Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Col steal Sust's Wait, Justice Listens, A Fate Shadows, seecres, Live,
doctors do the sa America scram Anologist coin sales of
law in the Alocycles, a crime break in, say Brust.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
And here's America's Criminologist, doctor Curry Myers.
Speaker 3 (00:43):
Hey, folks, how you doing. Welcome to America's Criminologists. I'm
doctor Curry Myers, retired major county sheriff and former special
agent and State trooper. Spent fifteen years in academia. Don't
hold that against me, serving as a school dean and
as a teaching criminology. During this show, we talk about
crime culture and the foundations that sustain civil society. I
(01:03):
have a little book coming out, and in that book
we talk about the importance of feral Man is what
I refer to it. So it is a two part
volume and part volume one talks about the cause why
we're in the situation that we are, and part two
goes into the rise of or the return from Pharaoh Man,
(01:27):
which talks about the things that we can do in
order to protect ourselves and protect our family from the
kind of civilization that we're running into. The show is
brought to you by real Resilience. It's a transformative program
helping inmates prepare for successful re entry using inspirational films
(01:51):
and guided discussions. Real resilience teaches a practical tools to
build resilience, strengthen relationships, and restore hope for the future.
It's real resilience. It's real learning done through real stories
where positive choices are modeled, not just preached. Real resilience
because re entry isn't just released, it's a second chance
(02:14):
done right. Today, we're tackling a subject that goes beyond
traditional discussions of crime and criminal justice. Increasingly, law enforcement
officers are encountering individuals who exhibit narcissistic, psychopathic, and a
social and predatory behaviors. These are individuals who often lack empathy,
(02:34):
reject accountability, and manipulate others for personal gain, and view
society's rules and norms as obstacles rather than responsibilities. Now
in my work as an applied criminologists often to refer
to this phenomenon as the feral Man complex. It's individuals
untethered from the foundational institutions of faith, family, and formation
(02:56):
that have historically helped shaped moral behavior and social worsts. Responsibility.
Whether it's violent offenders, chronic repeat criminals, gang members, career predators,
or individuals driven by deep sense of entitlement or grievance,
these encounters are becoming an increasingly common part of modern society.
(03:17):
In fact, I dare say that I think it's worse
than it has been since I've been alive. Crime necessarily
hasn't gone up. I think it has because we're not
keeping records like we used to, and we're not enforcing
the law like we used to. But we are having
a different type of criminal. But while we're often focused
(03:37):
on the impact of these individuals and victims and businesses
and communities, we spend far less time talking about what
repeated exposure to this behavior does to law enforcement officers themselves.
Every day, officers are asked to make split second decisions,
assess threats, manage conflict, and maintain professionalism while dealing with
(03:59):
some of the most most manipulative, deceptive, and dangerous people
in society. The kind of environment places tremendous cognitive, emotional,
and physical demands on those who wear the badge. So
how do officers maintain clear thinking under pressure? How does
repeated exposure to violence and hostility and human dysfunction affect
(04:21):
things like decision making and leadership and overall wellness, and,
perhaps most importantly, what can be done to prepare officers
not just to survive these accounters, but to actually thrive
throughout a long and healthy career. Today we'll discuss the
psychological realities of modern policing the concept of anti fragility
(04:41):
and how officers can build the resilience necessary to perform
at their very best and an increasingly challenging world. Joining
me today is doctor Jennifer Prohaska, a police psychologist who
works with high risk tactical teams at both the state
and federal level and is the found under of Tactical Longevity.
(05:02):
She specializes in critical incident response, pre incident performance optimization,
and building high performance teams operating in high stake environments.
Drawing from sports psychology and organizational psychology, doctor Prohaska helps
law enforcement professionals understand how stress affects our thinking, our
(05:23):
decision making, our behavior, our leadership during critical incidents, and
other things. She again is the founder of Tactical Longevity.
It's an anti fragility training program designed to prepare professionals
to withstand stress and sustain peak performance throughout their careers. Doc,
how are you doing, my friend?
Speaker 4 (05:43):
I'm doing good?
Speaker 3 (05:44):
Are you? I'm doing well. I am so pleased to
have you on your show, as have you on my show.
As we said before the show began, I have been
following your work for a number of years now, and
I've been trying to get you on the show, and
I'm an it's been my fault because I haven't done
a good job planning and scheduling, because I would have
(06:04):
put you at the front of the hopper, but every
time I thought, I saw your name and I go
I got to have her on, and then I realize
that I'm booked for the month. So I'm glad it
worked out, and I appreciate you very much for sure.
I'm glad to be here having a good summers. What's
a psychologist that deals with all of this stress and issues?
(06:26):
Do you do? You do? You find yourself looking staring
into the abyss at the end of the day and going, man,
I need to help a lot of people.
Speaker 5 (06:35):
So summers are interesting, you know.
Speaker 4 (06:37):
I always think we can predict crime, like when when
things are really going to pop off, And I do
think that when things get hotter, people get more reactive
to stress, and so either officers are less likely to
kind of behave as they want you. But definitely, I
think the average person in a confrontation with law enforcement
just behaves differently in the hot months.
Speaker 5 (06:55):
For sure.
Speaker 4 (06:56):
It's just one more stressor on the pile that I
think leads to them times making bad choices. So yeah,
I definitely summer months are when I kind of get
ready for a little bit more violence and honestly definitely
a little bit more drug exposures to.
Speaker 5 (07:08):
Which of course make makes people behave differently.
Speaker 3 (07:11):
So oh yeah, in the increase in mental illness that
we still don't have a handle on, especially to me, Doc,
this is I've proffered this theory. There is kind of
a red state blue state issue that's going on in
America that the red states are areas and there could
be a blue city in a red state, but it's
(07:31):
still red state blue state. The red states have a
handle on things. They've thrown away that the Summer of
Love from twenty twenty. They've gotten back to the realities.
They're supporting law enforcement again. Prosecutors are prosecuting cases. You know,
it's kind of back to a little bit of the normal.
(07:52):
We're trying to make up from the loss of some
manpower and retirement, mainly retirements, and to be able to
and we have police officers lead with ten or fifteen
years on the job, which was so important to try
to keep because they're the field generals, if you will.
As they go out, and then we have this kind
of blue phenomenon that's going on where they're not enforcing
(08:13):
the law. They have decriminalization. Whatever they do, there's more complaints,
there's more. California alone has like nearly eight fifty eight
or sixty percent of the homeless. I call it homeless
when it's not really homeless. Homelessness does occur for anybody yells,
but it's about five to ten percent of the number.
(08:35):
In reality, ninety percent of the people that are homeless
are because of drug or alcohol addiction or mental illness,
and we're not treating it. And so one person like
you is played so important of a position. I used
to tell my students in the classroom, law enforcement is
a mere reflection of the society in which they serve.
(08:56):
So true, and if we have KAO going on, there's
a high probability we're going to have chaos going on
within the ranks if we don't get our handle on
it and we don't try to help them as much
as possible. What are your thoughts on this kind of phenomenon,
And before we really get started with the questions, do
(09:19):
you kind of see this where you may have somebody
come from an area that is not letting them do
their job and some that are letting them do their job,
and it's affecting those officers differently.
Speaker 5 (09:33):
For sure.
Speaker 4 (09:33):
I will say that the red state blue state thing
is fascinating. I just recently had an experience. I won't
say where I was, but I had been brought into
kind of more of.
Speaker 5 (09:41):
A blue area and I realized that they were.
Speaker 4 (09:44):
Still trying policies from twenty twenty and it wasn't working
very well. And I could definitely feel it in the
environment I was in. And I think that, you know,
I live in a red state, red blue, purplish, you
know state, And I would say that we had a
little bit of a hiccup in twenty twenty and that
things are finally turning aro. I think we're getting back
to the law and order with a reasonable degree. Absolutely,
(10:05):
And I think that When people are in an environment
where they're policing with less chaos, people can lead better
inside as well. When you're surrounded by chaos, it becomes
the default. Like we are pack animals, we pick up
on the vibes around us. So if you're leading in chaos,
you're a sergeant. You're out there leading in a blue state.
That's kind of not the law and order type. I
(10:26):
think it makes it a way more chaotic insight, and
also I think there's a lack of clarity from the
top down when you play into those kind of those
scheme as.
Speaker 3 (10:34):
I'll say, yeah, absolutely, from your experience, you've worked a
lot with tactical teams. I was on a tactical team
for ten years. I enjoyed it so much. I loved
my career. It was full of dangers, but I felt
really good about what I did, serving something greater than myselves.
And I had a close relationship with my brothers and
(10:56):
sisters in law enforcement, and when I joined tea teams, especially,
I was the head of the clandestine lab team, which
did meth amphetamine labs. Yeah, but I was also a
member of the tactical team, and I can't think of
a time where I was more in tune mentally, physically,
and emotionally with a group of other men and women
(11:18):
than I was during that time period. How how does
it affect law enforcement? You know, we all we all
come from these kind of different careers, but there are
some jobs that we do within the career that come
and give us a different set of problems.
Speaker 4 (11:38):
Yeah, so definitely would say that the tactical teams are
you know, you're specialists, right, They're really they have the
coolest toys, you know, they get to go do the
kind of more higher risk things. They oftentimes walk in with.
Speaker 5 (11:48):
A plan as well.
Speaker 4 (11:49):
And I think one of the things that I was
thinking about when you just said that is that I
think when your mission is very specific, it helps improve
team behavior. And as law enforcement, you know, you know,
has become the social workers of society as well, that
mission has really kind of got diluted and really proliferated
at the same time.
Speaker 5 (12:08):
And I think that that makes it very very.
Speaker 4 (12:09):
Hard for people to find their pack or their tribe
within law enforcement, because we want something one mission that
we can clearly wrap around our heads, our heads around
and move forward with. And I think that tactical teams
I love working with them because it's very clear mission.
It's kind of like, how do we score the goal
in sports?
Speaker 3 (12:25):
Right?
Speaker 4 (12:26):
You know, we're playing soccer here, that's what we're doing.
You know, we're not playing hockey and soccer and football
and basketball at the same time. And I think that
analogy applies to what America sometimes has asked law enforcement
to do in our history is become animal control, social work,
mental health providers, and enforce the law. And when you
have such a spread like that, I just don't think
it's reasonable to think that you're going to have a
(12:47):
cohesive team.
Speaker 3 (12:49):
Yeah, we.
Speaker 6 (12:53):
Have.
Speaker 3 (12:54):
Again, I've referred to an as feral man. It's individuals
detached from social responsibility and moral straint. We're seeing anarchy
like never before. We're seeing anarchy that is promoted and
fostered by political elites and social elites, which is that's
been unusual. There was when there was anarchy in the
(13:15):
sixties and seventies, It wasn't necessarily promoted expressed publicly by politicians.
It's a different day and age when we're dealing with
this detachment that is occurring, and then there's there there.
It's not a it's not a diagnose, but we have
(13:37):
the kind of Trump derangement syndrome which ends up I
think it's probably should be studied because people go crazy
just dealing with his name alone. And how is that
affecting officers today when you're trying to go do your work,
when you're not really dealing with the reality of a
(13:58):
person and the issue that's going on in front of them.
They're dealing with something totally different, and they've applied it
and injected it into their current state or their conversation
or what they're doing, and then they make an excuse
that it's what they're doing is acceptable because of this
detachment that's going on.
Speaker 4 (14:20):
So you're talking about like compliance with social norms too
as well. Like we have an issue, I think with
people complying with what we would consider normal social norms.
