A Thousand Cuts
A Post-Cop Analysis
Shortly after leaving law enforcement in 2021, I was warned I may experience emotions I wasn’t prepared for. I remember brushing off the possibility, mostly because the freedom of leaving was so new – so enjoyable – I thought, “how could any of this be bad?”
I’d also heard it mentioned many times that leaving military or police service after a long enough career can be challenging because of the sudden lack of mission that was once so prevalent in your day-to-day life. This advice, too, was set aside. “My new mission is to be free to find a new mission,” I confidently told myself.
Working in law enforcement can be very rewarding. Not only do you have a sense of mission, but you get to do amazing work with great people. Work that puts you on a stage and under the lights of a show that most people never experience; a show of humanity whose cast is a select, chosen few. The show is a dramedy, of sorts, full of laughter and uncertainty, fear and joy, mixed emotions with a little adrenaline sprinkled in. Your day is full of ups and downs, every day a new rollercoaster where you’re blind to the next corner. Things happen, you respond.
People call the police for many reasons. It could be the worst day of their life, or something as simple as an inconvenient fender-bender. Either way, picking up the phone and pressing send on three little numbers is akin to controlling the Bat-Signal. Everyone knows the power of 9-1-1 when they are in need. What they don’t always realize is that the responding power lies in the flesh within the uniform of whoever arrives, and they not only show up for you, but for all who call.
Bad things happen to everyone – it’s a part of life. We as humans get over bad things rather easily. Sure, we may wallow in a moment, but looking back, that moment is often seen as a mere speed bump we can hardly remember. Trauma, on the other hand, sticks around for a while. Trauma is a much larger speed bump, one that’s hit so hard and fast it causes some form damage needing repair. Luckily, for most, truly traumatic events are typically few and far between, and afterward there is generally time to think, time to talk, time to heal.
A police officer’s life, however – the show in which they star – is a life of running call-to-call, day-in-day-out experiencing everyone’s bad and traumatic events alongside them. Their response can also draw some officers into their own direct traumatic events. There is little time to think or talk, much less to heal, and this affects police officers whether they know it or not. There’s no emotion-proof vest issued on day one. No shield to throw on in the locker room before a shift, and certainly no standard for draining the sponge that soaked up all the day’s misery, much less all that’s accumulated from months and years on the job.
It’s a double-edged sword. As an officer you enjoy doing what you do. You do fun and exciting things with your friends and build bonds that last a lifetime. You joke with your buddies about how you did this on a call, and they did that. You absorb the brunt of people’s speed bumps with pride. They are badges of honor, stories to tell.
Although at the time you don’t realize it, out of necessity the bad associated with all the good naturally separates itself and begins to compartmentalize within you. Compartments get shut and locked, and the keys are easily misplaced. Misplaced because you’re constantly engaged in the work, not seeing the forest for the trees. This changes when you leave the job. Once you’ve taken a few steps away and separated yourself from the work, the lost keys slowly begin to present themselves. For me, they were not presented in a rush of emotion, but rather a lack thereof.
A little while after leaving law enforcement I was driving my kid home from school. Traveling down a familiar road here in my new home of Mesa, Arizona, I came upon a collision. A dirt bike ridden by two teenagers on their way to have the time of their life struck the side of a vehicle that pulled onto the roadway in front of them.
As the collision happened probably less than a minute before I arrived, I was one of the first people on the scene. One of the teenagers had been thrown far from the collision, struggling in pain from what I later learned was a shattered femur, among other things, and the other young man, sadly, was all but motionless on the pavement. Clearly, he was injured much worse than his friend.
I parked blocking the roadway and told my son to stay in our car with his seatbelt on. I got out to help, heading straight to the one most injured. I found him wide-eyed, struggling to move while fighting to breathe from unseen injuries. I tried my best to keep him still and comforted while speaking to the emergency dispatcher, attempting to control the scene and direct the fire department to our location so they could arrive and administer much-needed, critical care.
When the medics showed, they took over and started doing what they could. I returned to my son who asked question after question about what had just unfolded in front of him. As we drove away, I said a quick thanks to the police officer who began handling traffic control, and home we went. Sadly, the young man I was helping didn’t have the opportunity to go home. He passed away a few days later in the hospital, surrounded by his family. A life lost, others changed forever.
What occurred and my involvement seemed normal. I didn’t think twice about it; shit happens. It wasn’t until shortly after when I was telling the story to a family member – who wasn’t there but was clearly affected by it – I realized that this being normal probably wasn’t normal. Why would it be? It certainly shouldn’t be. This made me think.
It was only normal because I had been on the stage of my old job for so long that I couldn’t see the effect committing law enforcement had had on my life, how it had changed me as a person. I began to realize police work is a series of a thousand small cuts that never get a chance to heal. The cuts only begin to heal if you’re purposeful in patching them (which isn’t common), or when you leave the profession altogether, forcing the cutting to stop.
Several years removed from law enforcement, empathy – and even sadness – have regained a place in my life. I’m not sure I would have moved through the transition as fast without the experience that forced the above realization. Or, perhaps, without someone planting the possibility in the back of my mind in the first place. I consider myself lucky. Some go years (or never) without moving closer to who they once were before the job.
There are a lot of officers who have experienced much more than me, but if I can pass along any words of advice, it would be to take healing option A (being more purposeful in your mental health) a little more seriously while you’re still in the thick of it. A more purposeful approach, even if you don’t think you need it, could help avoid serious issues in your post-cop life, ultimately allowing you to enjoy your new-found freedom that much more.
Make sure you’re not just talking to your friends about the fun things, but things that matter, too. You watch your buddies’ backs on the street, remember it might also be needed outside the uniform.
If you’ve left or are considering leaving law enforcement, talk with those who have made the change and take to heart what they have to share. For a show with Oscar-quality storytelling and brilliant performances, the lack of applause can be deafening. Law enforcement, and life after, can be lonely, but it doesn’t have to be.
Like what you read? Subscribe to my blog and share my content.
Follow me here on Substack, as well as Instagram and Facebook (@realtayjones).
More about Tay Jones.