A call for help

When thrust into a traumatic situation, the human brain shifts gears — raw emotion and sensory-driven details take over, while mundane information is distorted or suppressed. 

For police officers, this isn’t a rare occurrence; it’s part of the job. 

But what happens when a profession that exposes people to cumulative trauma is lacking a support system to appropriately manage that, and is layered with an implicit message from society that they shouldn’t need help? 

Officer Savannah Barnes of the Oak Bluffs Police Department didn’t remember driving to the scene of a critical incident that occurred on Beach Road a year ago, when a woman lost her life. Barnes didn’t remember the chaos unfolding around her, or even if there were bystanders surrounding her or not — just the rhythm of her hands pressing down on the chest of a 41-year-old woman in an attempt to keep her heart beating after her moped collided head on with a Jeep. Barnes was 23 at the time.

For officers like Barnes left reeling from a profound experience, such as the gruesome moped accident, a searing example and tragic case in point of this kind of trauma is the more recent death of an infant left in a vehicle found lifeless last month. Police are not commenting as it is an active case, but the way the first responders are expected to process the event represents an unfathomable example of why support for officers dealing with trauma is so important. 

In many emergencies , the first-responding officer often becomes an extra pair of hands in the ambulance. So for Barnes, after she responded to the moped accident, the opportunity to pause and process what had just happened did not come until the victim had been wheeled behind closed hospital doors. Then came the questions: Where is my cruiser? Did I follow the procedure properly? Did I do everything to give her the best chance of survival?

Tragically, the woman did not survive, but Barnes had properly followed procedure. Surprisingly, despite the toll, Barnes wouldn’t change what she’s experienced and learned for anything. 

“You carry these people with you as the last person they saw when they were alive,” said Barnes. “I’d never want to wipe that; you can turn it into something useful for yourself.”

But Barnes admitted that without proper diffusing procedures after a traumatic incident, even everyday tasks can feel overwhelming. 

Historically, it has been taboo for officers to suggest an incident is weighing on them mentally or emotionally, and this results in the trauma coming out in unhealthy ways. The Oak Bluffs Police Department has been working to get officers the resources they need, and next week at the annual town meeting, part of the department’s budget is another step toward addressing this.

Chief Jonathan Searle has been a driving force behind the cultural shift in how a police officer should be treated following a traumatic incident.

“As first responders, you jump into these situations, and you are trying to fix this chaos, in addition to witnessing something to the human body that you didn’t know could happen,” said Searle. “In the old days you probably washed the blood off your hands and went back to work, and God forbid you said, ‘Man, I really feel like crying.’

“We’re supposed to be tough and stoic, but the reality is we are human beings, and we just wear this suit; we are no different than anyone else,” he added. 

As a young officer, when Searle sought help for a traumatic experience, he was met with disapproval. 

“I was treated like dirt when I asked for help,” he said. “After what I went through, I never wanted another officer to go through the same experience.” 

Now, leading the Oak Bluffs Police Department as chief since 2022, Searle has launched a peer-support program to help reduce stigma about coming forward and help officers recovering from traumatic experiences. Officers Sgt. Jeffrey LaBell and Det. Jillian Sedlier-Clark are trained in crisis management, and lead the OBPD peer-support program, guiding officers and their families through the aftermath of trauma. 

The first step for an officer at the Oak Bluffs Police Department, following a critical incident, is to take the rest of the day off, while another officer is ready to start their shift. 

“The last thing you want is to be balled up with all this emotion and adrenaline and have someone get in your face about something like a parking ticket, saying they didn’t deserve it when they definitely did,” said Searle. 

Officers are contacted in the following days by peer support for a “diffusing process,” which is a one-on-one recounting of events, followed by a debriefing with the Cape and Islands Critical Incident Stress Management Team, to help to fill gaps in memory left behind by traumatic scenarios.

The latest initiative under consideration is the request of $15,000 of the police budget to be dedicated for officer wellness services. Searle has already partnered with Amy Carter, a clinician who is on the Suicide Prevention Committee for the International Association of Chiefs of Police, and who has provided help to Island officers in the past. The idea is to have a clinician that can be available over the phone at a moment’s notice to help law enforcement personnel process their experiences.

Carter, who holds degrees from Syracuse University and executive life and wellness coaching credentials from Harvard Medical School, is currently the director of officer wellness at the Haverhill Police Department. She said that support for police trauma is “vital.” 

“It never should have been optional, let alone nonexistent,” said Carter in an interview with The Times. “It’s something that always should have been integrated into the profession; policing involves exposure to cumulative trauma, and anytime someone is going to be exposed to cumulative trauma, it should be a no-brainer that we would have support for the impacts of that.” 

Carter’s goal isn’t to have recurring patients, but to equip officers with the knowledge and skills to manage their mental health on a daily basis. 

“That’s how officers will be able to help themselves in autonomous and convenient ways,” said Carter. “I will be there whenever they need me, but my goal is to help them need me less.” 

Carter found her passion to help police grow during her time in a police academy. She initially hoped to apply her behavioral knowledge to help communities, but it was there she first witnessed what she called “an egregious lack of support and education for officers in terms of coping with cumulative trauma, stress, and depression inherent to sad and negative environments.

“When that day came for the mental health training, all we got was a two-hour session that basically said that the goal was for officers to not commit suicide — the baseline standard for acceptable wellness seemed like anything that came short of that –– and I was horrified,” said Carter. “The standard was just, ‘Try to survive.’ The goal shouldn’t be surviving but thriving, and officers shouldn’t have to give up that right by virtue of occupation.” 

Carter’s approach blends clinical expertise with an insider’s lens; when she starts as the clinician at the Oak Bluffs Police Department, Carter said, she will first introduce officers to her methods, and aim to equip them with the base knowledge and skills to manage their mental health on a daily basis. 

For Chief Searle and other officers, Carter’s blend of clinical expertise and understanding of police culture makes her an ideal fit.

Carter affirmed that despite working for Haverhill as well, she was confident she could accommodate the Oak Bluffs Police Department’s wellness support needs. 

“There’s no day of the week I wouldn’t be available to talk to someone,” said Carter. “This is more than a job for me, its truly my passion and my purpose.”

For Barnes, something she’d like to see before the end of her career is a decrease in the police suicide rate. 

“I am fairly new, so I am lucky enough to have been here and have Chief Searle been chief,” said Barnes. “When I first started elsewhere and I had a bad call, the supervisor asked, ‘Do you want to take a sick day tomorrow?’ and I said no, because I only have three sick days. 

“Having the open ability to come talk to the chief, having Sgt. LaBell, Jillian [Sedlier-Clarke] and other officers –– it creates a wide net cast, so you have a better chance of catching people that are in crisis, and I think it [the suicide rate] will go down over time.”

During an interview with the MVTimes for this article, Barnes and Searle were discussing trauma in general when a call crackled through the radio. Both officers exchanged a concerned glance, then the words “baby turning blue,” came over the radio and Barnes without a second thought was on the move. And the stakes for why an on-call clinician should be considered hung in the air as the officers moved to respond to the scene and do their jobs.