Police officers develop cynicism from constant exposure to stressful, negative incidents that wear down optimism. The hosts debate whether this cynicism harms the profession and can be reduced, or if it's an unavoidable part of the job.
More than any other civil servant, cops are really cynical. Does it hurt the profession? Is it something that. Can you make cops less cynical?
You know, sorry, I'm laughing because I don't think that's possible.
They're cynical. Yes. There's good. And they all have the stories of helping the little old ladies across the street. And I feel like my job has value and there's a lot of that that's, let's be honest, it makes it onto the websites, of course, but at the end of the day, it's a lot of people at their worst and it's a lot of bad days. Even if it's a car accident where nobody did anything, but it's a bad day.
Correct. It's part of the job. It's a coping mechanism. Yeah, but it all evolves around mindset, right. If you allow the evil and the darkness to stay in your brain 24 7, it's going to turn you dark, it's going to turn you cynical. However, I think we've made some strides in lessening the cynicism through focusing on Officer Wellness, which 20 years ago was not a thing. There was no wellness. Like I remember going to a fire where this 8 year old boy died and it was horrible. It was a horrible scene. And I escorted his body to the hospital and I just remember being so devastated in that moment for his family and there was nothing I could do. And then my sergeant shows up and he's like, hey, are you okay? Well, of course I'm gonna say I'm okay, right? And he goes, okay, well you have a call holding, I need you to clear and go hit the street. So I went from that to I don't even know what the next call was. It didn't matter what it was, but I wasn't able to process what I was going through in that moment. Now I think what we would do is pull people off the street, let them go back to the station, decompress, maybe even send them home. But I had to just keep going and taking reports from people. That's why I think people sometimes get cops that aren't at their best, because you don't know what call they just came from to come see you. Right. We didn't do a great job in thinking about or talking about our mental health and we saw a lot of issues because of it.
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