Major John Poulos wants you to know that a career in law enforcement is tough.
Not for the reasons you might think. It’s not just the trauma on the officers from seeing the unthinkable every day. It’s the trauma that passes on to those officers’ spouses and children, too.
Poulos is the director of the 10-34 Project at the Mississippi Highway Patrol, which focuses on officer wellness and resilience. Tuesday, at Lion Hills Center, he explained his new project to a joint meeting of the Columbus Rotary Club and the Lowndes County Republican Women.
“In law enforcement, we use 10-codes on radio transmission in law enforcement,” he said. “A 10-34 for the highway patrol means ‘officer requesting backup.’”
Poulos said wellness and resilience training is a major deficiency throughout law enforcement, but it is needed now more than ever. An experience his son — also a state trooper — had underscored this and helped him decide to take on the 10-34 Project after ten years in MHP’s public affairs division.
His son responded to a wreck where people were trapped inside a burning car, and he aided firefighters on scene in getting them out. One died in the crash, the other was an 18-year-old girl who was badly burned and died a few days later.
“As a father, and being a trooper for 24 years, I started questioning how that affected him,” Poulos said. “What he experienced (getting her out of that car) was traumatic, and then she passed. Losing someone is not something that we’re good with.”
The son said he was OK, Poulos said, but he wondered.
“What do we do to make sure he’s good?” he said. “We can’t force law enforcement officers to go to counseling unless they’re involved in a shooting. So are we really helping them?”
Poulos said he also thought about the impact such trauma has on an officer’s home life.
“We’ve got to help the spouses and the children,” he said. “We had an officer-involved shooting on the coast in which an infant was killed. Eight troopers fired their weapons. The suspect was using the child like a shield.”
A spouse asked for help, he said.
“I had a spouse tell us they were happy we were putting this program together,” he said. “But then she asked what type of training we were going to provide for her to figure out how to handle her husband when he doesn’t want to talk. That’s something we don’t think about.”
Addressing mental and emotional help for officers is more important than ever with the problems law enforcement is facing in general, he said. More officers leave law enforcement entirely than leave to go to other agencies.
“We train them how to drive, shoot, work crashes and issue citations,” he said. “What are we doing above the neck? Where is that type of training? We have got to start changing the culture when it comes to what other training they need.”
Part of officer resiliency and wellness comes back to the community and community involvement, he said.
“When we put this uniform on, it feels like armor,” he said. “But you get to where you don’t want to take it off. It’s not a joke that when we sit in a restaurant we want to face the door. It becomes a part of life to where you can’t have a conversation with your child because you’re constantly scanning and asking if this is going to be the restaurant where we have a mass shooting.”
Poulos said he wants officers to get involved with their communities.
“My goal is for officers to come to civic projects and organizations where they’re not in uniform,” he said. “They’re in civilian clothes where they feel like a normal person. It’s going to be hard for us to get out of that mentality, but you have to start somewhere. We have got to start changing the culture.”
Brian Jones is the local government reporter for Columbus and Lowndes County.
You can help your community
Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 29 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.
You can help your community
Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 29 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.
Join the Discussion