Police Psychology Into the 21st Century

Martin I. Kurke, Ellen M. Scrivner, Martin I. Kurke, Ellen M. Scrivner

• Publisher: Psychology Press
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780805813449
• eBook ISBN: 9781135807436
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Industrial & Organizational Psychology
• Index: Psychology

As we approach the 21st century, there is a discernable shift in policing, from an incident-driven perspective to a proactive problem solving stance often described as "community policing." In this volume a panel of 21 psychologists examine the changing directions in policing and how such changes impact on psychological service delivery and operational support to law enforcement agencies. The book describes existing and emerging means of providing psychological support to the law enforcement community in response to police needs to accommodate new technology, community-oriented problem solving technology, crime prevention, and sensitivity to community social changes.

Senior psychologists who are sworn officers, federal agents and civilian employees of federal, state and local law enforcement agencies comprise the team of chapter authors. Their perspectives encompass their collective experience "in the trenches" and in law enforcement management and administrative support roles. They discuss traditional applications of psychology to police selection, training and promotion processes, and in trauma stress management and evaluation of fitness for duty. Concerns related to police diversity and police family issues are also addressed, as are unique aspects of police stress management. Additional chapters are dedicated to establishing psychological service functions that currently are less familiar to police agencies than they are to other government and private sector service recipients. These chapters are devoted to police psychologists as human resource professionals, as human factors experts in accommodating to new technology and to new legal requirements, as organizational behavioral experts, and as strategic planners.

This text is recommended reading for two groups:
*police and public safety administators whose work takes them--or should take them--into contact with police psychologists;
*practicing and would-be police psychologists concerned with the emerging trends in the application of psychology to police and other public safety programs.

PART THREE

THE CORE TECHNOLOGY OF POLICE PSYCHOLOGY: COUNSELING

CHAPTER EIGHT

Employee Assistance Programs in Police Organizations

Nancy Gund

Woodburn Center for Community Mental Health

Ben Elliott

U.S. Department of Justice Employee Assistance Program

This chapter acknowledges the long tradition of Employee Assistance Programs (EAPs) in law enforcement. It focuses on the EAP model of professional service delivery as distinct from psychological service programs and peer programs and highlights some of the differences between EAP programs at the federal and local government levels.

Specifically, the chapter provides an overview of the EAPs in federal law enforcement. It then details the structure, operation, and service delivery characteristics of one EAP that operated effectively at the local level for at least 10 years. The chapter demonstrates how public law provided the driving force that established EAPs, and how different models emerged to meet the divergent needs of specific law enforcement agencies. Although all agencies embrace the common goal of providing law enforcement services, they differ in terms of unique law enforcement missions, size, and geographic distribution of employees. Hence, the delivery of services also differs.

FEDERAL LAW ENFORCEMENT ORGANIZATIONS

Employee Assistance Programs, formerly known as Occupational Alcoholism Programs (OAPs) are programs that help employees resolve personal problems that may affect their job performance and productivity. Designed to provide early detection of employee problems, EAPs generally focus on problem assessment, short-term counseling and referral to expert treatment resources, follow-up services, employee education, and management training on appropriate use of the EAP program.

Problems that EAPs respond to include, but are not limited to marital dysfunction; financial, legal, or relocation problems; substance abuse; job stress; traumatic incidents; and generic mental health problems. Generally, services are time limited and there is a strong emphasis on appropriate referral for long-term clinical interventions. Within this context, EAP programs differ from full-range psychological service units where employee assistance may be provided as one component of a broader array of psychological services.

Public Law and EAPs

The scope and priority of EAPs within the federal law enforcement community in many ways mirror the development of EAPs in federal, non-law-enforcement organizations. With the enactment of Public Law 91-616 in 1970, commonly referred to as the Hughes Bill after its sponsor, Senator Harold Hughes from Iowa, federal agencies were required to establish alcoholism programs for federal employees. A variety of additional public laws from Congress and issuance from the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) directed agencies to provide a progressively wider range of human resource services to federal employees. Most agency EAPs have adopted the “broad brush” approach to provide the full range of EAP services to their employees and family members, believing that any personal or family difficulty has an existing or potential impact on an employee’s performance and conduct, and therefore is a legitimate concern to management. Over and above ensuring the personal well-being of employees, the rationale that drives the development of EAPs includes the need to maintain safety in the workplace and a productive work force.

EAPs and Law Enforcement

Prior to the development of EAPs, many law enforcement organizations were utilizing mental health professionals. These mental health professionals, typically psychologists, were assisting their organization in three major areas: (a) assessing potential risk in profiling past and future criminal behavior and providing assistance at hostage barricade situations, (b) assisting officers in dealing with occupational stress and coping with critical incidents, and (c) providing psychological screening for new hires and evaluating officers for psychologically based disabilities.

The emergence of EAPs provided an opportunity to expand mental health involvement in law enforcement organizations and to focus more directly on providing treatment services. This trend provided somewhat of a unique situation in that the services needed to be tailored to meet the needs of a unique culture that was not known for wide-ranging acceptance of mental health interventions. Hence, the range of approaches varied considerably. Some organizations kept the responsibilities separate, whereas other groups attempted some level of integration into existing psychological services. However, the roles were sometimes in conflict; therefore, many law enforcement groups developed policies to keep EAPs separate from other services such as those already mentioned.

It is widely accepted that law enforcement presents a variety of special considerations that typically represent a specialized work force. The mission of law enforcement fosters what is often referred to as a closed community; a community or bond between officers who are often under considerable stress, aware of their vulnerability, and on the defensive with the citizen groups they are sworn to protect. Thus, perhaps the single most significant development with EAPs in federal law enforcement is the peer counseling and peer support programs developed in most federal law enforcement agencies. Having officers or agents work with the EAP provides a significant level of credibility to the programs and helps to defuse the defensiveness. This concept has worked most effectively in areas of posttrauma debriefings, and during interventions with officers suffering from chemical dependency.

