WK 2 forum Law enforcement Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

WK 2 forum Law enforcement - Essay Example Police officers have an increased rate of suicide, alcoholism, and divorce than most other occupations. The extended costs to be paid from police stress are also astounding, with premature retirement, high absenteeism, lower rates of discipline, and disability. Stress also possesses hidden costs such as crisis management actions that the police require to redo their shift schedules and poor community relationships (Ellison, 2011). Most police personnel also tend to suppress stress, which has negative impacts on the police officers, their families, and ultimately their career. Suppression of stress eventually evolves into defensive mechanisms, for example, detachment of officers from their emotional lives (Ellison, 2011). This suppression benefits the police officer in the occurrence of crises, proving a systemic and validated way to release suppressed emotions especially after critical occurrences. However, the officers also suppress anger and frustration towards their supervisors, which causes questioning of their leadership skills. Police stress also leads to a high rate of divorce among police officers since they use work as a way to deal with their stress, thus staying away from home and accepting punishing shifts (Ellison, 2011). Suicide rates from stress related issues also have hard-hitting effects on families, as the officer may have been the sole breadwinner in the family. Spill over from demands at work, work family conflict, and emotional exhaustion leads to high marital discord rates, as well as divorce. Administrators in Police Departments have attempted to develop programs aimed at addressing the issue of stress among its personnel. This change has, however, been very slow because of the because of the bureaucracy inherent in most police departments Kearn (Kearney, 2009). First line supervisors carry a