Clinician's Guide to Peer Support and Officer Wellness | S5 E10

SPEAKER_01 0:00

I can tell you that our peer support team has saved officers' lives in our department and other departments, like no question. And so what we did, we took out the hard work for the officers and just said, hey, we'll do it with you if you want us to. And I've never had an officer say no. So I'll give you a real tough time in New Have We did six debriefs from Thanksgiving to Christmas in 2023. And in that time period, five of the incidents were within a mile of each other. I'd say the two themes that come out the most are pulling up old stuff and also wishing they could have done more. We're not educating them to be therapists, obviously. We're educating them to understand what someone might need in a circumstance and make it easier to make that first phone call, make it easier to show up to that first appointment.

Voiceover 0:45

Welcome to Responder Resilience, along with my co-host Dr. Stacy Raymond. I'm David Dashinger. This episode we're going to be speaking with Captain Michael Fumiati of the New Haven Police Department. He's the co-director of the Connecticut Alliance to benefit law enforcement, otherwise known as Cable. And we're going to be discussing peer support and officer wellness and what mental health professionals who work with first responders need to know. Remember to like and subscribe, YouTube, Responder Resilience, Facebook, Responder Wellness Inc. and Responder TV. LinkedIn, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify, and go to our website, respondertv.com for past episodes and guest information. This episode is made possible by the First Responder Center for Excellence. Discover more at First ResponderCenter.org and connect with us on X, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and YouTube. Our resource partner, Fight Camp, is offering an exclusive deal for viewers of responder resilience. For a limited time, you can get an amazing free package valued at $238, which includes punch crackers, quick wraps, and a free 45-day membership trial. Don't miss out. Email us at inforresponderTV.com with the subject line Fight Camp to claim your free package today. We'll be right back to speak with Michael after this. In this family, more of us die by our own hands and by the hazards of the job.

SPEAKER_06 2:01

In this family, up to a quarter of 911 telecommunicators have symptoms of post-traumatic stress. In this family, our mental health and wellness are in high risk, while respondents are quietly suffering.

SPEAKER_08 2:13

In this family, many struggle with job-related stress.

SPEAKER_03 2:17

Burnout.

Voiceover 3:26

He's incredibly passionate about police work and officer wellness. Mike, welcome to Respond to Resilience.

SPEAKER_01 3:33

Hi, David. Thank you so much for having me.

unknown 3:35

Dr.

SPEAKER_01 3:35

Raymond, it's good to see you as well.

SPEAKER_06 3:37

So, Mike, I want to ask you can you explain what peer support entails and why is it so crucial for law enforcement officers?

SPEAKER_01 3:48

Yeah, Dr. Raymond, that's a great question. Uh to start off, uh peer support, I think, is the one of the most integral parts of a police department. Um I think that over the years we've had um there have been uh different teams and different iterations of peer support, but I think it's incredibly important because you have a group of people uh meaning law enforcement officers who understand the job, who work the job, who see the ins and outs, also uh would see how certain officers are impacted by a specific scene or a specific incident. And so they're really the barometer for or they're they the read on our fellow officers. And so uh I think that just from a uh initial point of catching or looking at when when someone's a little bit different, uh and then the goal is to then bridge the gap between uh someone maybe not understanding what therapy is or seeking treatment, uh, to our goal, both at Cable and in the New Haven Police Department, is to educate peer support officers. Um they don't we're not educating them to be therapists, obviously. We're educating them to uh understand what someone might need in a circumstance and then reduce that stigma uh and make it easier to make that first phone call, make it easier to show up to that first appointment. Uh and I what I've seen is that once we're able to break down that first barrier, then we're off to the races and most of the time with officers.

Voiceover 5:04

Right. I think you're touching on something, Mike, um, love you to speak to a little more. And that's um one of the functions of peer support or can be to kind of help shepherd somebody who needs help to get those resources. Is that something you do in in your work?

SPEAKER_01 5:17

Oh, yeah, all the time. I think it requires a lot of trust. Um, but we'll have officers make the first call to a clinician uh with us in the room. And so if they're that way, they're not alone, they're not, hey, listen, we've done this with tons of officers before. You're not the first one, you're certainly not going to be the last one. I I feel like over the course of my career, handing somebody a phone number and saying, hey, call EAP or hear somebody call them, uh, we all know how that goes most of the time. But hey, people are concerned about it.

SPEAKER_06 5:44

That phone call is a very difficult one to make.