And I understand having a little bit of flexibility on
what social norms are, and.
Speaker 5 (14:31):
I'm cool with that.
Speaker 4 (14:32):
I think when it comes to getting so flexible on
what's socially normative, what happens is you create a society
that has no laws, and there's lawless society and kind
of the officers then come into these environments where the
people that are interacting with are really unpredictable. Most of
us can kind of predict normal social behavior. If I
say hi to you, you say high back. That kind
(14:53):
of stuff is a normal social interaction, normal social engagement.
If I'm in a uniform and I'm identified as a police,
most people and the old ways of operating, I would say,
would say, oh, okay, cool, I'm gonna comply with that.
What we're seeing a lot of is just disrespect for
institutions in general, not just law enforcement. It's institutions on
the whole. You know, see people pulling away from religious institutions,
(15:15):
spiritual communities, those things, boy scouts, girls scouts, all of
those things. We're just pulling away and detaching from institutions.
And I think institutions are great for setting social and
cultural norms, and so when people pull away from those,
I think that contributes significantly to the types of individuals
officers are engaging with. So now they're engaging with people
that are non compliant, I would say, they're also way
(15:36):
more impulsive, way more reactive. And then there's also a
degree of non engagement. So there's almost like a zombie
level numbness. I think that I don't know what happened
during the twenty twenty COVID era, But we all came
out a little bit numb. And when people come out numb,
they don't respond as much to consequence, and so I
think we're seeing people not really care too much about consequence.
(15:57):
I always point to, like you see these like roving
groups of juveniles kind of being destructive and being problematic
in the news, and I think to myself, like these
this might sound a little overly sympathetic, but these kids
are a generation that had everything predictable taken away from them,
and so now they don't believe in anything, including you know,
societal institutions and rules and norms. That's I think why
(16:20):
some of their way they're behaving is because hey, look
they thought I'm going to go to high school and
I'm going to do my work and then I'm going
to get to do graduation or prom or my senior
season planning sports and all that got ripped away from
them in twenty twenty. And I think that now they
don't believe in anything, and so that includes institutions and
including the uniform.
Speaker 3 (16:39):
Yeah, and I have five children older, so I've got
three of them that are older two of them that
was we're going to school, one college, one high school
during COVID, and they have turned out, I mean, they
didn't like what was happening, but they've turned out socially
(16:59):
fond and you know, very involved in the church and
all those kinds of things. So what what was unique?
There's a there's a lack of accountability or a lack
of parenting. There's something that happened and not guide people
through that incidence that that time period that made them
(17:21):
disallow their own selves even more than what others went to.
Is there anything specific that you've been able to identify
that was causal during that time period that that made
certain people literally go wild and it's like the wilding,
It's like you.
Speaker 4 (17:40):
Know, yeah, yeah, I think that everyone lost hope and
everyone had a real I call it like lower self efficacy.
Speaker 5 (17:48):
The self efficacy is like.
Speaker 4 (17:50):
A great trait for like high resiliency and being able
to push through difficulty or things you can't control. Self
efficacy is I believe I can change myself in my situation.
And I think what a lot of jew Niles and
adults did during the COVID time was they lost self
efficacy and they developed a little bit of learned helplessness.
And when that happens, it's easier to throw up your
hands at the easiest site, the littlest thing that can
(18:12):
go wrong, you just throw up your hands and say,
I can't keep moving forward. And so I think that
some people didn't do that, and I think it's because
they had exceptionally high self efficacy that was tested over
time in their lifetime. They had that, then COVID hits,
they don't necessarily tell their kids, oh, you know, or
they don't demonstrate or model to their kids it's okay
to give up. I think they say, well, I'm going
to focus on what I can control, like all the
(18:34):
stuff I cannot, and so their kids see that modeled,
and then they come out of this difficult time period
looking totally different as opposed to I think some people's
parents are parental structures.
Speaker 5 (18:44):
That didn't do that.
Speaker 4 (18:45):
They said, oh, you know, we're not going and continuing
anything else we used to do. What a great opportunity
to not do any of that, and let's not bounce back.
And so they ended up demonstrating low self effocacy and
learned helplessness, and then their kids ended up picking that
up and taking that on themselves, which is which is
a shame.
Speaker 6 (19:02):
Really.
Speaker 3 (19:04):
Now, were you practicing during that COVID time period? Yes,
I was, okay. So did you have law enforcement that
came to you during that time period as well? Where
you were were you trying to help them specifically?
Speaker 4 (19:16):
Yeah, nothing changed here, To be honest with you, We
we operated like normal and I'm not ashamed to admit it.
We nothing ever changed here.
Speaker 5 (19:23):
We didn't go virtual. We just kept going.
Speaker 4 (19:25):
If they're going to keep going, we're going to keep going.
And I think that that showed some solidarity in some immunity.
But yeah, they were struggling during that time period because
all of a sudden, up was down, left was right,
and nothing really made sense. And you know, policing has
always been the ping pong ball of American society, we
love you, we hate you type of thing, but it.
Speaker 3 (19:42):
Got really comp Like a teenage teenager with a parent,
I hate you to.
Speaker 4 (19:48):
Absolutely absolutely no helped me out now, right, And so
it just got weird and I think a lot of
people left the field at that time because it just
didn't make any sense anymore. And then the you know,
societal push was for making police officers a certain kind
of way, and that is not the career they signed
up for. So they signed up to do this type
of job, with this type of way of doing the job,
(20:08):
and then all of a sudden, society flipped it on
them and it kept like snowballing out of control, and
I think a lot of people left because it wasn't
the job that they ever signed up for.
Speaker 3 (20:18):
We had some, yeah, we had some police officers in
fact that were to me, politics has been injected into
policing more than ever. There's more mayors that are now
hyper political. They used to be when you were a mayor,
you hired a police chief and then you've let him
or herb run the department and keep people safe. I
mean that's the way it was. And then all of
(20:38):
a sudden we have this hyper politicization of law enforcement
where the mayors had become like a super chief deciding
what to do and not to do. Did you have
officers struggle with the edeks that came down from mayors
saying that we're going to enforce you know, distancing and
masks and all that kind of stuff, when you have
(21:00):
some places that weren't doing it at all, but you
had some that became like hyper focused on that and
that's not the job of police, and they're forced into that,
and it caused a lot of angst between the public
and towards police officers for a while for those jurisdictions
that were doing it.
Speaker 4 (21:18):
Yeah, and luckily I did not work with any jurisdictions
that were really being you know, mandated by their you know,
city government to enforce said things. I'm really glad because
I think that would have been almost a no go
for a lot of my folks. Again, I'm in a
red state, mostly red state, so but I saw the
internal struggle I think that law enforcement officers were having
with the entire COVID experience in general, mostly because these
(21:40):
are people that when they sign up to do the job,
they inherently know that within the job description is and
I may lose my life, and.
Speaker 5 (21:48):
So they already knew that.
Speaker 4 (21:49):
And so when we put kind of arbitrary kind of
constraints on people or like you know, we're making like
the grand gestures to keep people safe, I think that
their risk tolerance in general is so much higher, and
so I think that in itself kind of caused disruption
and that was probably bigger of a problem than anything.
Speaker 3 (22:08):
Let's talk the dark psychological traits, because I'm very intrigued
in this. I feel like that as a result of
untreated mental illness, the kind of feral wilding that's going on,
we're seeing an increase in the dark psychological traits and
that's unique. And of course when you have people with
(22:28):
the dark psychological traits, sometimes the crime can get very
very dark, very disturbed, and then you get into the
dark tetrads, you know, where it includes even sadism. So
any thoughts on how the dark traits are impacting man
today as opposed to twenty thirty, even sixty years ago.
Speaker 4 (22:50):
Oh man, okay, So I think that, you know, technology
and social media is great, but I think we have
to think about the proliferation of what appears to be
normal behavior through those media. So the things that will
get you the most attention and how the algorithm works
are the things that are most extreme. And so I
think when we are exposed to things that are the
most extreme, it starts to normalize other versions of that
(23:13):
behavior in ourselves.
Speaker 5 (23:14):
We are social.
Speaker 4 (23:15):
Animals and we pick up on cues of other people,
and so if we see a lot of violence being
perpetuated in society by you know, sociopathic individuals, people with
you know, psychopathic traits. I think we start to feel
like there's a degree of normalization in that. And so
I think that just merely social media in itself or
just proliferation of technology and media has contributed to I
(23:37):
think a rise in the visibility of people behaving that way. Now,
just because people behave that way doesn't necessarily mean they
meet diagnostic criteria for you know, sociopathy or psychopathy or narcissism,
of course, but I think there's been a permission granted,
if you will, to do extreme behaviors or behave certain
ways to people in order to get attention.
Speaker 5 (23:59):
And that's a problem.
Speaker 4 (24:00):
I also, I mean, this is an unpopular kind of
maybe take on this and more of an evolutionary take that.
Back in the old days, if we had someone that
was demonstrating sociopathic tendencies in particular, they weren't compliant with
the group norms. They were you know, raping and pillaging
and all that kind of stuff. We you know, they
went out hunting one day with Bob and.
Speaker 5 (24:20):
They never came back type of thing. They were already
eliminated and now they're there.
Speaker 4 (24:24):
We can't do that, and I understand why, but that
was it was naturally removed before we got to a
more I guess the society we live in today, yeah,
we don't do that. So I think that it's been
you know, statistically speaking, they say, you know, probably not
actually technically increasing if you really look at the stats.
(24:44):
But I think that the behaviors or the subtleties like
not full diagnoses are probably increasing in society as well.
Speaker 5 (24:51):
And the problem with that is.
Speaker 4 (24:54):
They are rather unpredictable characters and it makes it hard.
One of the things that happens when we walk through
life is we predict how other people will behave and
we have a certain amount of mental energy that we
use to predict how if I engage with someone, how
they're going to behave and then how I'm going to
behave back. And when people have kind of the dark
triad or more on like the you know, psychopathic, sociopathic,
(25:17):
or narcissistic traits, it takes much more energy or more
like what we call cognitive load to predict certain people's behaviors,
and so I think it's wearing them out. And then
also when we look at these characteristics in people and
you know, full blown illness in people related to narcissism, sociopathy,
or psychopathy. They do sometimes engage in some of the
(25:40):
more heinous crimes that are really shocking to the eyes.
Speaker 3 (25:44):
Yeah. And if the average person's cognitive load is getting full,
imagine the cognitive load of police officers that are you know,
one hundred times the cognitive load trying to trying to
keep it in play. And I'm glad you brought up
too about where people can suffer from these traits but
not necessarily be diagnosed. I mean, that's the whole impetus
(26:06):
behind social contagions, right, is that it can just catch
up and people can just start, you know, like you said,
just start wandering and following people as a result of
those social contagents. I mean, we see it a lot
today because of social technology and the advent of technology.
But the salem which issue is social contagion and its earliest,
(26:30):
you know, it's spread from community.
Speaker 4 (26:32):
To community, absolutely, And I mean that's how we're just
social beings. And I think sometimes as much as we
like to deny our animalistic nature, we are social pack animals.
Speaker 3 (26:41):
Yeah, So what happens to officers cognitively when they're exposed
to this kind of aggression and anti social behavior.
Speaker 4 (26:51):
Yeah, well, I think it takes up too much load,
you know, it takes up the cognitive load, so they
sometimes will get more tired. In particular at the end
of shift, they're just exhausted. Also, you just you have
to expand your your bandwidth to be able to deal
with folks like that because they are so unpredictable. It's
so incredibly impossible to be able to predict especially I
(27:11):
always say the only thing predictable about mental illness is
that nothing is predictable and so and I've got stories
of when I used to work in an in patient
setting that that definitely taught me.
