Marshall Memorial Fellowship: Chicago’s Finest? Then Treat Them as Such

It was raining in Chicago the night my Marshall Memorial Fellowship cohort  reported to the headquarters of the Chicago Police.  In the days before, we had been briefed on Chicago’s most recent crime wave. Shocking statistics, amongst which one stood out starkly: in the first few months of this year, there had been 196 murders.

Just by comparison: my own city of Amsterdam had 21 last year. In total.

We were there for a 4-hour police ride-along. Two police officers - who both had been working in law enforcement in Chicago for years - would take us through the second District.  This is the University of Chicago’s neighborhood, where the Obamas have their house. It’s lovely and prosperous. But only a few blocks down, the misery starts. For those of you who have seen The Wire, that’s pretty much exactly how it looks. Run down housing blocks, street prostitution, groups of young black kids wandering through the streets. “Gang bangers,” the police officers told us: “Nobody else would dare to go in the street at this time of night.”

We came to talk about what it’s like to be a police officer in a place like this and the stress that comes with it. They had been telling us how “depressing” their work sometimes made them feel. All the misery, the guns, the violence, the children with whom they’d try to bond in the library when they were little, only to lose them to drugs and gangs a few years later.

I asked them about the effects of the constant stress they faced. What happens, for instance, when something really bad happens on your shift? “Well”, they told me, “nothing much”. When you have to pull your gun and shoot somebody - a very, very traumatic experience for every officer - they’d get three days off  “to sleep it off”and the business card of a counsellor they could call when they still felt bad. But to talk about these things,really talk about them, that’s not in the culture of the Chicago Police.

I asked them about the Laquam McDonald case,  where a cop shot a young suspect sixteen times and killed him. Could an incident like that also be stress-related? “Sure,” they told me. “That officer just lost it completely.” They too had the experience of having to pull back a colleague from a situation because his or her behavior didn’t fit the police code to prevent a situation from escalating. But most of the time, after an incident like that, they told us, you sit down for a coffee, talk about it, and you’re okay again.

It made me think. In the wake of the conflicts between police officers and unarmed black men, and the subsequent Black Lives Matter movement, we rightfully hear much discussion of structural racism, or preventative measures such as body cams. And for good reason. But there’s another side to this issue that also deserves attention. If we want to prevent incidents like the one with Laquam McDonald, wouldn’t it be smart idea to devote equal attention to the mental health of our police force? In addition to the many measures that do exist—from the provision of counseling, days off after serious incidents, to newer mind-body awareness programs that aim to increase officers’ levels of self-awareness and mindfulness.Further structural investment in screening, monitoring, and counseling on issues like PTSD and burnout would likely benefit officers like those I encountered in Chicago.  

An ultimate goal might be to foster police culture where it’s normal, and best practice, to talk about the the emotional and psychological toll of working at the frontlines of violence, poverty, and oftentimes injustice. The alternative includes the high cost of law suits, officers that either temporarily or permanently drop out of the police force due to stress related issues, and unnecessary violence. If we call them Chicago’s finest, it seems only logical to treat them as such.

Willem Dudok, Director, Johnny Wonder, is a spring 2016 Marshall Memorial Fellow.