SPEAKER_01 5:47

Yeah. And so what we did, we we took out the hard work for the officers and just said, hey, we'll do it with you if you want us to. And I've never had an officer say no.

SPEAKER_06 5:55

Do you have a list of uh vetted clinicians? Like, how does that work? Do you do you know who who to call and who not to call?

SPEAKER_01 6:04

So basically, I I I tell officers all the time. So I see a therapist every week. I don't care who knows about it. Um, my therapist knows uh people in my circle, and so people will say, Oh, I was talking to Captain Fumiati, and she's always like, Well, I didn't want to tell them that I talked to you. And I said, You can tell them. I don't don't tell them what I say. But like, you can tell them, you can tell them I talked to you, can I tell everybody? And so uh from my perspective, I think that like um we have a list, but I also tell people it's like dating, you know, like and I'm not saying date your therapist, but I'm saying like if you're it's like if you don't like someone or you don't hit it off with them, it's not a one and done situation where you go one time and you're like, ah, we didn't really hit it off. So yeah, we have a list and um we we use our EAP heavily, we use uh officer, officer, other officer wellness um resources. And so uh a lot of the time uh we can talk more about it too. Like we tried a lot of preventative stuff the last year in New Haven. So that was a real initiative for us is preventative stuff rather than um when people are in crisis.

Voiceover 7:08

What are some of the long-stand-standing issues that you're seeing in law enforcement that affects mental health for LEOs and how can peer support begin to address these issues?

SPEAKER_01 7:18

Um, so it's a it's a daunting task. Uh so I I'm in front of roughly between seven and eight hundred police officers across the state every year. Uh, and it's always amazing to me that uh in each classroom, I'll ask who's read Kevin Gilmartin's book, Emotional Survival for Law Enforcement, uh, which to me is like a foundational text. The same way Broken Windows is, the same way that should be. Um and uh I'd say less than 1% of every classroom has read the book.

SPEAKER_06 7:45

That's amazing.

SPEAKER_01 7:46

And I might catch a supervisor or two who say, Oh, I took it for uh I read it for a sergeant's exam, or somebody said, Oh, yeah, I read that in the academy, but I didn't really think anything of it. Um, and so uh I I think the biggest issue that I've seen. My grandfather was a police officer in New Haven from 1959 to 1990. My uncle was a police officer who was killed in line of duty in New Haven. Uh, the issues that they and their friends and their coworkers went through are the same issue that we deal with now. Uh it's uh it's almost as if Kevin Gilmartin's book was written, I think, 25, 30 years ago at this point. And it's as if you he wrote it yesterday. So I think no surprise, alcohol or unhealthy coping skills around uh substance use. Um I think stress and burnout, big time, uh, a lack of sleep, uh, I think anxiety tied with all that. Uh I think that those, honestly, those things, on top of um uh I think the the added pressure of social stress and weight of the job, um, I think that all of those things are compounding factors for what we're dealing with today.

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SPEAKER_06 10:01

So, Mike, we know that uh police officers uh face traumatic events. Um, can you discuss the types of trauma that they experience and how peer support can assist in managing um the their trauma responses? Like what does peer support do to help um, you know, uh the offers officers get through the traumatic incidents? So, first and foremost, what are the tr uh the typical traumatic incidents?

SPEAKER_01 10:29

So I'll give an example. I mean, I don't think we have enough time to talk about it, but I'll I'll try to make it as quick as I can. Uh so I'll give you a real tough time in New Haven. We had um six, we did six debriefs from Thanksgiving to Christmas in 2023. Uh and in that time period, uh there was a murder. Uh five of the incidents were within a mile of each other. So uh very same officers or very similar officers on similar beats went to these calls. Uh one was a person who jumped from the 15th floor of a building uh and uh obviously passed away. So officers arrived on that. Uh another one was a domestic dispute where an individual um ended his own life by firearm uh in uh in a very public way. Another one was a similar situation except uh a room over from uh two young children. Uh another one was a murder suicide uh in a house that uh was decorated very beautifully for Christmas. Um and another one was uh two individuals that engaged, uh they were reading poetry at uh four o'clock in the morning and smoking PCP, and it turned into a um a knife battle between two of the individuals, and officers went to that. Um and so uh I mean uh debriefs that we've done recently, death of children, the you know, the the usual thing, death of an officer, death of children, um, serious injuries to people. Um there's a lot of different things I think that people don't realize the volume of uh of what officers are going to on the regular. And one thing about New Haven, especially in urban policing right now, is uh when I was uh so I spent most of my time in Fairhaven, which is a district there, uh when I first started, there was 12 to 14 officers on the evening shift working. Now there's three. And so the call volume also is at our highest ever. Um and so the all the calls aren't going down, just fewer officers are going to them. And so the possibility of being traumatized is through the roof.