Speaker 5 (27:21):
That for sure.
Speaker 3 (27:22):
So yeah, doctor Paraska, can you come back for round two?
Speaker 6 (27:26):
Sure?
Speaker 3 (27:26):
Absolutely? All right, folks, when we return from the break,
we'll talk about tactical longevity with doctor Porhaska. So stay tuned.
We'll be right back in three minutes. Ah right, folks.
(27:53):
Doctor Curry Myers here to let you know that my
new show is called America's Criminologist with Doctor Curry Myers
every Tuesday and one PM. Is a former state trooper
special agent share for a major county. I will offer
sharp insights into the pressing issues shaping American society today.
I'll have guests, news, and my insights as an applied
criminologist throughout the one hour show. So criminals and the
(28:14):
progressive politicians that allow them to fester beware because this
show is directed at you, America's criminologist. Every Tuesday at
one pm on k M E.
Speaker 7 (28:23):
T listen to Constitution Radio with Douglas P. Gibbs, your
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ninety Saturdays at one in the afternoon.
Speaker 6 (28:41):
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Speaker 3 (30:25):
Hey, my friends, is doctor Curry Meyers, America's criminologist. I
have a new sponsor for my show, I Mean Real Resilience.
That's our ab L transformative program helping inmates prepare for
successful re entry and uses inspirational films and guided discussions.
Real Resilience teaches practical tools to build resilience. It's really
(30:47):
an important tool real resilience, because reentry isn't just released,
it's a second chance done right. All right, folks, welcome
back to America's criminologists. Please remember you can view my
work on substack at doctor Currymeyers dot substack dot com.
(31:09):
And if you're interested on the faith side, then I
have a podcast dedicated to that as well. It's called
the Saint Michael's Group Podcast at Saint Michael's dot substack
dot com. Also available if you would like for me
to come speak, you can reach out to me anytime.
If you would like to like to have me come
out and speak on faith issues, then you can reach
(31:30):
out to Catholic Speakers at Catholic Speakers dot com and
they'll be happy to book you for me. So, law
enforcement is one of the few professions where you're expected
to make life altering decisions and seconds while carrying the
cumulative weight of years of stress, trauma, and responsibility. Every
shift demands physical readiness, mental sharpness, emotional control, and an
(31:54):
unwavering moral compass. Yet the real challenge isn't simply surviving
a critical incident. It's actually sustaining excellence over an entire career,
and I'll tell you one event can be life changing
to that officer, and sometimes they're not able to deal
with it, assass it and come back from it, especially
when they're feel like they're isolated and left alone and
(32:17):
know one to talk to. I remember when I was
in the nineteen ninety three Federal building shootout and bombing incident.
The next day I showed up for work. It was
kind of put your pants on, show up for work
the next day. We just didn't have any of those
kinds of things to help us deal with the emotion
that was going through at that time. Today, we're going
(32:40):
to explore what it takes for an officer to remain silient, healthy,
and effective in a profession that continually tests the mind, body,
and spirit. We're back with doctor Jennifer Prohaska, a police
psychologist who works with high risk tactical teams at both
the state and federal level and a founder of Tactical
Longevity and view that website Tactical Longevity. When she comes
(33:03):
back on, hopefully she will give that link so you
can understand it more. Doc, welcome back to the show.
Thank you, Thank you Tactical Longevity. How can people follow
your work?
Speaker 5 (33:13):
Yeah, tactical Loongevity dot com.
Speaker 4 (33:15):
And then also I'm on LinkedIn as nerdy as that
is so just you know, Jennifer Perasco on LinkedIn and
then also Instagram and Facebook. So Instagram is doctor Jenny Peraska. Facebook, uh,
doctor Jenny Prasco.
Speaker 5 (33:28):
Actually, so there you are.
Speaker 3 (33:29):
Oh you've made it simple. I know, marketing marketing genius.
Speaker 4 (33:34):
Well, you know, my last name is complicated, so it's
not a common one. If it was Jenny Smith, we'd
have an issue.
Speaker 3 (33:38):
So yeah, yeah, you use the term anti fragility. I
think it's an interesting term. So what does that mean
for law enforcement professionals?
Speaker 4 (33:47):
Yeah, so I'm going to compare it to something that's
a pretty common word you're going to hear is, which
is resiliency. So resiliency is your ability to bounce back
after an incident or stress to your original form, kind
of return back to baseline.
Speaker 5 (33:59):
That's resiliency.
Speaker 4 (34:00):
Everybody's heard of that. Anti fragility is a little bit
of a step up from that. And I'm really more
on the anti fragility side nowadays in particular, which is basically,
how do I use the bad thing that just happened
to me? And how do I use that experience to
make me a better human? How do I not only
bounce back, but actually use that as an accelerator for
my own own growth? And so I'm big on anti
(34:21):
fragility because I think that frankly, some people's resiliency baselines
are not good enough, and so I think we need
to be using our bad experiences to make us better people.
Speaker 3 (34:33):
Okay, yeah, I mean it's can you does law enforcement
get that? When you when you you know you have
to do a little bit of marketing. You know in
your you're not just psychologists, but you have to. It's
a tough nut to crack to get into law enforcement
because you've got to be part of the you know,
the the language, the talk, that kind of stuff. As
(34:54):
you as you probably know, it's not a try. We
don't trust what you don't truly easy.
Speaker 5 (35:00):
Oh, trust is a low low item.
Speaker 3 (35:02):
On the time. I'm just curious, how did how were
you able to kind of kind of because you've been
extremely successful and you you help a lot of police
officers and a lot of departments, So how did you
build that? Because just getting in the door can be
extremely difficult unless you don't want to give any trade secrets,
then give any trade secrets. That's fine.
Speaker 5 (35:25):
Now the good news is, I'm pretty sure it's not
a trade secret. It's just part of me.
Speaker 4 (35:28):
And I will say I've been I've been blessed with
a adversarial personality, and I know that's weird to say,
but it has really helped me. I think that, you know,
even in graduate school. You know, most psychologists are incredibly
publicly correct, usually more on the liberal side, right, And
so I walked through most of graduate school as a
total black sheep, and I was like, this might not
(35:49):
be the career for me, right, And so I'm walking
through life like that. You know, graduate school is a
long period of time. You know, you do four years
of undergrad then you go to graduate school where you're
in your little cohort of like people. For me, it
was six people in my program at the time, and
I'm definitely the black sheep at that point. I'm pretty direct.
I'm pretty I was pretty challenging. I'm pretty sure my
classmates did not care for me because I was always
(36:12):
going But what about that doesn't make sense, that's not realistic.
Speaker 5 (36:14):
Ivory Tower, like, you.
Speaker 4 (36:16):
Know, because academia has that, and I think you know
that personally, and so I was always challenging things, and
so that's that's just my adversarial personality is a fit.
Speaker 5 (36:25):
And then I would say I've been very I've.
Speaker 4 (36:28):
Been very good today and haven't cursed once, and I'm
very proud of myself for that. But there's a degree
of just adopting the language and being very authentic and genuine.
And so when you show up authentic and genuine, that's.
Speaker 3 (36:39):
Just what it is.
Speaker 4 (36:40):
Man like, Like I'm adversarial by nature. I show up
authentic and genuine, and I can't. I can't bullshit anymore.
I've run out of space for that. I've ran out
early in life, you know, on that. And so I
think that that the cops are like amazing light detectors,
and I think that when I showed up authentic and
just put it all out there, that's how it worked.
Speaker 3 (36:58):
Yeah, yeah, no doubt. There's a it has not been diagnosed.
You may disagree or I agree with it. There's a
thing called operators syndrome that's going around. If I don't
believe I don't have PTSD, not that I'm aware of,
(37:21):
but I cannot even now to this day, I can't
turn things off. You know, I'm overly situationally aware. I
think often about the past, both things I could have
done better, as well as reliving whether it be a homicide.
(37:42):
I had one homicide that I couldn't solve, the rest
I could solve, and that to this day that haunts
me naturally. The nineteen ninety three incident is weighs in
my mind. And then all the other cases that I worked,
and again I did the kind of law enforcement work
where I was. I did a lot compared to just
(38:03):
you know, the average person, and I when I got
to do research on this operator syndrome, it seems likely that,
even though it's not an official diagnosis, I probably leaned
towards something like that. Have you done anything to look
at that and understand it? Oh?
Speaker 4 (38:24):
Yeah, I can't believe you brought that up, because so
many people do not know about this. I like, so,
I'm neuropsych trained. I was trained at the University of
Kansas Medical Center and neuropsychological you know, testing and rehabilitation
and all this kind of stuff. So when I here's
someone mentioned operator syndrome, I'm like, yes, thank you so
much for saying it because honestly, it's probably more of
(38:45):
what I see than anything else, except it's not a
real diagnosis. And so this is a concept just to
kind of update your audience. Operator syndrome is a concept basically,
and it's been research and it has been published recently
in some top tier medical journals. It has not picked
up a lot of traction in the United States, and
I think I have a conspiracy theory reason why we
can talk about later.
Speaker 3 (39:05):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (39:05):
Yeah, But operator syndrome is basically a set of symptoms
that are showing up in people that have had high tempo,
high stress careers, where basically they're showing up with a
set of like brain based symptoms as well as indo
chronology based symptoms or hormone based symptoms. So they're showing
up with vestibular issues or balance issues. They're showing up
(39:25):
with memory issues and difficulty, high irritability, you know, tonights
is something that we often kind of put in that category.
Oftentimes their metabolic profile looks awful, sleep issues, you name it,
and then high emotional reactivity in particular, and they don't
necessarily have that classic PTSD look where they're having flashbacks, nightmares,
and truce thoughts per se. But it's just like everything
(39:48):
gets slowed down like in mud a lot.
Speaker 5 (39:51):
They'll complain of brain fog things like that.
Speaker 4 (39:53):
So operator syndrome has not been formally recognized in the
United States. I think that some of the things that
we know that might cause it are also exposure to
blast injury, not just TBI like.
Speaker 5 (40:04):
Your traumatic brain injury, major injury.
Speaker 4 (40:06):
I'm talking about falls, punches, blast exposures, lots of breacher
brain stuff like all those micro like little micro tears
that might be happening in the brain and it's causing
a certain profile. And so doctor Free, I got to
give respect to Chris Free. He's the one who does
all this research, and so I'm very very well acquainted
with it. And I would say that a lot of
(40:27):
my tactical team guys show profiles. And I also think
that the reason it hasn't to go straight into my
conspiracy theory, the reason that it hasn't taken off is
because I think if it's acknowledged medically, the VA will
have a massive problem on their hands.
Speaker 3 (40:41):
Oh there's no doubt. Yeah, there's no doubt, because it is,
as you rightfully said, it's not PTSD. It's totally different,
and it's almost like even in gut health and Yep,
there were so many things. That's the reason I'm trying
to focus. I love officer wellness. I want to try
to help officers as well. I don't know how to
(41:03):
do that other than have this show and talk about
it and be open about it, open about things that
I've had. But I call it the importance of a
three legged stool, and that's mind, body and spirit.
Speaker 6 (41:15):
Ye.
Speaker 3 (41:17):
And as you know, police officers, especially TAC guys, mind
and body are huge. I mean they are physically fit,
they are constantly training and trying to get to the
next level. They're usually highly educated. They'll spend time doing research.