Federal Models

Programs in the federal sector are structured to provide EAP services in one of three primary ways: internal programs, contracted services, and service delivery systems that combine elements of other viable models in order to meet a specific service goal.

The internal program model staffs the EAP with full-time agency employees who provide traditional EAP services. Examples of this model include the programs in place in the Secret Service, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

The external contracted model uses outside providers to deliver clinical services but the program is coordinated inhouse by an agency program manager. Programs in the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), the U.S. Park Police, U.S. Marshals Service and the Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms Bureau conform to this model. The DEA, in particular, based their selection of this model on the results of an evaluation process that facilitated the determination of the EAP model that would be most effective to meet the needs of an agency whose employees are geographically dispersed across the nation and overseas. Subsequently, the program manager incorporated a trauma response protocol as another element of the EAP. This program component uses “Trauma Team” agents who receive extensive training to provide immediate support for agents who sustain traumatic incidents and to serve as a bridge between the incident and the program’s area clinicians who represent the DEA/EAP program manager in the field.

The combined services model uses an outside contractor to operate the program within the organization to provide services to employee personnel and management. The program at the U.S. Customs Service is an example of this model and in my opinion this is currently one of the more cost effective and efficient program models in the federal law enforcement community. This model provides the full range of EAP services to employees nationwide. Program staff are located at Customs headquarters in Washington, DC, but have the ability to travel to various locations as needed. The majority of their work is telephone assessment and referral to local community resources.

Studies comparing external EAPs with internal programs have identified strengths and weaknesses for both. Generally, the external model receives a higher number of self-referrals and the internal model experiences a higher number of supervisory referrals. Consequently, internal programs are more effective in reaching the chemically dependent employees (more often supervisory referred), whereas the external programs are more effective in involving family members. This tendency is magnified in the law enforcement community, where the manager, in a quasi-military structure, is more likely to trust a support service that is part of the organization.

In summary, by establishing EAPs, federal law enforcement organizations have matched, and in some instances surpassed, efforts of other agencies. With organizations expressing an increased interest in progressive management and maximizing employee productivity, the future for EAPs in federal organizations, including law enforcement, is very strong.

A LOCAL POLICE DEPARTMENT

The Fairfax County Police Department is responsive to a 400-square-mile county located across the Potomac River from Washington, DC. The department was established with a chief of police, five sworn officers, and two clerks. It has grown into the largest local law enforcement agency in Virginia with 1,368 civilian and sworn personnel. Since its inception over 50 years ago, Fairfax County has developed from a rural community to a bustling technological center with a population of more than 840,000 people. With a median family income of $65,000, Fairfax is now one of the wealthiest communities in the United States (Fairfax County Office of Research and Statistics, 1991). Within those parameters, it also contains pockets of poverty, violence, drug and gang influences, everyday street crime, and an extraordinary split between the very wealthy and the poor.

The police department that responds to this large suburban community has a reputation for being one of the best in the United States, and it strives to maintain this standard as it grows and stretches to meet the needs of the community. Its police officers and civilian personnel, who comprise a small community in themselves, often give their entire careers to Fairfax County. These dedicated men and women often put aside their own needs and their families’ needs in order to provide for the safety of the community.

The Woodburn Center for Community Mental Health is also a county agency entrusted with a public service mission. One of three community mental health centers in Fairfax, it provides for the myriad of mental health needs of residents in the county.

The police department and Woodburn Center have worked together on many community projects over the years, and each has felt the rewards of these concerted efforts. They joined forces in the late 1970s to address the issues of police officer stress and forged ahead with a program designed to meet the specific mental health needs of police personnel in Fairfax County. What follows is a description of the Fairfax County Police EAP, its role as a mental health service provider, and some of its attempts to sort through the dilemmas that came with the task.

EAPs offer employees and management a unique opportunity to pursue the mutually beneficial goal of supporting and keeping a productive employee.

Part of the philosophy of EAP programs is that an organization’s employees are among its most important assets and that if the problems in an employee’s personal life interfere with job performance, it makes good business sense for that organization to provide assistance toward resolution of the problem. If the issue can be solved, losses to the organization and the individual are minimized. The organization, which may suffer because of decreased productivity through use of sick leave and increased health-care costs, reduces its concerns about the loss of investment in human resources through employee discipline and termination. The employee who may have experienced considerable distress get relief from the problem and returns to former levels of functioning.

The EAP model is an appropriate choice for the police organization interested in seeing its recruits and its significant financial investment in training through to retirement. (Fairfax spends about $60,000 training each recruit.) Contracting out EAP services also offers police departments an alternative to hiring its own psychological services professionals, which can create problems in areas discussed later in this chapter.

The Fairfax County Police Department (FCPD) EAP promotes its services to police personnel as a support mechanism for psychological well-being during their careers as police officers. Although it is unrealistic to assume that police personnel will ever fully embrace the cause of mental health, there is an organizational philosophy that establishes the EAP as a valuable resource to all employees. These ideas are present from the beginning when a person applies for a job as an officer with the Fairfax County Police Department. This complex process can take up to 6 months and from the beginning the message is clear that the department’s hiring process is highly competitive, and that the candidates with the greatest strengths in each of the areas of competence will be selected. Applicants are tested rigorously in a...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Series in Applied Psychology
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Series Foreword
• Foreword
• Preface
• I Overview
• II The Core Technology of Police Psychology Evaluation
• III The Core Technology of Police Psychology Counseling
• IV The Core Technology of Police Psychology Training
• V Supporting Pouce Operations
• VI Organizational Development and Support
• VII New Directions
• Author Index
• Subject Index