SPEAKER_06 12:21

So, Mike, you're using the word uh debriefing. So just for our audience, can you explain, you know, how does peer support uh it how is peer support involved in in a uh critical incident stress debriefing? What is a debriefing? Just so that the clinicians listening um can understand that better.

SPEAKER_01 12:42

Uh yeah, so we follow uh we use a combination of the Mitchell model and uh ICISF, CISD, CISM. And so we kind of uh most of our like standard um uh situations where we'll call officers. Generally, we try to do it within 48 hours of the incident. Um, and we'll have officers, our peer support officers uh will run the debriefing. And so there'll be a group of officers that come into the room. Um generally it's officers, so we also pay overtime to come to the meeting. And so both our peer support officers and the officers who are attending are compensated for their time because we value it. Um and so uh a clinician will be in the room, uh, though this is uh the peer support team coordinator runs our um runs the debrief and the clinician uh will assist and kind of work with us through it. Uh we follow the same pretty much a Mitchell model format-ish, and we work our way through it, and that's been incredibly successful for us. Uh the feedback we get from officers is astounding. Uh I've sat in, I don't know, probably a hundred of them. Uh, and it's always amazing to me how officers connect unlike suppressed incidents from earlier on their career to these careers. That's like a common theme, I would say. I'd say the two themes that come out the most are pulling up old stuff and also wishing they could have done more, wishing they could have done more for other officers, wishing they could have done more for people. And so I just think that's that's very fascinating that those two things all come up in almost every debrief.

Voiceover 14:12

Yeah. Wow. So let's talk again about the kind of intersectional interface between mental health clinicians and peer support. Um, how can mental health professionals collaborate with police departments to help enhance the peer support initiatives and improve the outcomes for officers?

SPEAKER_01 14:30

That's a great question. So, what's challenging about uh peer support, uh, I think what's also challenging about Connecticut for um I'll speak to Connecticut specifically, is we have so many different police departments. And so what happens in uh New Haven might be drastically different than how Wallingford handles something or Hartford to West Hartford or Glastonbury. And so it's uh I think one thing that clinicians can do is just uh at least try to just understand the job, or at least um people I feel like people are always surprised when it's like uh our officers will go from um dealing with a uh a seriously injured six-month-old to a parking complaint in like you know, outside of a pizza spot in New Haven. And so I think like the juxtaposition between those two things as a human being is incredible. Um, we we get to see like the worst of humanity and the best of humanity sometimes within seconds or minutes of each other. And so I think understanding that, I'm a big proponent of ride-alongs. I think if you're doing if you're working with cops or you're working with first responders, you have to at least just sit in the seat a couple of times. Um because uh I just think that that really shows a uh a good example of what the job is like day in and day out.

SPEAKER_06 15:41

I I work a lot with police. Um I'm sure you're alarmed and Dave is alarmed with the suicide rate among the police, although those numbers are going down, which is fortunate. Um and it seems like it's still very difficult to get uh police officers to think about you know needing psychotherapy. So what do you think are the barriers as to to explain that?

SPEAKER_01 16:09

I think it's difficult to admit that we are exposed, we're experts in trauma. I think that's difficult to admit. I mean not not necessarily even experts in understanding it, but experts in being exposed to it. And so I think like because then you I think to admit that you have to admit that you're not superman or superwoman. You you are going to feel a certain way. It's very common for officers to be depressed. It's if you understand the brain and body chemistry that's happening every time you go to a hot call or you put on a gun belt and a vest, then you understand that your body normally, no matter who you are, is going to do the opposite. And so you're going to be depressed, upset, anxious. Um that's just a natural thing that's going to happen. And so I think um admitting that I uh I'd say would be one of the barriers, one of the biggest barriers is um, you know, we don't we don't need help. Um we're strong, we're tough, we don't have to deal with it or talk about emotions or feelings. Um and that's that's really challenging. I think that's really hard to do. Um I think another one of the barriers is we're still kind of like if you think about it, like we would never have this conversation in my grandfather's generation. You know, like probably in my my parents' generation, like in their their issues.

SPEAKER_06 17:23

Oh my absolutely my dad was a police officer, and I saw what he was, you know, he was struggling, but there was no talking about it. Absolutely absolutely not.