(41:41):
As you said, I think at the beginning they have
to prep. They have to make sure their briefings, pre briefings,
post briefings are articulate, are well thought out, are well planned,
because somebody's life may be at risk if they don't so.
But it also means we know how to compartmentalize rule easily.
And I've compartmentalized my entire life. You know, bad things.
(42:07):
It's over here in closet D, shelf C through E.
It seems like and I don't go into that closet
very often.
Speaker 5 (42:16):
Yeah, you know, and and but.
Speaker 3 (42:20):
We don't focus enough on the whole, the whole package,
which means and that reason I was so excited when
you talked about the body side of it in terms
of of getting understanding our macro nutrients, understanding what we're
putting into our body to help whether or not we're
(42:40):
maybe we have gluten stuff that's being exposed because of
a of a mental state that we're in that's occurred.
And until I got to the position where I understand
and went to a a more holistic type of medicine,
where my doctor kind of went to a functional more
(43:03):
of a functional health medicine, she was able to help
me understand what I was really going through and how
my gut and how I wasn't paying attention to the
right you know, different areas, and it all kind of
impacts your life at different time.
Speaker 4 (43:20):
For sure, all those three things are connected, you know,
the three legates to all the mind, body spirit thing.
I mean, I think sometimes we like to medicalize things
and get away from that, but down to its core
that shows up over and over and over again. And
what you're saying about like kind of the gut brain connection,
or the mental health and gut connection is really interesting,
I think, especially recently because we are learning a lot
(43:42):
about and this goes back to like the more traditional
western medicine again, but we're learning a lot about like
the GLP one effect on mental health, and you know,
there's some research that says that GLP ones and some
other compounds actually are like helping repair that gut. And
when they do that, I notice in my patients I'm
actually seeing quite interesting just anecdotally, of course, I have
(44:02):
to be careful here, but anecdotally I am seeing an
interesting turnaround, and they're like depression and anxiety symptoms in particular,
and also there's sleep habits. So I know there's much
more studying that needs to be done, but I will
say that gut brain connection super important.
Speaker 5 (44:16):
We don't know enough about it.
Speaker 4 (44:17):
And then also like these peptides, especially BBC one five seven,
which is definitely like you know, gut reparative, it helps
with that component of it. And I'm very much out
of my league talking much more about it. Besides that,
I think that what we're seeing is, man, this might
be much more important than may ever really realized. And
when it comes to the tach operators or my swat guys,
(44:39):
I will say you mentioned that they spend a lot
of time on their you know, physical and mental side,
and I'm gonna say I slightly disagree here. They spend
a great amount of time on their physical side and
the mental side with regards to mentally making decisions quickly
or registering their spatial awareness and things like that. They
actually don't spend probably the right amount of energy on
(45:01):
things like better self awareness.
Speaker 3 (45:03):
You know.
Speaker 4 (45:04):
They they do spend some time on self regulational say,
but they do struggle I think with things like mental
flexibility or how do I make choices based on what's
a priority and what's my values personally? And they do
struggle nowadays. And know maybe not when you were on teams,
but they're struggling now with like deeper connection in that
sense of belonging in teamwork. And so I think that yes,
they are working in some areas and they they're getting
(45:28):
like a C or a B minus is being nice,
you know, a grade level on their mental stuff because
they probably should be working in a different way.
Speaker 3 (45:36):
Yeah, I totally agree with you. I I think when
I was referring to mind, I meant the academic study.
Oh yeah, the prep, the trying to go back. Hey,
I need to get a master you know, I need
to get a master's or I need to I need
to know how to do this policy. You know they're intellectual, Yeah,
(45:58):
the intellectual side. But I completely to agree with you
because it wasn't any different back then. Those were the
fallacies I had. And then the last thing was the
faith side. I call it spirit. For me, it's faith.
If we don't have a faith life, if we don't
have some sort of connection to our faith life, we
(46:21):
can get lost and not have hope. Because I will
tell you, and I struggled with this. You see, every
time you turn around, you go, how could God exist
if this occurs? How could God exist? If you see this?
How could God exist? If you see this and it
gets stuck in your mind where all of a sudden
it affects your faith, It affects what you believe, and
(46:43):
you can't have that happen. I mean, I know how
I struggled that for years. I know why it happens. Now.
It's called free will. God's given us free will to
decide to do. These things are not doing those things. Okay,
that's out of my control. But now I can lead
to understand and be able to say, okay, I can
(47:04):
deal with it, and I can still have a faith
life because I now understand it, and I can try
to not do the things that would tempt me because
of that free will and understand the society shouldn't do
that and tempt us as a result of that free will.
So as faith, you know, I don't want it. Some
people want to stay away from it. But how important
(47:25):
is kind of connecting with their faith life to make
sure that they are staying centered and putting really, God,
the ultimate creator is number one, so they can remember
who they are.
Speaker 5 (47:37):
Well, I told you I was authentic, right, So here
we go.
Speaker 4 (47:41):
I this is a little personal about me, but I
think it will help you kind of understand my answer
a little bit. I have always been in total admiration
for people who can connect with that faith.
Speaker 5 (47:50):
It's been a challenge for me from the beginning.
Speaker 4 (47:52):
And you know, people in my profession tend to shy
away from you know, faith based initiatives in general. Right,
and so you know, and I tend to be a
little bit more intellectual on things, but I can tell
you time and time again, when I get officers that
have a strong sense of faith, spirituality and or meaning making,
they can make meaning of things and a lot of
(48:13):
times faith comes into that they tend to need me less.
And so I think that there's something that's a superpower.
I think that if nothing else, it helps you get
their really horrific things. It also, I think creates a
sense of like what I can and can't control. And
so when we think about people that are really anti fragile,
one of the things that they're really good at is
(48:33):
separating out what they can and cannot control. And I
think that faith allows a vehicle for that to happen better.
Speaker 3 (48:40):
Yeah, yeah, well I try to educate people. Listen, you
spent a lifetime fighting and battling with bad guys and
that are girls, and that's an honorable thing and a
good thing. But don't forget the spiritual side of it,
because there's a spiritual world that you could that were
If you're not paying attention to it, it can take
(49:03):
you over, absolutely, and it's it's one of the things
that you know I And the cool part is we
have been through some I think bad times when it
comes to our spiritual life and who we are and
you know what we're serving. But it seems to me
that the concept of moral relativism is starting to wane,
(49:25):
and now we're seeing more and more people say there
is something more. The last couple of years, we've seen
this kind of you know, reigniting, of people going, I
do serve something greater than myself. You know, there's something
else out there that ultimately is in charge, and I
(49:46):
want to help get closer to it.
Speaker 4 (49:50):
As a result, agree, And I think that that's part
of what naturally comes next after you have to really
reckon with the things you don't have control over. And
I think that and when we go through difficult times
society or as a profession or as an individual, you
have to reckon, you have to make sense of and
I think that that's where faith becomes incredibly important.
Speaker 3 (50:11):
Yeah, very important thing right here. So what makes what
are the most common performance mistakes that officers make under
stress when they haven't been able to deal with their stress.
What are you seeing as the most common mistakes?
Speaker 4 (50:27):
They either get emotionally overreactive or underreactive, and both of
those can be exceptionally dangerous. So I think when people
are not dialed into what's happening with them and where
their stress level is and how an't managing that better?
I see just the make errors and performance related to
I overreacted or I underreacted, and both are not good.
When you're in this type of profession, you need to
(50:48):
have the perfect style and type of reaction to every situation,
and so the pressure is on to be able to
do that at all times for twenty plus years, no joke,
but I think that's the mistakes I see is definitely
being underreactive or overreactive.
Speaker 5 (51:02):
And then I think the other things that I see is.
Speaker 4 (51:04):
Then kind of loser self in the process, so they
don't act in line with what's important to them and
they get disconnected or things. So, like I told you,
one of my values, one of the things that's important
to me is being authentic and honest. And I think
that sometimes when people are so exhausted and so tired,
they don't act in line with what's important to them,
and when that happens, their love for the job and
(51:25):
for life can kind of go away too.
Speaker 3 (51:27):
Yeah, and it really affects the family too, because sometimes
they can they can say okay, I'm going to be
okay at work or I'm just going to kind of disconnect,
but I'm going to show it at home, and then
that leads. Divorce rates are high, They're extremely high. In
law enforcement. Unfortunately, suicide rates are you know, starting to
increase as well. When we have these kinds of incidents.
(51:50):
Was when it comes to an employee, I employee, excuse me,
an officer being killed in the line of duty. I have, unfortunately,
known quite a few officers that have been killed in
the line of duty. In my role, I worked with
a lot of other police departments because as a special
agent especially, my job was to go out and work
with others, help them build cases, be the case agent,
(52:12):
if you will. So that gave me exposure to many
different departments around many different jurisdictions, and I've lost some
people that I've worked with. I have seen many people
lose their career because of the death of a fellow
police officer and the department didn't recognize behaviors as a
(52:32):
result of that death. Maybe it's a little slightly different.
It's the death of somebody that they were with, maybe
their partner, maybe they were around, and they weren't able
to cope with it, and you started seeing a decline
in their work, and then you started seeing maybe criminal
activity or something else occur, or maybe addictions occur, and
(52:55):
then all of a sudden, they're out, they're done, they're gone,
they're early retired. Whatever can we is what is the
focus now? To try to understand the importance of an
officer death affects the entire department, but especially that the
ones that he or she worked with the closest, and
(53:18):
you got to keep an eye on them to make
sure that they remain healthy in dealing with this tragedy.
Speaker 4 (53:25):
Yeah, I will say I think one of the things
that we can do is obviously educate leadership a little
bit more. One of the challenges though with this is
a lot of times when you see, you know, officers
post line of duty death, you know, officers around that
officer kind of spiral out and do all the destructive
stuff you mentioned.
Speaker 5 (53:41):
The tale is really long.
Speaker 4 (53:42):
That runway towards that like ultimate behavior that ends their
career is very long, and I.
Speaker 5 (53:47):
Hate seeing that.
Speaker 4 (53:48):
But one of the things I see is people jump
to judgment like, oh, I guess we just had a
bad guy in our midst The whole time, and I'm like.
Speaker 5 (53:55):
No, dummies, no you didn't. You know, no, you know
you didn't.
Speaker 4 (53:58):
This is a long building process over time. You just
didn't see the recency of it. It's because it's not recent.
It takes long time to develop over time, especially until
somebody gets caught or punished, etc.
Speaker 5 (54:09):
It rises to that level.
Speaker 4 (54:11):
I think people don't realize a lot of times it's connected.
We don't have chapters in our lives.
Speaker 5 (54:16):
We have an entire book that's made up of chapters.
Speaker 4 (54:19):
Yeah, and so I think people need to realize that
what happens in chapter four absolutely affects chapter ten. There
is a through line in everyone else's life and so
and so educating them that way is really necessary, I think.
And then also officers realizing that, like, this is a
slow and steady progression. It's not an overnight thing. This
builds one little degree at a time.
Speaker 3 (54:39):
Well, if you could leave with America's law enforcement officers
with one message about sustaining excellence, health and purpose throughout
their careers, what would that be.
Speaker 4 (54:47):
Think of yourself like a professional athlete, treat your body,
your mind, and your soul that way.
Speaker 3 (54:52):
Oh that's awesome. Wow, boy, it runs fast when you're
having a good time. At least I was having a
good time then runs fast. So thank you so much.
I highly recommend people watch and listen to Doctor Prohaska.
Thanks so much for coming on the show.
Speaker 4 (55:08):
And again, what's the website tactic along jeviy dot com.
