brings on either retraining and/or disciplinary actions, so that the academy instructors will “save” them from making it to the street. Here, the recruits “save face” by not having to quit or acknowledge their fears, and instead the recruits can externalize blame onto the agency for the negative outcome. Another example would be a serving police officer who needs to qualify at the range, but purposefully fails to qualify with the specific intent of avoiding an upcoming undesirable mandatory work detail.
While these initial examples may seem relatively innocuous, repeated instances of even minor self-sabotaging behavior can sometimes indicate that an officer is escalating along a trajectory to more destructive behaviors. Signs of emotional or psychological distress often manifest behaviorally with self-sabotaging symptoms (e.g., avoidant symptoms of acute or post-traumatic stress manifesting as not showing up for shifts or other forms of work avoidance). Unfortunately, officers can and often do engage in more serious forms of self-sabotage. For example, a police officer who has moderate to severe obsessive-compulsive disorder may self-medicate with alcohol because the officer realizes, as was once stated to one of the authors, “It’s okay to be known as a drunk; it’s never okay to be known as crazy.” This supports the perception that alcoholism is tolerated in police departments, but mental illness is not. That said, even alcoholism has its limits, and some police officers will engage in risky alcohol-related behaviors that cross the line (e.g., drinking and driving) until such time that they are held accountable (e.g., getting arrested for driving under the influence of alcohol). At this point, typically, the agency and/or the officer’s union will become involved in admitting that officer into an alcohol rehabilitation program, thus meeting the officer’s desired endgame by receiving treatment—but without having to admit to needing treatment or requesting it.
The most serious kinds of self-sabotaging behaviors can lead a police officer to be disciplined and permanently removed from service or, in the worst-case scenario, to die by suicide. After many years of working clinically with suicidal officers, the authors no longer conceptualize suicide as an acute event; rather, officer suicide is seen as one polar end of a continuum of self-destructive behaviors. That continuum ranges from “harmless,” less severe forms of self-sabotage (e.g., procrastinating to the point of missing deadlines; stubbornly refusing to comply with basic uniform regulations) to long-term use of maladaptive coping mechanisms (e.g., alcohol abuse; sexual promiscuity; excessive gambling) to the point of destroying one’s own happiness from within and culminating in suicide—the ultimate internal sabotage.
Consider an officer who is struggling with untreated symptoms of post-traumatic stress from a long police career filled with difficult calls for service. That officer engages in criminal activity, is arrested, and is relieved of his law enforcement position. Through the act of self-sabotage, the officer (a) avoided fears concerning engaging in psychotherapy or other help-seeking behaviors and (b) “solved” the desire to no longer do police work without having to voluntarily resign. Another example finds a police officer who has undergone multiple courses of alcohol rehabilitation treatment and has been placed on a “last chance agreement” with his agency with regard to staying sober. That officer relapses in terms of alcohol use, engages in risky behavior while drinking—obviously violating the agreement, and is arrested. In this matter, the agency is led to put the officer in for an involuntary disability retirement. As in the previous example, the officer was able to “save face” and not voluntarily resign nor admit that he could no longer serve as a police officer.
Moreover, there are examples of police officers who engage in physical self-harm or suicide attempts. In these matters, the officers typically know that the self-sabotaging action(s) are going to lead to the end of their careers. In the case of when an officer dies by suicide, as noted above, it is seen as the most extreme form of self-sabotage. It is important to note that, like many who engage in psychotherapy, sometimes officers will appear for treatment only to withhold relevant information from the therapist, continuing the self-sabotage pattern. This phenomenon includes concealed suicidality—the intentional withholding of suicidal ideation from one’s therapist or other clinicians.2
One author worked clinically in psychotherapy with an officer who presented initially for intermittent outbursts in the workplace, which was clear self-sabotaging behavior. In addition, the officer had appeared at the agency’s medical unit and self-declared as physically unfit due to impairing physical pain. It is important to note that, later in treatment, the officer acknowledged this was a malingering strategy to avoid work. After a period of time in psychotherapy, the officer was restored to full duty following an agency fitness for duty evaluation. While many officers end treatment once restored, this officer continued to attend regular sessions. It was only after restoration to full duty that the officer revealed a number of treatment needs that the individual had concealed from the psychotherapist all along, despite direct inquiries by the therapist, including illegal substance use, workplace misconduct, and suicidal thoughts and gestures. Informed by these new disclosures, the therapy was able to truly progress as the officer acknowledged the role of the internal saboteur. A more focused treatment was applied, and the officer committed to true, lasting behavioral change. Here, self-sabotage occurs even in the context of therapy, and chiefs are encouraged to understand that therapy is sometimes an extended process and to be patient as treatment unfolds over time.