SPEAKER_01 17:32

And so I think what's great is like we've come a long way since then, you know. Like I I say it all the time, like when my grandpa started, he was trained by people in World War II. So like the world it's a different, it's a different, we're a couple of generations away from that. Um but I what I'm encouraged by is the fact that young officers are open to this stuff. They're they're much more open to it, they're much more uh willing to communicate around mental health and wellness.

SPEAKER_06 17:56

What about the issue of mistrust? Um, you know, because I think just observing my father, he he really felt kind of isolated, people didn't understand him, um, people put him in a separate category. And now when you look at like a public view of police, um it just seems like there's this, you know, that I that police feel kind of isolated, they they have a very special job, nobody gets them. Can you comment on that?

SPEAKER_01 18:24

Yeah, for sure. I think mistrust is a huge piece of it. Uh now I'm I'm overseeing internal affairs, which is the first time in my career that I've uh had that experience, and we have a decent amount of cases in New Haven. And uh I think uh as as if you're doing it correctly, you should have uh there should be some open investigations to look into make sure we're being accountable and transparent, etc. But cut with that comes like, hey, is this person in plain clothes that's in someone's car? Is that an IA plant? You know, like we bore caught a border on the line of a little bit of paranoia there. And so I think the mistrust with like, is the chief gonna find out? Is someone gonna tell? Like, we we really harp on that. Um any peer support coordinator I talk to, anyone that I who's starting a program, continuing a program, the number one thing has to be confidentiality. Yes. Uh number one. But like there are things that the peer support coordinator and I know that nobody will ever know. Um and so I think that's also what's great about peer support is like making sure the team is well trained, they understand confidentiality, they understand their legal protections. Um, I think those things are all really important. But uh I think um we it's honestly the same strategy. I use the same strategy that we use with community policing. Uh Dr. Raymond, the more you come along, the more you hang out with the cops when they're not in crisis, when things aren't going bad, uh, you you build rapport with them. It's uh it's the same idea with as community policing. Uh we're just using it on the cops.

SPEAKER_00 19:52

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Voiceover 20:52

Talk about real officer wellness and your experience. What does that look like and how can peer support facilitate it?

SPEAKER_01 20:59

Uh yeah, so officer wellness, I think, has come uh a long way. Uh I still think there's a long way to go. Um, it seems like it's a challenge in each department to make that happen. So across the board, uh departments, it uh pretty much most departments have peer support. Uh if they don't, they have something that kind of looks like it. They all have EAP, though nobody knows about it and nobody uses it. Um they have uh the comfort dogs, some of the comfort dogs and therapy dogs have started popping up. Um and I what I would say about the comfort dogs is uh anybody who doesn't believe in them, uh it took me three years to get them in New Haven. And uh if you don't believe in them, I'd encourage anybody to just take a look at the uh the Bristol police officer funeral when uh all the comfort dogs were with uh the officers' children in the uh walkway to the locker room. Uh that that was if you're not sold on comfort dogs, I don't know uh what else would sell you on them. But I struggle with administrations can only do so much. Uh funding is always a barrier. Uh there's but I think uh an actual um a real look for the administration, meaning the chief and the chief's office, uh, to take a look at like what do we actually do for our officers? What does officer wellness look like? Is it a training once a year? Uh is it having a gym that nobody uses? Um and so I think it's like really uh for administrators having some introspection of like we say officer wellness is a catchphrase, but what does it actually mean? Um in New Haven, we mandate a lot of people to stay. We force a lot of officers to stay. And so that creates an environment where how can you say you do officer wellness uh, but then you're whole forcing people to stay in in the same environment. So I think it's challenging. Um I'd say uh you can do little things though. You can uh get access to healthy food, have that available in the police department. Um, you can get uh make sure the gym equipment is up to date, make sure it's an environment that uh individuals want to use. Um I'd say make resources available. Um so mental health resources, we did a whole month-long uh thing on sleep. We were able to send, I think, 16 or 17 officers for sleep studies, and a bunch of them were able to get CPAP machines. And so if you're sleeping better, uh things are gonna be happier, healthier, better. Um I think also having a conversation around uh unhealthy substance use. So I bring it up every time I can. Like I don't drink, I haven't drank in over two years. Um, it just doesn't do anything for me. Um and I never had a problem with it, it wasn't something I was concerned about. But I think having frank conversations about like we have to put our money where our mouth is uh around officer wellness. And so there's gotta be some sort of investment, but it's gotta come from the officers in my mind. Uh to use Field of Dreams, like uh if you build it, they might not come unless they want to build it. Um so if they're building it or they're a part of it, then I think um why not do something like that? That that's I think where it has to go. It has to be uh from the officers for the officers.