Speaker 3 (55:13):
Beautiful My friends, Doctor Curry Myers been America's criminologists. Stay safe,
stay informed, and remember to check out my work on substack.
Doctor Curry Myers dot substack dot com. Stay safe and
see you next week.
Speaker 1 (55:31):
Came steals us distrusting me as afraid Shadows sets do
Coscramnologist sells by three
Col steal Sust's Wait, Justice Listens, A Fate Shadows, seecres, Live,
doctors do the sa America scram Anologist coin sales of
law in the Alocycles, a crime break in, say Brust.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
And here's America's Criminologist, doctor Curry Myers.
Speaker 3 (00:43):
Hey, folks, how you doing. Welcome to America's Criminologists. I'm
doctor Curry Myers, retired major county sheriff and former special
agent and State trooper. Spent fifteen years in academia. Don't
hold that against me, serving as a school dean and
as a teaching criminology. During this show, we talk about
crime culture and the foundations that sustain civil society. I
(01:03):
have a little book coming out, and in that book
we talk about the importance of feral Man is what
I refer to it. So it is a two part
volume and part volume one talks about the cause why
we're in the situation that we are, and part two
goes into the rise of or the return from Pharaoh Man,
(01:27):
which talks about the things that we can do in
order to protect ourselves and protect our family from the
kind of civilization that we're running into. The show is
brought to you by real Resilience. It's a transformative program
helping inmates prepare for successful re entry using inspirational films
(01:51):
and guided discussions. Real resilience teaches a practical tools to
build resilience, strengthen relationships, and restore hope for the future.
It's real resilience. It's real learning done through real stories
where positive choices are modeled, not just preached. Real resilience
because re entry isn't just released, it's a second chance
(02:14):
done right. Today, we're tackling a subject that goes beyond
traditional discussions of crime and criminal justice. Increasingly, law enforcement
officers are encountering individuals who exhibit narcissistic, psychopathic, and a
social and predatory behaviors. These are individuals who often lack empathy,
(02:34):
reject accountability, and manipulate others for personal gain, and view
society's rules and norms as obstacles rather than responsibilities. Now
in my work as an applied criminologists often to refer
to this phenomenon as the feral Man complex. It's individuals
untethered from the foundational institutions of faith, family, and formation
(02:56):
that have historically helped shaped moral behavior and social worsts. Responsibility.
Whether it's violent offenders, chronic repeat criminals, gang members, career predators,
or individuals driven by deep sense of entitlement or grievance,
these encounters are becoming an increasingly common part of modern society.
(03:17):
In fact, I dare say that I think it's worse
than it has been since I've been alive. Crime necessarily
hasn't gone up. I think it has because we're not
keeping records like we used to, and we're not enforcing
the law like we used to. But we are having
a different type of criminal. But while we're often focused
(03:37):
on the impact of these individuals and victims and businesses
and communities, we spend far less time talking about what
repeated exposure to this behavior does to law enforcement officers themselves.
Every day, officers are asked to make split second decisions,
assess threats, manage conflict, and maintain professionalism while dealing with
(03:59):
some of the most most manipulative, deceptive, and dangerous people
in society. The kind of environment places tremendous cognitive, emotional,
and physical demands on those who wear the badge. So
how do officers maintain clear thinking under pressure? How does
repeated exposure to violence and hostility and human dysfunction affect
(04:21):
things like decision making and leadership and overall wellness, and,
perhaps most importantly, what can be done to prepare officers
not just to survive these accounters, but to actually thrive
throughout a long and healthy career. Today we'll discuss the
psychological realities of modern policing the concept of anti fragility
(04:41):
and how officers can build the resilience necessary to perform
at their very best and an increasingly challenging world. Joining
me today is doctor Jennifer Prohaska, a police psychologist who
works with high risk tactical teams at both the state
and federal level and is the found under of Tactical Longevity.
(05:02):
She specializes in critical incident response, pre incident performance optimization,
and building high performance teams operating in high stake environments.
Drawing from sports psychology and organizational psychology, doctor Prohaska helps
law enforcement professionals understand how stress affects our thinking, our
(05:23):
decision making, our behavior, our leadership during critical incidents, and
other things. She again is the founder of Tactical Longevity.
It's an anti fragility training program designed to prepare professionals
to withstand stress and sustain peak performance throughout their careers. Doc,
how are you doing, my friend?
Speaker 4 (05:43):
I'm doing good?
Speaker 3 (05:44):
Are you? I'm doing well. I am so pleased to
have you on your show, as have you on my show.
As we said before the show began, I have been
following your work for a number of years now, and
I've been trying to get you on the show, and
I'm an it's been my fault because I haven't done
a good job planning and scheduling, because I would have
(06:04):
put you at the front of the hopper, but every
time I thought, I saw your name and I go
I got to have her on, and then I realize
that I'm booked for the month. So I'm glad it
worked out, and I appreciate you very much for sure.
I'm glad to be here having a good summers. What's
a psychologist that deals with all of this stress and issues?
(06:26):
Do you do? You do? You find yourself looking staring
into the abyss at the end of the day and going, man,
I need to help a lot of people.
Speaker 5 (06:35):
So summers are interesting, you know.
Speaker 4 (06:37):
I always think we can predict crime, like when when
things are really going to pop off, And I do
think that when things get hotter, people get more reactive
to stress, and so either officers are less likely to
kind of behave as they want you. But definitely, I
think the average person in a confrontation with law enforcement
just behaves differently in the hot months.
Speaker 5 (06:55):
For sure.
Speaker 4 (06:56):
It's just one more stressor on the pile that I
think leads to them times making bad choices. So yeah,
I definitely summer months are when I kind of get
ready for a little bit more violence and honestly definitely
a little bit more drug exposures to.
Speaker 5 (07:08):
Which of course make makes people behave differently.
Speaker 3 (07:11):
So oh yeah, in the increase in mental illness that
we still don't have a handle on, especially to me, Doc,
this is I've proffered this theory. There is kind of
a red state blue state issue that's going on in
America that the red states are areas and there could
be a blue city in a red state, but it's
(07:31):
still red state blue state. The red states have a
handle on things. They've thrown away that the Summer of
Love from twenty twenty. They've gotten back to the realities.
They're supporting law enforcement again. Prosecutors are prosecuting cases. You know,
it's kind of back to a little bit of the normal.
(07:52):
We're trying to make up from the loss of some
manpower and retirement, mainly retirements, and to be able to
and we have police officers lead with ten or fifteen
years on the job, which was so important to try
to keep because they're the field generals, if you will.
As they go out, and then we have this kind
of blue phenomenon that's going on where they're not enforcing
(08:13):
the law. They have decriminalization. Whatever they do, there's more complaints,
there's more. California alone has like nearly eight fifty eight
or sixty percent of the homeless. I call it homeless
when it's not really homeless. Homelessness does occur for anybody yells,
but it's about five to ten percent of the number.
(08:35):
In reality, ninety percent of the people that are homeless
are because of drug or alcohol addiction or mental illness,
and we're not treating it. And so one person like
you is played so important of a position. I used
to tell my students in the classroom, law enforcement is
a mere reflection of the society in which they serve.
(08:56):
So true, and if we have KAO going on, there's
a high probability we're going to have chaos going on
within the ranks if we don't get our handle on
it and we don't try to help them as much
as possible. What are your thoughts on this kind of phenomenon,
And before we really get started with the questions, do
(09:19):
you kind of see this where you may have somebody
come from an area that is not letting them do
their job and some that are letting them do their job,
and it's affecting those officers differently.
Speaker 5 (09:33):
For sure.
Speaker 4 (09:33):
I will say that the red state blue state thing
is fascinating. I just recently had an experience. I won't
say where I was, but I had been brought into
kind of more of.
Speaker 5 (09:41):
A blue area and I realized that they were.
Speaker 4 (09:44):
Still trying policies from twenty twenty and it wasn't working
very well. And I could definitely feel it in the
environment I was in. And I think that, you know,
I live in a red state, red blue, purplish, you
know state, And I would say that we had a
little bit of a hiccup in twenty twenty and that
things are finally turning aro. I think we're getting back
to the law and order with a reasonable degree. Absolutely,
(10:05):
And I think that When people are in an environment
where they're policing with less chaos, people can lead better
inside as well. When you're surrounded by chaos, it becomes
the default. Like we are pack animals, we pick up
on the vibes around us. So if you're leading in chaos,
you're a sergeant. You're out there leading in a blue state.
That's kind of not the law and order type. I
(10:26):
think it makes it a way more chaotic insight, and
also I think there's a lack of clarity from the
top down when you play into those kind of those
scheme as.
Speaker 3 (10:34):
I'll say, yeah, absolutely, from your experience, you've worked a
lot with tactical teams. I was on a tactical team
for ten years. I enjoyed it so much. I loved
my career. It was full of dangers, but I felt
really good about what I did, serving something greater than myselves.
And I had a close relationship with my brothers and
(10:56):
sisters in law enforcement, and when I joined tea teams, especially,
I was the head of the clandestine lab team, which
did meth amphetamine labs. Yeah, but I was also a
member of the tactical team, and I can't think of
a time where I was more in tune mentally, physically,
and emotionally with a group of other men and women
(11:18):
than I was during that time period. How how does
it affect law enforcement? You know, we all we all
come from these kind of different careers, but there are
some jobs that we do within the career that come
and give us a different set of problems.
Speaker 4 (11:38):
Yeah, so definitely would say that the tactical teams are
you know, you're specialists, right, They're really they have the
coolest toys, you know, they get to go do the
kind of more higher risk things. They oftentimes walk in with.
Speaker 5 (11:48):
A plan as well.
Speaker 4 (11:49):
And I think one of the things that I was
thinking about when you just said that is that I
think when your mission is very specific, it helps improve
team behavior. And as law enforcement, you know, you know,
has become the social workers of society as well, that
mission has really kind of got diluted and really proliferated
at the same time.
Speaker 5 (12:08):
And I think that that makes it very very.
Speaker 4 (12:09):
Hard for people to find their pack or their tribe
within law enforcement, because we want something one mission that
we can clearly wrap around our heads, our heads around
and move forward with. And I think that tactical teams
I love working with them because it's very clear mission.
It's kind of like, how do we score the goal
in sports?
Speaker 3 (12:25):
Right?
Speaker 4 (12:26):
You know, we're playing soccer here, that's what we're doing.
You know, we're not playing hockey and soccer and football
and basketball at the same time. And I think that
analogy applies to what America sometimes has asked law enforcement
to do in our history is become animal control, social work,
mental health providers, and enforce the law. And when you
have such a spread like that, I just don't think
it's reasonable to think that you're going to have a
(12:47):
cohesive team.
Speaker 3 (12:49):
Yeah, we.
Speaker 6 (12:53):
Have.
Speaker 3 (12:54):
Again, I've referred to an as feral man. It's individuals
detached from social responsibility and moral straint. We're seeing anarchy
like never before. We're seeing anarchy that is promoted and
fostered by political elites and social elites, which is that's
been unusual. There was when there was anarchy in the
(13:15):
sixties and seventies, It wasn't necessarily promoted expressed publicly by politicians.
It's a different day and age when we're dealing with
this detachment that is occurring, and then there's there there.
It's not a it's not a diagnose, but we have
(13:37):
the kind of Trump derangement syndrome which ends up I
think it's probably should be studied because people go crazy
just dealing with his name alone. And how is that
affecting officers today when you're trying to go do your work,
when you're not really dealing with the reality of a
(13:58):
person and the issue that's going on in front of them.
