Career As A Police Officer: One Of The Most Sought-After Career

Being a police officer is one of the most sought-after careers in the United States. This career is in such high demand because with the job of being a police officer comes power, respect, and responsibility. This job comes with power because each day police officers up hold the law to a standard that citizens must meet to stay out of trouble. Officers have respect because people respect positions of authority and it comes with responsibility because the community officers police are only as good as they are. Being a police officer also comes with many other positives like officers have very flexible work schedules, government insurance and benefits, promotion opportunities, and early retirement. Another positive for police officers in middle

A lot of occupational stress for officer’s lead to depression then Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Police culture has never been to be vocally expressive, emotions are rarely talked about and it is common for officers to bottle up whatever traumatic incident they have been apart of. Police officers are known for looking the other way for each other and other cultural things like the blue wall of silence. Law enforcement and the law enforcement culture has a stigma that exist around mental health issues like PTSD. After so long of being stressed many officers turn to caffeine, nicotine, and alcohol (2017). A lack of sleep combined with leaning on these depressant drugs leads to depression. After becoming depressed and going to work each day seeing people in bad situations and seeing people hurt themselves and each other officers began to quit on life. The traumatic incidents they have seen and heard play in their minds and they develop a cynical outlook on life (2017). A combination of cynicism, PTSD, and no out let lead officers to suicide. Data shows that in recent years in law enforcement there about 11 suicides each month, averaging about 130 each year

The most common symptoms of a stressed officer are fatigue, lack of sleep (insomnia), a low sex drive, excessive drinking, and nicotine addiction (Alvin, 2014). With lack of sleep a lot of officers turn to caffeine as well and end up becoming dependent of it to get through a shift (2014). Stress is common and can be caused by all sorts of things that are a part of the daily work environment. Police officer stress due to the situations and people around them. On duty officers are mostly around victims of a crime, suspects of a crime, peers they work with, and their superiors in the department. Constantly being around people that are involved in distressed situations is likely to affect the officers emotional state in some way (2014). It is also common that officers stress over their safety, physical injuries do happen in the field and that is a big concern for some. Other sources that bring stress are provoking people, a frustrating work load, and pressure from the community. At work as an officer people will try and provoke officers to do things out of anger and aggression, people try to do anything to get under the skin of officers. Work can be frustrating because with each incident that happens out on the streets come multiple pages of paper work. More stress comes from the community because no matter how good of a job