SPEAKER_06 23:51

So um what training or skills do you think uh peer support team officers should have, you know, to be considered you know members on the team? Like do you is there a certain requirements? What are you looking for in a peer support team officer?

SPEAKER_01 24:06

So we actually revamped our entire peer support team a couple of years ago. Um and I think uh I think the I want them to get as much training as possible. Uh we we I want them to be treated like our SWAT team. I want them to be treated like our hostage team, I want them to be treated like our crowd control team. All these specialized units, peer support has kind of always been like, oh, here's a thing we do, like do that for free. Um I can tell you that our peer support team has saved officers' lives in our department and other departments, like no question. Um and so I'd say um as much training as possible. Um so we require that everyone is uh Sism trained. Um so ICISF, Sism trained. Um, we've tried to expand to more. Um it's really challenging to get to train the trainer for that stuff and to move up in that organization. Um so we've we've explored that. Um there's a couple other peer support trainings around uh the state that I'll send officers to. Anything that opens up for officer wellness, we'll send peer support officers too. Good. Um and so I think um what we look for in officers specifically um are officers who have a good reputation in the department, officers who are not seen as gossip people, um, good officers, good quality police officers. Um and if you're caught gossiping, or we are we will immediately can you and I'll we have no problem. It's very well known that if uh you'll be held as as accountable as we can hold you within the department. Um I think those things are um pretty simple, but I think it it requires peer support's been around for a while. Uh I just think as people left during COVID, you kind of had this uh tumble effect where we lost a lot of um uh what do you call it, uh knowledge in the department. You know, we have homicide detectives who have done dozens and dozens of homicides, and now all of a sudden we have a homicide detective who's done two homicides, you know, like not that extreme, but you get what I'm saying. So the same exact thing happened with peer support. Like our old peer support team had seen it, done it, but now they're not here anymore. And so how do we close that gap with some of our younger officers? Uh we also do a pretty cool onboarding um where we have all the officers sit around and say, like, hey, what are what are some things that you um that you want to do with the peer support team? What are you passionate about? Is it veterans? Is it alcohol? Uh is it maybe maybe you don't maybe because of a family history involving suicide, you don't want to touch suicide. Or maybe you don't want to touch like line of duty deaths isn't really my thing. Um I'll I'll go afterwards and support, but generally I'm not the person that's going because that just hits too close to home for me. And so I have no problem saying that to people with um, hey, listen, if this isn't your spot, if you've got a six-month-old at home, you shouldn't be going to that debrief. And so I think really just getting getting to know the team um and spending a lot of time on it, any training that they can go to, I'm happy to send them to because I think um any opportunity they get to make a to see something different in somebody or to try to offer help and support, uh, I think that that's worth it entirely.

Voiceover 27:05

Great. And Mike, you were talking about the turnover in the department, and obviously it's happening in many places. Is there a way to tap into that wealth of knowledge and experience um with the retirees and somehow you know incorporate that into peer support?

SPEAKER_01 27:20

Yeah, I love it. We do in New Haven for sure. Um so we do uh we have our we have uh pretty much if you're a member on the team, we don't, unless you do something to get uh knocked off, we don't remove you from the team. So when we we have a group of retirees that uh we have a pretty good network where if something happens with a retiree, we will send uh both our active peer support members and retired peer support members to do something like that. It's actually one of our goals for the next year is to involve our retirees more. We started sending officers to some of the luncheons that they do, et cetera. Um, but uh yeah, we don't we still we still use them um uh to bridge the gap between retirees. And unfortunately, uh we had a retired officer take her life um a couple of years ago. And so our current peer support team was there to support uh the retirees as well as retired peer support members to help as well. So uh yeah, we we still tap into that experience and resource whenever we can.

Voiceover 28:19

Oh, good.

SPEAKER_06 28:19

And that's a win-win too, because then the retirees feel like they're still using their training, you know, because they've seen everything, they've done everything, uh, they have years of experience, and so now they could, you know, uh counsel a younger officer and and let them know that everything is going to be okay. And and it makes them feel useful in their retirement. So that's what I mean by a win-win, uh, because we know that that first year out, there is an uptick in uh police suicide. For that first year of uh retiring, there's an uptick, and and that's very concerning because they, you know, these officers lose a sense of uh you know, they're not contributing, they don't feel meaningful anymore. And so I think honestly, I think that all departments should employ their um you know their retirees to give them a sense of purpose, you know, and contribute to peer support.