They're dealing with something totally different, and they've applied it
and injected it into their current state or their conversation
or what they're doing, and then they make an excuse
that it's what they're doing is acceptable because of this
detachment that's going on.
Speaker 4 (14:20):
So you're talking about like compliance with social norms too
as well. Like we have an issue, I think with
people complying with what we would consider normal social norms.
And I understand having a little bit of flexibility on
what social norms are, and.
Speaker 5 (14:31):
I'm cool with that.
Speaker 4 (14:32):
I think when it comes to getting so flexible on
what's socially normative, what happens is you create a society
that has no laws, and there's lawless society and kind
of the officers then come into these environments where the
people that are interacting with are really unpredictable. Most of
us can kind of predict normal social behavior. If I
say hi to you, you say high back. That kind
(14:53):
of stuff is a normal social interaction, normal social engagement.
If I'm in a uniform and I'm identified as a police,
most people and the old ways of operating, I would say,
would say, oh, okay, cool, I'm gonna comply with that.
What we're seeing a lot of is just disrespect for
institutions in general, not just law enforcement. It's institutions on
the whole. You know, see people pulling away from religious institutions,
(15:15):
spiritual communities, those things, boy scouts, girls scouts, all of
those things. We're just pulling away and detaching from institutions.
And I think institutions are great for setting social and
cultural norms, and so when people pull away from those,
I think that contributes significantly to the types of individuals
officers are engaging with. So now they're engaging with people
that are non compliant, I would say, they're also way
(15:36):
more impulsive, way more reactive. And then there's also a
degree of non engagement. So there's almost like a zombie
level numbness. I think that I don't know what happened
during the twenty twenty COVID era, But we all came
out a little bit numb. And when people come out numb,
they don't respond as much to consequence, and so I
think we're seeing people not really care too much about consequence.
(15:57):
I always point to, like you see these like roving
groups of juveniles kind of being destructive and being problematic
in the news, and I think to myself, like these
this might sound a little overly sympathetic, but these kids
are a generation that had everything predictable taken away from them,
and so now they don't believe in anything, including you know,
societal institutions and rules and norms. That's I think why
(16:20):
some of their way they're behaving is because hey, look
they thought I'm going to go to high school and
I'm going to do my work and then I'm going
to get to do graduation or prom or my senior
season planning sports and all that got ripped away from
them in twenty twenty. And I think that now they
don't believe in anything, and so that includes institutions and
including the uniform.
Speaker 3 (16:39):
Yeah, and I have five children older, so I've got
three of them that are older two of them that
was we're going to school, one college, one high school
during COVID, and they have turned out, I mean, they
didn't like what was happening, but they've turned out socially
(16:59):
fond and you know, very involved in the church and
all those kinds of things. So what what was unique?
There's a there's a lack of accountability or a lack
of parenting. There's something that happened and not guide people
through that incidence that that time period that made them
(17:21):
disallow their own selves even more than what others went to.
Is there anything specific that you've been able to identify
that was causal during that time period that that made
certain people literally go wild and it's like the wilding,
It's like you.
Speaker 4 (17:40):
Know, yeah, yeah, I think that everyone lost hope and
everyone had a real I call it like lower self efficacy.
Speaker 5 (17:48):
The self efficacy is like.
Speaker 4 (17:50):
A great trait for like high resiliency and being able
to push through difficulty or things you can't control. Self
efficacy is I believe I can change myself in my situation.
And I think what a lot of jew Niles and
adults did during the COVID time was they lost self
efficacy and they developed a little bit of learned helplessness.
And when that happens, it's easier to throw up your
hands at the easiest site, the littlest thing that can
(18:12):
go wrong, you just throw up your hands and say,
I can't keep moving forward. And so I think that
some people didn't do that, and I think it's because
they had exceptionally high self efficacy that was tested over
time in their lifetime. They had that, then COVID hits,
they don't necessarily tell their kids, oh, you know, or
they don't demonstrate or model to their kids it's okay
to give up. I think they say, well, I'm going
to focus on what I can control, like all the
(18:34):
stuff I cannot, and so their kids see that modeled,
and then they come out of this difficult time period
looking totally different as opposed to I think some people's
parents are parental structures.
Speaker 5 (18:44):
That didn't do that.
Speaker 4 (18:45):
They said, oh, you know, we're not going and continuing
anything else we used to do. What a great opportunity
to not do any of that, and let's not bounce back.
And so they ended up demonstrating low self effocacy and
learned helplessness, and then their kids ended up picking that
up and taking that on themselves, which is which is
a shame.
Speaker 6 (19:02):
Really.
Speaker 3 (19:04):
Now, were you practicing during that COVID time period? Yes,
I was, okay. So did you have law enforcement that
came to you during that time period as well? Where
you were were you trying to help them specifically?
Speaker 4 (19:16):
Yeah, nothing changed here, To be honest with you, We
we operated like normal and I'm not ashamed to admit it.
We nothing ever changed here.
Speaker 5 (19:23):
We didn't go virtual. We just kept going.
Speaker 4 (19:25):
If they're going to keep going, we're going to keep going.
And I think that that showed some solidarity in some immunity.
But yeah, they were struggling during that time period because
all of a sudden, up was down, left was right,
and nothing really made sense. And you know, policing has
always been the ping pong ball of American society, we
love you, we hate you type of thing, but it.
Speaker 3 (19:42):
Got really comp Like a teenage teenager with a parent,
I hate you to.
Speaker 4 (19:48):
Absolutely absolutely no helped me out now, right, And so
it just got weird and I think a lot of
people left the field at that time because it just
didn't make any sense anymore. And then the you know,
societal push was for making police officers a certain kind
of way, and that is not the career they signed
up for. So they signed up to do this type
of job, with this type of way of doing the job,
(20:08):
and then all of a sudden, society flipped it on
them and it kept like snowballing out of control, and
I think a lot of people left because it wasn't
the job that they ever signed up for.
Speaker 3 (20:18):
We had some, yeah, we had some police officers in
fact that were to me, politics has been injected into
policing more than ever. There's more mayors that are now
hyper political. They used to be when you were a mayor,
you hired a police chief and then you've let him
or herb run the department and keep people safe. I
mean that's the way it was. And then all of
(20:38):
a sudden we have this hyper politicization of law enforcement
where the mayors had become like a super chief deciding
what to do and not to do. Did you have
officers struggle with the edeks that came down from mayors
saying that we're going to enforce you know, distancing and
masks and all that kind of stuff, when you have
(21:00):
some places that weren't doing it at all, but you
had some that became like hyper focused on that and
that's not the job of police, and they're forced into that,
and it caused a lot of angst between the public
and towards police officers for a while for those jurisdictions
that were doing it.
Speaker 4 (21:18):
Yeah, and luckily I did not work with any jurisdictions
that were really being you know, mandated by their you know,
city government to enforce said things. I'm really glad because
I think that would have been almost a no go
for a lot of my folks. Again, I'm in a
red state, mostly red state, so but I saw the
internal struggle I think that law enforcement officers were having
with the entire COVID experience in general, mostly because these
(21:40):
are people that when they sign up to do the job,
they inherently know that within the job description is and
I may lose my life, and.
Speaker 5 (21:48):
So they already knew that.
Speaker 4 (21:49):
And so when we put kind of arbitrary kind of
constraints on people or like you know, we're making like
the grand gestures to keep people safe, I think that
their risk tolerance in general is so much higher, and
so I think that in itself kind of caused disruption
and that was probably bigger of a problem than anything.
Speaker 3 (22:08):
Let's talk the dark psychological traits, because I'm very intrigued
in this. I feel like that as a result of
untreated mental illness, the kind of feral wilding that's going on,
we're seeing an increase in the dark psychological traits and
that's unique. And of course when you have people with
(22:28):
the dark psychological traits, sometimes the crime can get very
very dark, very disturbed, and then you get into the
dark tetrads, you know, where it includes even sadism. So
any thoughts on how the dark traits are impacting man
today as opposed to twenty thirty, even sixty years ago.
Speaker 4 (22:50):
Oh man, okay, So I think that, you know, technology
and social media is great, but I think we have
to think about the proliferation of what appears to be
normal behavior through those media. So the things that will
get you the most attention and how the algorithm works
are the things that are most extreme. And so I
think when we are exposed to things that are the
most extreme, it starts to normalize other versions of that
(23:13):
behavior in ourselves.
Speaker 5 (23:14):
We are social.
Speaker 4 (23:15):
Animals and we pick up on cues of other people,
and so if we see a lot of violence being
perpetuated in society by you know, sociopathic individuals, people with
you know, psychopathic traits. I think we start to feel
like there's a degree of normalization in that. And so
I think that just merely social media in itself or
just proliferation of technology and media has contributed to I
(23:37):
think a rise in the visibility of people behaving that way. Now,
just because people behave that way doesn't necessarily mean they
meet diagnostic criteria for you know, sociopathy or psychopathy or narcissism,
of course, but I think there's been a permission granted,
if you will, to do extreme behaviors or behave certain
ways to people in order to get attention.
Speaker 5 (23:59):
And that's a problem.
Speaker 4 (24:00):
I also, I mean, this is an unpopular kind of
maybe take on this and more of an evolutionary take that.
Back in the old days, if we had someone that
was demonstrating sociopathic tendencies in particular, they weren't compliant with
the group norms. They were you know, raping and pillaging
and all that kind of stuff. We you know, they
went out hunting one day with Bob and.
Speaker 5 (24:20):
They never came back type of thing. They were already
eliminated and now they're there.
Speaker 4 (24:24):
We can't do that, and I understand why, but that
was it was naturally removed before we got to a
more I guess the society we live in today, yeah,
we don't do that. So I think that it's been
you know, statistically speaking, they say, you know, probably not
actually technically increasing if you really look at the stats.
(24:44):
But I think that the behaviors or the subtleties like
not full diagnoses are probably increasing in society as well.
Speaker 5 (24:51):
And the problem with that is.
Speaker 4 (24:54):
They are rather unpredictable characters and it makes it hard.
One of the things that happens when we walk through
life is we predict how other people will behave and
we have a certain amount of mental energy that we
use to predict how if I engage with someone, how
they're going to behave and then how I'm going to
behave back. And when people have kind of the dark
triad or more on like the you know, psychopathic, sociopathic,
(25:17):
or narcissistic traits, it takes much more energy or more
like what we call cognitive load to predict certain people's behaviors,
and so I think it's wearing them out. And then
also when we look at these characteristics in people and
you know, full blown illness in people related to narcissism, sociopathy,
or psychopathy. They do sometimes engage in some of the
(25:40):
more heinous crimes that are really shocking to the eyes.
Speaker 3 (25:44):
Yeah. And if the average person's cognitive load is getting full,
imagine the cognitive load of police officers that are you know,
one hundred times the cognitive load trying to trying to
keep it in play. And I'm glad you brought up
too about where people can suffer from these traits but
not necessarily be diagnosed. I mean, that's the whole impetus
(26:06):
behind social contagions, right, is that it can just catch
up and people can just start, you know, like you said,
just start wandering and following people as a result of
those social contagents. I mean, we see it a lot
today because of social technology and the advent of technology.
But the salem which issue is social contagion and its earliest,
(26:30):
you know, it's spread from community.
Speaker 4 (26:32):
To community, absolutely, And I mean that's how we're just
social beings. And I think sometimes as much as we
like to deny our animalistic nature, we are social pack animals.
Speaker 3 (26:41):
Yeah, So what happens to officers cognitively when they're exposed
to this kind of aggression and anti social behavior.