Reasons Why Officers Engage in Self-Sabotaging Behavior
Understanding why police officers engage in certain types of conduct as a surrogate for asking for help is an essential component of being able to manage and reduce these self-sabotaging behaviors. One reason that officers may engage in self-sabotaging behaviors, especially more serious ones, is that although they may be aware of a need for change or have been advised of such by a loved one or coworker, they resist accepting or seeking help. This is sometimes due to a misconception on their part that only people with serious mental health problems engage in therapy. When coupled with a treatment-resistant culture that equates seeking mental health treatment with weakness and when considering the lack of mental health professionals who are culturally competent with regard to the law enforcement community, it is not surprising that officers do not routinely ask for help.3 This idea gets translated to their own lives in that officers sometimes think that only a serious crisis warrants help, and so officers delay asking for help until things are really going poorly in their lives.
Self-sabotage can permeate across an officer’s life and decision-making, including the choice to deny oneself needed services. For example, the authors are aware of officers with direct or vicarious traumatic exposure to the horrors of 9/11 who persist in their refusal to sign up for health and wellness services (e.g., the World Trade Center Health Registry). This refusal stems from an expressed sense of guilt that they would be taking services from more deeply affected officers; said another way, self-sabotage manifests as self-sacrifice or martyrdom that potentially leaves signs and symptoms undetected and untreated. Moreover, this idea that their needs are not worthy of help leads some officers to make an overly dramatic scene when their self-sabotaging behaviors finally are expressed, despite it having been their goal all along, whether in their conscious awareness or otherwise.
“Psychologically healthy officers are less likely to engage in workplace misconduct.”
Another possible explanation for officers engaging in risky behavior is the likely presence of some latent symptoms of post-traumatic stress through repeated exposure to trauma over time. As officers repeatedly respond to difficult calls for service across their careers, the chance for them to gradually become increasingly emotionally numb due to traumatic stress exists. This emotional numbing leads officers to seek the adrenaline rush associated with risky behaviors (e.g., drinking and driving; engaging in extramarital affairs; excessive online sports-betting leading to an associated need for excessive overtime).
Finally, the role played by subclinical but no less significant treatment needs for experiences such as burnout or compassion fatigue should not be ignored. Although both are nondiagnostic syndromes, burnout and compassion fatigue are important contributors to self-sabotaging behaviors. Wellness services informed by such subclinical syndromes are recommended, as their presence can indicate a deeper, diagnosable treatment need. In burnout, officers experience exhaustion, cynicism, detachment, and low role fulfillment, all combining into a general experience of apathy to job responsibilities and indifference to agency regulations.4 Negative behavioral outcomes associated with burnout can include self-sabotaging behaviors such as excessive absenteeism, disregard for basic procedural compliance (e.g., uniform standards), and even insubordination; all behaviors which the officer can but seemingly chooses not to control. In compassion fatigue officers experience apathy to others, to include victims of crime, members of the community being served, and even those in their social and family circles. For example, officers may “slow roll it” on response to certain calls for service out of compassion fatigue, as verbalized by one officer experiencing such fatigue. This self-sabotaged slow response time can negatively impact the community, the agency, and the officer’s career.
Strategies for Managing and Reducing Self-Sabotaging Behaviors in Police Officers
It may seem that an officer who is committed to engaging in his or her own undoing cannot be swayed from the inevitable endpoints of self-sabotage: discipline, termination, divorce, suicide. This fatalistic view is a fallacy. The following recommendations are offered for law enforcement leaders who wish to help interrupt officers’ maladaptive behavioral patterns and reduce the incidence and outcomes of self-sabotage. It is the authors’ contention that by engaging in these strategies, agencies will end up fielding officers who are psychologically healthier and generally happier and, as a result, more effective and less likely to engage in misconduct. This aligns with the views expressed in a 2021 Police Chief article by Dr. Schlosser and Chief Andrew A. Kudrick, who advocated for agencies to consider that officer misconduct may be a behavioral manifestation of the officer being mentally unwell.5 Said another way, psychologically healthy officers are less likely to engage in workplace misconduct. It is suggested that directing resources to these recommendations, especially those that are preventative in nature, will help reduce negative outcomes (e.g., absenteeism, misconduct, use of excessive force, lawsuits/settlements) and increase positive outcomes (e.g., positive community-police relationships) in policing.
Annual Wellness Visits. Both authors were recently members of the International Association of Chiefs of Police – Police Psychological Services Section (IACP-PPSS) inaugural working group to produce guidelines for annual wellness visits. As proposed, the stated goals of an annual wellness visit include a preventative approach to promoting the early self-identification of officers’ mental health or wellness needs through psychoeducation, normalizing the experience of meeting with a mental health professional, and reducing the stigma often associated with psychotherapy. This approach helps officers proactively avoid problems that may impair job performance or lead to functional impairment. The optimal time to engage in therapy is not when one’s life has been upended by crisis, but before a crisis occurs. This is because when in crisis and survival mode, emotions are high and receptiveness to new ways of thinking is low. By promoting officer engagement in proactive psychotherapeutic services, police chiefs can get in front of liability and the need to take disciplinary action by helping their officers recognize maladaptive behavioral patterns like self-sabotaging behavior.
