LITTLE VALLEY, N.Y. — As local police departments seek to recruit new officers there have been reports of a serious shortage of applicants.
Some of the lack of interest may stem from previous negative images due to police misconduct and even calls to defund the police. But overall stress of the job and the toll it can take may also be factors.
Recently we heard from a newly retired law enforcement veteran who knows about those factors all too well from experiences in his career and his own personal grief.
2 On Your Side sat down with former Cattaraugus County Sheriff Tim Whitcomb, who now promotes an enlightened wellness approach for "total officer safety."
For over 35 years Whitcomb wore a badge, including the last 15 as Cattaraugus County Sheriff.
And while now formally retired as of three weeks ago, he is still driven by a new passion derived from his law enforcement experiences. As Whitcomb puts it, "To enhance the ability to protect and serve those who have protected and served."
So that badge may also carry a burden. Whitcomb says statistics show life expectancy for police officers is much less than the general population.
"It's 56 to 59 regardless of the gender. So if you just do the math, subtracting that from the average minimum life expectancy of men ... that's a difference of 17 to 20 years of life," Whitcomb said.
The stress generator is what they experience on the job. Maybe it is at a terrible crime scene involving a child or a beloved person.
Whitcomb thinks back to his role investigating the 1999 rape and strangulation Mother's Day slaying of Penny Brown of Salamanca, which a then-15-year-old Edward Kindt confessed to.
"Had a profound impact on me as a young detective that I never forgot," Whitcomb said.
And he somberly added, "If you wear a badge long enough, you recognize that evil is real."
Or perhaps officers may have to respond to gruesome fatal accident. He recalled a recent conversation with one of his office's supervisors who told him he saw three deputies in tears in his office as they expressed their emotions.
Whitcomb says officers or deputies may see people at their worst and in the most emotionally draining times of their lives, and that means "the cumulative exposure to those traumas is what sets first responders up for post-traumatic stress disorder."
It is a potentially debilitating condition with physical, emotional, and mental health symptoms and effects that Whitcomb says 1 in 4 officers may experience and suffer from.
And he points out that in years past, "the culture in law enforcement that I was embraced with when I graduated the academy and started working midnights and traffic division and seven and a half years major crimes, the culture was to not talk about it. If you talked about it, it was an indicator of weakness."
So with a revelation Whitcomb, who has a Masters degree in counseling, has now taken on a new role as speaker at law enforcement conferences around the country.
In one video produced by the COPS program of the U.S. Justice Department, Whitcomb points out, "We don't have a great understanding in the subculture of law enforcement of how to deal with the emotional and psychological injury, and that's what PTSD is."
Whitcomb now advocates for police officer wellness programs, such as the one he helped implement at the Cattaraugus Sheriff's Office.
There is specialized available counseling through hotlines for police officers. But there is also resiliency and even, yes, cops taking part in seemingly silly stuff like goat or puppy yoga, beekeeping, or even an art class.
Whitcomb said to this reporter, "You just laughed, right? But the family that plays together stays together, right? And this is a law enforcement family. The feelings that we have for the other men and women that share our uniforms is very true, because we share other people's darkest moments of life together. It's a shared exposure to awful traumas that the community needs us to respond to."
Whitcomb shares in that video and his life a deeply personal turning point. That is what happened to his supervisor, colleague, predecessor, and cherished friend, Sheriff Dennis John, on Aug. 18, 2009.
As Whitcomb recalls that day, "9:03 a.m. My friend sent me a text message that he was about to kill himself and told me where he was, and he followed through. His death was a tremendous learning curve for me."
Now Whitcomb has this strong feeling.
"The wellness program, as it is right now, I believe would have prevented his suicide, yes," he said.
So now a different law enforcement legacy from Whitcomb in his career spanning over three decades.
"Unquestionably the thing that I've done in my career ... wearing a badge that I'm most proud of ... is leaving a wellness program behind," Whitcomb said.
Whitcomb says this officer wellness program, which has more elements to it, has also been set up at the Monroe County Sheriff's office in Rochester, and other law enforcement may adopt it as well.
The Buffalo Police Department has set up a program where officers trained in counseling can respond to speak with their colleagues who may feel emotionally troubled by what they see after responding to a difficult incident. Other agencies such as Cheektowaga Police have launched such programs as well.
Whitcomb hopes such programs could eventually be expanded to include firefighters, emergency medical service staffers, corrections officers and dispatchers who must handle those sometimes life and death calls which come in through 911.