Speaker 4 (26:51):
Yeah, well, I think it takes up too much load,
you know, it takes up the cognitive load, so they
sometimes will get more tired. In particular at the end
of shift, they're just exhausted. Also, you just you have
to expand your your bandwidth to be able to deal
with folks like that because they are so unpredictable. It's
so incredibly impossible to be able to predict especially I
(27:11):
always say the only thing predictable about mental illness is
that nothing is predictable and so and I've got stories
of when I used to work in an in patient
setting that that definitely taught me.
Speaker 5 (27:21):
That for sure.
Speaker 3 (27:22):
So yeah, doctor Paraska, can you come back for round two?
Speaker 6 (27:26):
Sure?
Speaker 3 (27:26):
Absolutely? All right, folks, when we return from the break,
we'll talk about tactical longevity with doctor Porhaska. So stay tuned.
We'll be right back in three minutes. Ah right, folks.
(27:53):
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Speaker 3 (30:25):
Hey, my friends, is doctor Curry Meyers, America's criminologist. I
have a new sponsor for my show, I Mean Real Resilience.
That's our ab L transformative program helping inmates prepare for
successful re entry and uses inspirational films and guided discussions.
Real Resilience teaches practical tools to build resilience. It's really
(30:47):
an important tool real resilience, because reentry isn't just released,
it's a second chance done right. All right, folks, welcome
back to America's criminologists. Please remember you can view my
work on substack at doctor Currymeyers dot substack dot com.
(31:09):
And if you're interested on the faith side, then I
have a podcast dedicated to that as well. It's called
the Saint Michael's Group Podcast at Saint Michael's dot substack
dot com. Also available if you would like for me
to come speak, you can reach out to me anytime.
If you would like to like to have me come
out and speak on faith issues, then you can reach
(31:30):
out to Catholic Speakers at Catholic Speakers dot com and
they'll be happy to book you for me. So, law
enforcement is one of the few professions where you're expected
to make life altering decisions and seconds while carrying the
cumulative weight of years of stress, trauma, and responsibility. Every
shift demands physical readiness, mental sharpness, emotional control, and an
(31:54):
unwavering moral compass. Yet the real challenge isn't simply surviving
a critical incident. It's actually sustaining excellence over an entire career,
and I'll tell you one event can be life changing
to that officer, and sometimes they're not able to deal
with it, assass it and come back from it, especially
when they're feel like they're isolated and left alone and
(32:17):
know one to talk to. I remember when I was
in the nineteen ninety three Federal building shootout and bombing incident.
The next day I showed up for work. It was
kind of put your pants on, show up for work
the next day. We just didn't have any of those
kinds of things to help us deal with the emotion
that was going through at that time. Today, we're going
(32:40):
to explore what it takes for an officer to remain silient, healthy,
and effective in a profession that continually tests the mind, body,
and spirit. We're back with doctor Jennifer Prohaska, a police
psychologist who works with high risk tactical teams at both
the state and federal level and a founder of Tactical
Longevity and view that website Tactical Longevity. When she comes
(33:03):
back on, hopefully she will give that link so you
can understand it more. Doc, welcome back to the show.
Thank you, Thank you Tactical Longevity. How can people follow
your work?
Speaker 5 (33:13):
Yeah, tactical Loongevity dot com.
Speaker 4 (33:15):
And then also I'm on LinkedIn as nerdy as that
is so just you know, Jennifer Perasco on LinkedIn and
then also Instagram and Facebook. So Instagram is doctor Jenny Peraska. Facebook, uh,
doctor Jenny Prasco.
Speaker 5 (33:28):
Actually, so there you are.
Speaker 3 (33:29):
Oh you've made it simple. I know, marketing marketing genius.
Speaker 4 (33:34):
Well, you know, my last name is complicated, so it's
not a common one. If it was Jenny Smith, we'd
have an issue.
Speaker 3 (33:38):
So yeah, yeah, you use the term anti fragility. I
think it's an interesting term. So what does that mean
for law enforcement professionals?
Speaker 4 (33:47):
Yeah, so I'm going to compare it to something that's
a pretty common word you're going to hear is, which
is resiliency. So resiliency is your ability to bounce back
after an incident or stress to your original form, kind
of return back to baseline.
Speaker 5 (33:59):
That's resiliency.
Speaker 4 (34:00):
Everybody's heard of that. Anti fragility is a little bit
of a step up from that. And I'm really more
on the anti fragility side nowadays in particular, which is basically,
how do I use the bad thing that just happened
to me? And how do I use that experience to
make me a better human? How do I not only
bounce back, but actually use that as an accelerator for
my own own growth? And so I'm big on anti
(34:21):
fragility because I think that frankly, some people's resiliency baselines
are not good enough, and so I think we need
to be using our bad experiences to make us better people.
Speaker 3 (34:33):
Okay, yeah, I mean it's can you does law enforcement
get that? When you when you you know you have
to do a little bit of marketing. You know in
your you're not just psychologists, but you have to. It's
a tough nut to crack to get into law enforcement
because you've got to be part of the you know,
the the language, the talk, that kind of stuff. As
(34:54):
you as you probably know, it's not a try. We
don't trust what you don't truly easy.
Speaker 5 (35:00):
Oh, trust is a low low item.
Speaker 3 (35:02):
On the time. I'm just curious, how did how were
you able to kind of kind of because you've been
extremely successful and you you help a lot of police
officers and a lot of departments, So how did you
build that? Because just getting in the door can be
extremely difficult unless you don't want to give any trade secrets,
then give any trade secrets. That's fine.
Speaker 5 (35:25):
Now the good news is, I'm pretty sure it's not
a trade secret. It's just part of me.
Speaker 4 (35:28):
And I will say I've been I've been blessed with
a adversarial personality, and I know that's weird to say,
but it has really helped me. I think that, you know,
even in graduate school. You know, most psychologists are incredibly
publicly correct, usually more on the liberal side, right, And
so I walked through most of graduate school as a
total black sheep, and I was like, this might not
(35:49):
be the career for me, right, And so I'm walking
through life like that. You know, graduate school is a
long period of time. You know, you do four years
of undergrad then you go to graduate school where you're
in your little cohort of like people. For me, it
was six people in my program at the time, and
I'm definitely the black sheep at that point. I'm pretty direct.
I'm pretty I was pretty challenging. I'm pretty sure my
classmates did not care for me because I was always
(36:12):
going But what about that doesn't make sense, that's not realistic.
Speaker 5 (36:14):
Ivory Tower, like, you.
Speaker 4 (36:16):
Know, because academia has that, and I think you know
that personally, and so I was always challenging things, and
so that's that's just my adversarial personality is a fit.
Speaker 5 (36:25):
And then I would say I've been very I've.
Speaker 4 (36:28):
Been very good today and haven't cursed once, and I'm
very proud of myself for that. But there's a degree
of just adopting the language and being very authentic and genuine.
And so when you show up authentic and genuine, that's.
Speaker 3 (36:39):
Just what it is.
Speaker 4 (36:40):
Man like, Like I'm adversarial by nature. I show up
authentic and genuine, and I can't. I can't bullshit anymore.
I've run out of space for that. I've ran out
early in life, you know, on that. And so I
think that that the cops are like amazing light detectors,
and I think that when I showed up authentic and
just put it all out there, that's how it worked.
Speaker 3 (36:58):
Yeah, yeah, no doubt. There's a it has not been diagnosed.
You may disagree or I agree with it. There's a
thing called operators syndrome that's going around. If I don't
believe I don't have PTSD, not that I'm aware of,
(37:21):
but I cannot even now to this day, I can't
turn things off. You know, I'm overly situationally aware. I
think often about the past, both things I could have
done better, as well as reliving whether it be a homicide.
(37:42):
I had one homicide that I couldn't solve, the rest
I could solve, and that to this day that haunts
me naturally. The nineteen ninety three incident is weighs in
my mind. And then all the other cases that I worked,
and again I did the kind of law enforcement work
where I was. I did a lot compared to just
(38:03):
you know, the average person, and I when I got
to do research on this operator syndrome, it seems likely that,
even though it's not an official diagnosis, I probably leaned
towards something like that. Have you done anything to look
at that and understand it? Oh?
Speaker 4 (38:24):
Yeah, I can't believe you brought that up, because so
many people do not know about this. I like, so,
I'm neuropsych trained. I was trained at the University of
Kansas Medical Center and neuropsychological you know, testing and rehabilitation
and all this kind of stuff. So when I here's
someone mentioned operator syndrome, I'm like, yes, thank you so
much for saying it because honestly, it's probably more of
(38:45):
what I see than anything else, except it's not a
real diagnosis. And so this is a concept just to
kind of update your audience. Operator syndrome is a concept basically,
and it's been research and it has been published recently
in some top tier medical journals. It has not picked
up a lot of traction in the United States, and
I think I have a conspiracy theory reason why we
can talk about later.
Speaker 3 (39:05):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (39:05):
Yeah, But operator syndrome is basically a set of symptoms
that are showing up in people that have had high tempo,
high stress careers, where basically they're showing up with a
set of like brain based symptoms as well as indo
chronology based symptoms or hormone based symptoms. So they're showing
up with vestibular issues or balance issues. They're showing up
(39:25):
with memory issues and difficulty, high irritability, you know, tonights
is something that we often kind of put in that category.
Oftentimes their metabolic profile looks awful, sleep issues, you name it,
and then high emotional reactivity in particular, and they don't
necessarily have that classic PTSD look where they're having flashbacks, nightmares,
and truce thoughts per se. But it's just like everything
(39:48):
gets slowed down like in mud a lot.
Speaker 5 (39:51):
They'll complain of brain fog things like that.
Speaker 4 (39:53):
So operator syndrome has not been formally recognized in the
United States. I think that some of the things that
we know that might cause it are also exposure to
blast injury, not just TBI like.
Speaker 5 (40:04):
Your traumatic brain injury, major injury.
Speaker 4 (40:06):
I'm talking about falls, punches, blast exposures, lots of breacher
brain stuff like all those micro like little micro tears
that might be happening in the brain and it's causing
a certain profile. And so doctor Free, I got to
give respect to Chris Free. He's the one who does
all this research, and so I'm very very well acquainted
with it. And I would say that a lot of
(40:27):
my tactical team guys show profiles. And I also think
that the reason it hasn't to go straight into my
conspiracy theory, the reason that it hasn't taken off is
because I think if it's acknowledged medically, the VA will
have a massive problem on their hands.
Speaker 3 (40:41):
Oh there's no doubt. Yeah, there's no doubt, because it is,
as you rightfully said, it's not PTSD. It's totally different,
and it's almost like even in gut health and Yep,
there were so many things. That's the reason I'm trying
to focus. I love officer wellness. I want to try
to help officers as well. I don't know how to
(41:03):
do that other than have this show and talk about
it and be open about it, open about things that
I've had. But I call it the importance of a
three legged stool, and that's mind, body and spirit.
Speaker 6 (41:15):
Ye.
Speaker 3 (41:17):
And as you know, police officers, especially TAC guys, mind
and body are huge. I mean they are physically fit,
they are constantly training and trying to get to the
next level. They're usually highly educated. They'll spend time doing research.
(41:41):
As you said, I think at the beginning they have
to prep. They have to make sure their briefings, pre briefings,
post briefings are articulate, are well thought out, are well planned,
because somebody's life may be at risk if they don't so.
But it also means we know how to compartmentalize rule easily.
And I've compartmentalized my entire life. You know, bad things.
(42:07):
It's over here in closet D, shelf C through E.
It seems like and I don't go into that closet
very often.
