With Police Week almost upon us again, all eyes and hearts of those who wear blue turn to remember those of our ranks who have made the ultimate sacrifice since policing became policing. Their loss – always tragic, and far too often at the hands of a suspect – reminds us that every day does not hold the promise of returning home to our families andloved ones, especially with the role that we play as caretaker of the rules of an honest society, and guardians against those who would do harm to others who abide by its laws.

We send our prayers, and our conversations, towards them, wherever they may now be, in the hopes and belief that they can hear our remembrance and honoring of the memory of who they were in life. But there’s something else which we don’t do often enough in our everyday lives, and which Police Week can also serve as a reminder of: the need to honor and look after those who are still with us, but who may be struggling for one reason or another.

One Uniform, Many People

The line that binds every one of us who’s ever strapped on a shield and gun brings us together in a brother- and sisterhood with a common mission, a common purpose, and a common existence. Being a law enforcement officer, after all, is much more than simply a job; it’s a calling and a way of life. But being part of that kind of lifestyle can take its toll, as well. We’ve all seen it: the high divorce rate, the constant vigilance wearing on you even when you’re off-duty, the cynicism about people in general based upon the fact that we mainly deal with humanity at its worst… the list goes on.

Most of us have great coping skills, or at least pretty good, when it comes to compartmentalizing what happens at work versus what happens when we’re not at work. But even for those of us who appear the most squared away, there are often smaller demons nagging at our heels as a normal human response to being exposed to the things we do, and the stresses that come with every call being an unknown. Sometimes those manifest in obvious ways, other times they don’t.

We may not even notice them until we look back at the end of our careers after constantly running forward, only to find that we’ve been dragging their weight for a long time but were too busy to be able to stop and turn around to look. Those of us who do stop to look generally find that we’re healthier for the most part – sometimes even just the simple act of taking a trip to a place where you’re not certified as an officer (out of state) can be enough to pause the “on” button and give us a chance to reconnect with who we are as people, and not just as agents of the government.

Many People Inside the Uniform

Sometimes there’s a tendency for us to want to lump each other in as more alike than we actually are, because of the similarities of the role we play. We may think that someone else’s response to an incident is more like our own than it actually is because we’ve had the same training, for example, but the reality is that each of us brings our own identity to every single call we do, and because all of us are thankfully complex human beings with nuance and shades of gray, how we are affected will vary a lot. Even the 20-year SWAT guy (and in most cases, especially the 20-year SWAT guy), will be touched in some way by the tragic calls, and lifted up by the ones where we really make a difference.

The key for us, especially this Police Week, but really every week, is to recognize and get to know each other well enough as the people inside the uniform to know when something is bothering them, or even to recognize when they’re proud of something they’ve done in order to congratulate them. (The latter is especially critical in today’s day and age when it seems like everyone in the media and public is out to paint us all as sadistic power mongers.)

So, as we observe Police Week and remember those who have fallen in the line, I challenge you to take the time to try to pay a little more attention to those who are still with us, and who surround you as you man the Thin Blue Line between chaos and destruction, and peace and goodwill – because all of us are fighting this battle together, but none of us should ever, ever fight alone.

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Greg Bogosian is certified as a Reserve/Intermittent Police Officer by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and spent twelve years working as an EMT-Basic, including four years as a field EMT and dispatcher for the City of Boston EMS. He was additionally a member of a Federal medical disaster relief team for ten years, with experience responding to the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and the pre-deployment of resources for Hurricane Ike. Greg currently has a passion for educating public safety professionals about matters which impact their lives every day, and welcomes feedback and suggestions in the spirit of ensuring that best practices make it out there for all to benefit from.