Law enforcement officers are not immune to the same creeping afflictions that affect other segments of modern society. In fact, studies show that they are, in many cases, even more susceptible than other individuals.

Along with the more immediate, explicit risks inherent to police work, stress and inactivity can lead to a chain reaction of physical and mental health problems, injuries, lost time on the job, and worse. In fact, issues related to wellness can carry an even greater threat than direct, line-of-duty risks. The National Study of Police Suicides found that law enforcement officer deaths by suicide in 2012 were twice as high compared with deaths from traffic accidents and felonious assaults.¹

Perhaps figures like these are why some departments are focusing more deliberately on officer wellness. Often viewed as a companion issue to officer safety, wellness programs aim to foster health and prevent behaviors that can lead to complex and chronic conditions ranging from occupational injuries to substance abuse. Although more traditional tactical safety is better developed in the vendor space, there are some companies and organizations working to advance wellness.

“There’s a growing awareness among law enforcement that wellness is a huge concern,” said Ian Hamilton, project manager for the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) Center for Officer Safety and Wellness. “You can look at components of wellness and tie that to safety. On one end of the spectrum, you have tactical safety and body armor. On the other end, you have officer mental health.”²

Physical and Mental Wellness

“Officer wellness” is a fairly nebulous term because it encompasses many areas. Initiatives around personal safety—for example, ensuring that officers wear body armor or seat belts—are certainly a large part of the equation. But other areas are less cut and dried and more difficult to address.

Workplace injuries come in all stripes for law enforcement personnel. In early 2014, the IACP released a report on 18 police departments that collectively logged a total of 1,295 personnel injuries. These injuries resulted in 5,938 total missed days, with an average of 4.5 days missed for every incident. Based on a 10-hour workday and an average entry-level salary of $40,000, this sum represents a total of 59,380 missed work hours and more than $1.2 million lost.³

While physical health is certainly an important concern for officers, mental health issues are increasingly becoming an important element on the officer wellness spectrum. A 2012 study from the University of Buffalo School of Public Health and Health Professions found that police officers had a higher likelihood of unhealthy stress than members of the general public, which in turn raised the risk for the metabolic syndromes that lead to heart disease and diabetes, certain cancers, and suicide, among other serious health problems. Suicide rates were found to be more than eight times higher in working officers than those who had departed from law enforcement, the study found.⁴

Understandably, these issues are not popular discussion topics among officers. Fortunately, these risks can be avoided or prevented with solutions that are as varied as the problems.

Small Changes, Meaningful Differences

Workplace injuries are as predictable in law enforcement as they are preventable. To drive home the point, Bryan Fass, founder and president of Fit Responder, a North Carolina firm specializing in fitness and injury reduction programs, relays the story of an officer who sustained a major knee injury while stepping out of his patrol vehicle:

“When an officer injures his knee, it’s usually the left knee, because that’s the leg you’re always using to push out of the car,” Fass said. “You’re sitting in the car for long periods of time, and the repetitive motions have very specific biomechanical patterns. Hip flexors become chronically tight, and it works on the knee. These are predictable mobility issues, and you can start to alleviate those by coming up with a specific system of movement.”⁵

Fit Responder provides on-site analysis and training programs that, once implemented within the department, improve officer fitness and strength. The idea is to target strength and flexibility toward the parts of the body that are most susceptible to injury among the law enforcement community.

“We don’t want to alienate officers who are unfit,” Fass said. “This is about reducing injuries. Maybe there’s already a fitness culture at the department, but you want to address injuries in the workplace. We can customize the program to meet a specific department’s needs.”

Beyond training, Fit Responder also offers Fitness Builder, a mobile device app that helps prompt and guide users to follow a given fitness regimen. This is part of the way toward effecting a broader change in the day-to-day culture of a police department. The 2014 IACP study concluded that officers who engaged in a regular fitness program were less likely to sustain a serious injury.⁶

The need for practical, actionable changes manifests itself in discussions over diet as much as it does fitness. Healthier eating choices can mean better physical and mental health, and, while no one would argue with this, it can be far more difficult in theory than in practice, especially for law enforcement professionals.