Speaker 5 (42:16):
Yeah, you know, and and but.
Speaker 3 (42:20):
We don't focus enough on the whole, the whole package,
which means and that reason I was so excited when
you talked about the body side of it in terms
of of getting understanding our macro nutrients, understanding what we're
putting into our body to help whether or not we're
(42:40):
maybe we have gluten stuff that's being exposed because of
a of a mental state that we're in that's occurred.
And until I got to the position where I understand
and went to a a more holistic type of medicine,
where my doctor kind of went to a functional more
(43:03):
of a functional health medicine, she was able to help
me understand what I was really going through and how
my gut and how I wasn't paying attention to the
right you know, different areas, and it all kind of
impacts your life at different time.
Speaker 4 (43:20):
For sure, all those three things are connected, you know,
the three legates to all the mind, body spirit thing.
I mean, I think sometimes we like to medicalize things
and get away from that, but down to its core
that shows up over and over and over again. And
what you're saying about like kind of the gut brain connection,
or the mental health and gut connection is really interesting,
I think, especially recently because we are learning a lot
(43:42):
about and this goes back to like the more traditional
western medicine again, but we're learning a lot about like
the GLP one effect on mental health, and you know,
there's some research that says that GLP ones and some
other compounds actually are like helping repair that gut. And
when they do that, I notice in my patients I'm
actually seeing quite interesting just anecdotally, of course, I have
(44:02):
to be careful here, but anecdotally I am seeing an
interesting turnaround, and they're like depression and anxiety symptoms in particular,
and also there's sleep habits. So I know there's much
more studying that needs to be done, but I will
say that gut brain connection super important.
Speaker 5 (44:16):
We don't know enough about it.
Speaker 4 (44:17):
And then also like these peptides, especially BBC one five seven,
which is definitely like you know, gut reparative, it helps
with that component of it. And I'm very much out
of my league talking much more about it. Besides that,
I think that what we're seeing is, man, this might
be much more important than may ever really realized. And
when it comes to the tach operators or my swat guys,
(44:39):
I will say you mentioned that they spend a lot
of time on their you know, physical and mental side,
and I'm gonna say I slightly disagree here. They spend
a great amount of time on their physical side and
the mental side with regards to mentally making decisions quickly
or registering their spatial awareness and things like that. They
actually don't spend probably the right amount of energy on
(45:01):
things like better self awareness.
Speaker 3 (45:03):
You know.
Speaker 4 (45:04):
They they do spend some time on self regulational say,
but they do struggle I think with things like mental
flexibility or how do I make choices based on what's
a priority and what's my values personally? And they do
struggle nowadays. And know maybe not when you were on teams,
but they're struggling now with like deeper connection in that
sense of belonging in teamwork. And so I think that yes,
they are working in some areas and they they're getting
(45:28):
like a C or a B minus is being nice,
you know, a grade level on their mental stuff because
they probably should be working in a different way.
Speaker 3 (45:36):
Yeah, I totally agree with you. I I think when
I was referring to mind, I meant the academic study.
Oh yeah, the prep, the trying to go back. Hey,
I need to get a master you know, I need
to get a master's or I need to I need
to know how to do this policy. You know they're intellectual, Yeah,
(45:58):
the intellectual side. But I completely to agree with you
because it wasn't any different back then. Those were the
fallacies I had. And then the last thing was the
faith side. I call it spirit. For me, it's faith.
If we don't have a faith life, if we don't
have some sort of connection to our faith life, we
(46:21):
can get lost and not have hope. Because I will
tell you, and I struggled with this. You see, every
time you turn around, you go, how could God exist
if this occurs? How could God exist? If you see this?
How could God exist? If you see this and it
gets stuck in your mind where all of a sudden
it affects your faith, It affects what you believe, and
(46:43):
you can't have that happen. I mean, I know how
I struggled that for years. I know why it happens. Now.
It's called free will. God's given us free will to
decide to do. These things are not doing those things. Okay,
that's out of my control. But now I can lead
to understand and be able to say, okay, I can
(47:04):
deal with it, and I can still have a faith
life because I now understand it, and I can try
to not do the things that would tempt me because
of that free will and understand the society shouldn't do
that and tempt us as a result of that free will.
So as faith, you know, I don't want it. Some
people want to stay away from it. But how important
(47:25):
is kind of connecting with their faith life to make
sure that they are staying centered and putting really, God,
the ultimate creator is number one, so they can remember
who they are.
Speaker 5 (47:37):
Well, I told you I was authentic, right, So here
we go.
Speaker 4 (47:41):
I this is a little personal about me, but I
think it will help you kind of understand my answer
a little bit. I have always been in total admiration
for people who can connect with that faith.
Speaker 5 (47:50):
It's been a challenge for me from the beginning.
Speaker 4 (47:52):
And you know, people in my profession tend to shy
away from you know, faith based initiatives in general. Right,
and so you know, and I tend to be a
little bit more intellectual on things, but I can tell
you time and time again, when I get officers that
have a strong sense of faith, spirituality and or meaning making,
they can make meaning of things and a lot of
(48:13):
times faith comes into that they tend to need me less.
And so I think that there's something that's a superpower.
I think that if nothing else, it helps you get
their really horrific things. It also, I think creates a
sense of like what I can and can't control. And
so when we think about people that are really anti fragile,
one of the things that they're really good at is
(48:33):
separating out what they can and cannot control. And I
think that faith allows a vehicle for that to happen better.
Speaker 3 (48:40):
Yeah, yeah, well I try to educate people. Listen, you
spent a lifetime fighting and battling with bad guys and
that are girls, and that's an honorable thing and a
good thing. But don't forget the spiritual side of it,
because there's a spiritual world that you could that were
If you're not paying attention to it, it can take
(49:03):
you over, absolutely, and it's it's one of the things
that you know I And the cool part is we
have been through some I think bad times when it
comes to our spiritual life and who we are and
you know what we're serving. But it seems to me
that the concept of moral relativism is starting to wane,
(49:25):
and now we're seeing more and more people say there
is something more. The last couple of years, we've seen
this kind of you know, reigniting, of people going, I
do serve something greater than myself. You know, there's something
else out there that ultimately is in charge, and I
(49:46):
want to help get closer to it.
Speaker 4 (49:50):
As a result, agree, And I think that that's part
of what naturally comes next after you have to really
reckon with the things you don't have control over. And
I think that and when we go through difficult times
society or as a profession or as an individual, you
have to reckon, you have to make sense of and
I think that that's where faith becomes incredibly important.
Speaker 3 (50:11):
Yeah, very important thing right here. So what makes what
are the most common performance mistakes that officers make under
stress when they haven't been able to deal with their stress.
What are you seeing as the most common mistakes?
Speaker 4 (50:27):
They either get emotionally overreactive or underreactive, and both of
those can be exceptionally dangerous. So I think when people
are not dialed into what's happening with them and where
their stress level is and how an't managing that better?
I see just the make errors and performance related to
I overreacted or I underreacted, and both are not good.
When you're in this type of profession, you need to
(50:48):
have the perfect style and type of reaction to every situation,
and so the pressure is on to be able to
do that at all times for twenty plus years, no joke,
but I think that's the mistakes I see is definitely
being underreactive or overreactive.
Speaker 5 (51:02):
And then I think the other things that I see is.
Speaker 4 (51:04):
Then kind of loser self in the process, so they
don't act in line with what's important to them and
they get disconnected or things. So, like I told you,
one of my values, one of the things that's important
to me is being authentic and honest. And I think
that sometimes when people are so exhausted and so tired,
they don't act in line with what's important to them,
and when that happens, their love for the job and
(51:25):
for life can kind of go away too.
Speaker 3 (51:27):
Yeah, and it really affects the family too, because sometimes
they can they can say okay, I'm going to be
okay at work or I'm just going to kind of disconnect,
but I'm going to show it at home, and then
that leads. Divorce rates are high, They're extremely high. In
law enforcement. Unfortunately, suicide rates are you know, starting to
increase as well. When we have these kinds of incidents.
(51:50):
Was when it comes to an employee, I employee, excuse me,
an officer being killed in the line of duty. I have, unfortunately,
known quite a few officers that have been killed in
the line of duty. In my role, I worked with
a lot of other police departments because as a special
agent especially, my job was to go out and work
with others, help them build cases, be the case agent,
(52:12):
if you will. So that gave me exposure to many
different departments around many different jurisdictions, and I've lost some
people that I've worked with. I have seen many people
lose their career because of the death of a fellow
police officer and the department didn't recognize behaviors as a
(52:32):
result of that death. Maybe it's a little slightly different.
It's the death of somebody that they were with, maybe
their partner, maybe they were around, and they weren't able
to cope with it, and you started seeing a decline
in their work, and then you started seeing maybe criminal
activity or something else occur, or maybe addictions occur, and
(52:55):
then all of a sudden, they're out, they're done, they're gone,
they're early retired. Whatever can we is what is the
focus now? To try to understand the importance of an
officer death affects the entire department, but especially that the
ones that he or she worked with the closest, and
(53:18):
you got to keep an eye on them to make
sure that they remain healthy in dealing with this tragedy.
Speaker 4 (53:25):
Yeah, I will say I think one of the things
that we can do is obviously educate leadership a little
bit more. One of the challenges though with this is
a lot of times when you see, you know, officers
post line of duty death, you know, officers around that
officer kind of spiral out and do all the destructive
stuff you mentioned.
Speaker 5 (53:41):
The tale is really long.
Speaker 4 (53:42):
That runway towards that like ultimate behavior that ends their
career is very long, and I.
Speaker 5 (53:47):
Hate seeing that.
Speaker 4 (53:48):
But one of the things I see is people jump
to judgment like, oh, I guess we just had a
bad guy in our midst The whole time, and I'm like.
Speaker 5 (53:55):
No, dummies, no you didn't. You know, no, you know
you didn't.
Speaker 4 (53:58):
This is a long building process over time. You just
didn't see the recency of it. It's because it's not recent.
It takes long time to develop over time, especially until
somebody gets caught or punished, etc.
Speaker 5 (54:09):
It rises to that level.
Speaker 4 (54:11):
I think people don't realize a lot of times it's connected.
We don't have chapters in our lives.
Speaker 5 (54:16):
We have an entire book that's made up of chapters.
Speaker 4 (54:19):
Yeah, and so I think people need to realize that
what happens in chapter four absolutely affects chapter ten. There
is a through line in everyone else's life and so
and so educating them that way is really necessary, I think.
And then also officers realizing that, like, this is a
slow and steady progression. It's not an overnight thing. This
builds one little degree at a time.
Speaker 3 (54:39):
Well, if you could leave with America's law enforcement officers
with one message about sustaining excellence, health and purpose throughout
their careers, what would that be.
Speaker 4 (54:47):
Think of yourself like a professional athlete, treat your body,
your mind, and your soul that way.
Speaker 3 (54:52):
Oh that's awesome. Wow, boy, it runs fast when you're
having a good time. At least I was having a
good time then runs fast. So thank you so much.
I highly recommend people watch and listen to Doctor Prohaska.
Thanks so much for coming on the show.
Speaker 4 (55:08):
And again, what's the website tactic along jeviy dot com.
Speaker 3 (55:13):
Beautiful My friends, Doctor Curry Myers been America's criminologists. Stay safe,
stay informed, and remember to check out my work on substack.
Doctor Curry Myers dot substack dot com. Stay safe and
see you next week.
Speaker 1 (55:31):
Came steals us distrusting me as afraid Shadows sets do
Coscramnologist sells by three
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