Early Intervention System. Employing an early intervention system within the agency is another way to interrupt a pathway toward self-destruction. As part of the early intervention system, the authors recommend that indicators of self-sabotage be included (e.g., absenteeism, multiple minor disciplinary issues) and that the system have the capacity for a non-disciplinary outcome (i.e., referral for mental health intervention services) when one is warranted. A referral for a course of counseling, even if it is mandated, is more likely to interrupt the officer who is engaged in self-sabotaging behaviors than simply disciplining the officer. It is important to mention that in cases where agencies are making such referrals, agencies should have relationships with mental health professionals in the community who are culturally competent at treating police officers.
Education, Training, and Peer Support. Providing police officers with education and training related to resiliency and positive mental health is another way to reduce the incidence of self-sabotaging behaviors. This training can start as early as the police academy, but it should also be offered to all serving personnel regardless of rank or years of service. In addition, having a peer support team in place can be tremendously beneficial to the overall mental health and wellness of police officers. If a police officer needs help, the officer’s first contact is likely not going to be a mental health professional—it will be a trusted fellow officer, who can hopefully direct the officer to a trusted, known, and vetted mental health professional.
A Unified Approach. It is recommended that psychological services in law enforcement not be perceived as mutually exclusive domains and not operate in silos as such. While best practices and ethical codes of conduct prevent psychologists from serving as both a forensic evaluator and therapist to the same officer, this does not prevent fitness for duty evaluators from making treatment recommendations. In addition, this does not prevent a psychotherapist from being informed by the needs of a fitness for duty evaluator when conducting therapy with an officer who has come to the attention of the agency. Here again, the authors are in agreement with the 2021 Schlosser and Kudrick article, which recommended that psychologists conducting fitness for duty evaluations go beyond simply making a fitness determination, but further assist law enforcement leaders by both making treatment recommendations when warranted and by identifying a network of culturally competent clinicians to whom officers can be referred.
Focused Resources. It has been the authors’ experience that certain operational assignments, such as special investigations, involve higher degrees of stress, traumatic exposure, and/or other occupational challenges than others. Coupled with the autonomy or permissive work environment that sometimes accompany such duties, self-sabotaging behaviors are not uncommon. Examples of such assignments include child sex offense investigations, highway fatal collision investigations, homicide investigations, emergency service units, and clandestine operations. This is not to downplay the stressors associated with other operational assignments, such as patrol, but to highlight the need for a focused strategy. For example, one author has worked clinically with a number of clandestine operatives at the local and federal level as both therapy clients and research subjects, and an increased tendency for self-sabotage behaviors have been noted in this population.6 Chiefs are encouraged to direct resources and attention to officers working in such sensitive and highly charged assignments and to focus messaging on those officers. For example, when considering how to begin implementing annual wellness visits, chiefs are encouraged to begin with officers assigned to such roles. It is further recommended that novel and innovative approaches to the schedules of such officers be considered, such as brief, routine sabbaticals or temporary, nonpunitive “time-away” reassignments for the officers to decompress and focus on self-care.
Conclusion
Self-sabotage behaviors range along a continuum from generally innocuous to severe and sometimes fatal. Law enforcement officers are not immune to such behaviors. Indeed, self-sabotage among police personnel deserves attention because such behaviors among those whose work responsibilities involve public safety negatively impacts not only the officers’ careers and lives, but also the agency’s liability and the community’s safety. Police chiefs are encouraged to consider that observed self-sabotage behaviors by their officers represent an opportunity not solely for disciplinary action, but for intervention through mental health and wellness services. 🛡
Notes:
1All examples of self-sabotaging behavior in this article are drawn from real experiences the authors have had while helping officers. Efforts have been made to mask the officers’ identities in the case examples.
2Jay Nagdimon, Christopher McGovern, and Michael Craw, “Addressing Concealed Suicidality: A Flexible and Contextual Approach to Suicide Risk Assessment in Adults,” Journal of Contemporary Pyschotherapy 51, no. 3 (September 2021): 241–250.
3Lewis Z. Schlosser and Andrew A. Kudrick, “‘You Have to See the Pysch’—Reducing the Stigma of Seeking Mental Health Treatment among Police Personnel,” Police Chief 86, no. 5 (May 2019): 50–56.
4Thomas E. Coghlan, “Fostering Positive Outcomes in Policing by Addressing Burnout and Compassion Fatigue,” Police Chief 86, no. 5 (May 2019): 30–37.
5Lewis Z. Schlosser and Andrew A. Kudrick, “Psychological Fitness for duty Evaluations,” Police Chief 88, no. 5 (May 2021): 54–57.
6Thomas E. Coghlan “Role Interference and Moral Distress in the Subjective Experience of Deep Undercover Law Enforcement Operatives” (PsyD diss., Yeshiva University, 2010).
Please cite as
Lewis Z. Schlosser and Thomas E. Coghlan, “Officer Self-Sabotage,” Police Chief Online, May 17, 2023.