“We call it how to eat in the street,” Fass said. “You need to be taught about foods that heal versus foods that harm, but can still be eaten on duty. We hear all the time that it’s easy to eat healthy when you’re on the first or second shift, but what do you do when it’s one in the morning? What can you eat when your only choices come from gas stations?”⁷

That challenge is a perfect example of a small but meaningful opportunity that can pay big dividends. And it’s a good example of the sort of work that Fit Responder does.

“There are a lot of myths and misinformation about energy,” Fass said. “We think fatigue is caused by a lack of caffeine, but it’s usually dehydration. A bag of trail mix with no candy in it makes you feel full and gives you sustainable energy. You drink a bottle of water with it and will have as much energy from that as you would from a caffeinated beverage.”⁸

Meeting officers where they really live and work is a significant part of the wellness challenge. But increasingly, officers and departments are embracing this brand of discourse as a means of molding better officers.

“You have a younger emerging group of leadership that is very interested in physical fitness and performance on the job,” Hamilton said. “For the existing cultural barriers, a lot of it was just tradition. There was the old stereotype of officers and donuts. But now there’s a growing recognition among law enforcement and the general population that all of these issues are intertwined.”⁹

The Doctor Is In

The IACP Center for Officer Safety and Wellness provides data on officer health, injuries, and deaths, as well as a wealth of free resources for public safety personnel. One of these is the “Doctor’s Visit Checklist,” which is designed to help encourage regular checkups and an open rapport with care providers around issues—both mental and physical—that are relatively common in law enforcement.

“There’s a definite consensus out there that not all officers are going to the doctor as often as they should,” Hamilton said. “Have a candid conversation with doctors about issues related to the nature of the profession. We want there to be a conversation between an officer and his or her doctor. It may seem elementary, but you may not think about it until you see it on paper.”¹⁰

The IACP Center for Officer Safety and Wellness is attempting to connect with leaders at all levels of the department, so that new attitudes take root more deeply across divisions. “When we use the term ‘culture change,’ we are talking about improved habits,” Hamilton said. “There’s a need to reach leadership at various levels. Executives are important, but so is instilling change among first-line supervisors. They are mentors to younger officers, and, because of that, their actions are important.”¹¹

The U.S. Bureau of Justice Assistance also has several initiatives dedicated to fostering officer wellness. In addition to supporting efforts like the IACP’s Center for Officer Safety and Wellness, BJA created the VALOR Program, which helps prevent violence against law enforcement officers and helps improve resilience and survivability following violent encounters. With these types of solutions readily available from the IACP, BJA, and the companies listed here, officer wellness can be just as achievable, if not more, than tactical safety. ♦

Notes:
¹Ron Clark and Andy O’Hara, 2012 Police Suicides: The NSOPS Study (Middlebury, CT: Badge of Life, January 4, 2013), http://www.policesuicidestudy.com/id16.html (accessed June 17, 2015).
²Ian Hamilton (project manager, IACP Center for Officer Safety and Wellness), telephone interview, June 16, 2015.
³International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP), Reducing Officer Injuries, Final Report, http://www.theiacp.org/portals/0/pdfs/IACP_ROI_Final_Report.pdf (accessed June 18, 2015).
⁴“Police Officer Stress Creates Significant Health Risks Compared to General Population, Study Finds,” news release, July 9, 2012, http://www.buffalo.edu/news/releases/2012/07/13532.html (accessed June 17, 2015).
⁵Bryan Fass (founder, president, Fit Responder), telephone interview, June 17, 2015.
⁶IACP, Reducing Officer Injuries.
⁷Fass, telephone interview, June 16, 2015.
⁸Ibid.
⁹Hamilton, telephone interview, June 16, 2015.
¹⁰Ibid.
¹¹Ibid.

Please cite as

Scott Harris, “Stronger Officers, Stronger Force: Wellness Programs Make Better Police,” Product Feature, The Police Chief 82 (September 2015): 70–71.