SPEAKER_01 29:15

I agree. Yeah, we've seen that. Um it's always an interesting conversation uh to have with uh as in my position, I'm kind of caught between the the veteran retirees and the and the brand new rookies. I feel like an old guy on the street, but I'm a young guy in the administration areas. Uh any administrators listening to this, hopefully they don't hold that against me. Um but um the I think it's always fascinating to say, like to talk to people like a lot of people that I know of retired, and they're like, Yeah, you hand in your stuff for somewhere that you did 20, 25, 30 years, and there's some rookie sergeant working at the front desk, and you go to come in and they're like, Hey, who are you? Yeah, and that's just a wild feeling when this is, you know, it's just the it's a it's a really weird feeling. So yeah, we we definitely try to do that in New Haven. It's it's a lot of work for the peer support team. Um, but we we're we're trying on all those fronts.

SPEAKER_07 30:06

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Voiceover 31:11

Well, Mike, we covered a lot. Is there anything else that we didn't speak about that you'd like to talk to?

SPEAKER_01 31:16

The only thing that I think is uh we also do and try to focus on is like critical incidents. So like when the incidents are happening, um, so like officer-involved shootings. Um we've had a few of them in New Haven in the in the uh last couple of months. And so um what we try to do is uh we've we've limited like this over response. And so we really have key people who know what they're doing. We have uh one sergeant or lieutenant or an officer go to the hospital. We have one person go to wherever officers might be collecting, whether it's the police department, the hospital, or someone's home. We try to make sure that the peer support team is closing gaps for that. And so the way I look at it is like our peer support team is filling the gaps that the administration can't because the administration has a job to do. Um, and so we try to fill those gaps if kids need a ride somewhere, if somebody needs food, like uh a lot of times people will be like, oh, that's not our job, but that is actually our job. And so we've seen a lot of success in that. Um we also do a lot of follow-ups. So, like we'll we'll follow up, especially around anniversaries, around uh major incidents. So we were following up with all those officers after those um uh two years ago after a debrief, uh, we'll we'll follow up frequently with individuals when officers are injured. We're checking in with them when they're out injured, we're uh anybody who's on workers' comp, anybody who has a death in the family. Uh we also started doing some things around uh positive things. So, like if you have a child, we get a card from the peer support team. Like if there's good things that are happening, uh we don't want it to be this whole, you know, peer support only shows up when doom and gloom. So we've really tried to do that. Um it's challenging because everybody wears five hats. Uh, but I think it's uh we we've been doing doing our best to hold our own. Uh one last thing I think that's that's important to talk about is that with the new risk protection orders and risk protection warrants, uh we've had officers who said they were gonna take their own lives. Uh and they had their guns taken from them, uh, as they should, and they're back to work totally fine. They were able to admit they needed help, they got help, and they're back to work. And so I can't emphasize that enough every time I get in front of any sort of law enforcement audience. Like, if you think you can't ask for help, you're wrong. Uh you can ask for help. We can get you the help. Yeah, you might not make overtime for three months or six months or nine months because you're getting help that you need to live, uh, and that saves your life, then that's worth it. Um, gone are the days where, like, at least we're we're trying to get rid of the days where we say, like, uh, everybody knows that guy's drinking too much. Everybody knows that per that that person has some problems and has some things going on, but nobody wants to step into the arena and say, hey, like, if you need help, we can help you and and we can work through this. You'll you'll get support for it. Um our chief, our administration's been really supportive of that. So um I always try to emphasize that because there's like I feel like people always think there's like this boogeyman out there where if you don't if you're drinking too much or you're using uh whatever substance you're using, oh geez, it's gonna end my career. And like most of the time, if you do it the right way and you ask for help, um, you can get the help and and uh be able to um still be a police officer again, still be a firefighter again, still be a paramedic again. Um so I just think that's important to emphasize.

SPEAKER_06 34:35

And there's legislation to protect, you know, against being fired or demoted or passed over for promotion if you're you know, you have to see a therapist or you have to be on medication. So um I think that's very important that you know that there's legislation that prevents that.

Voiceover 34:52

That's great. Stacey, final thoughts?

SPEAKER_06 34:56

Um, I just I I'm a a clinical um supervisor for um a local police department, and I can't say enough how important peer support is. I mean, it really is the first line of defense for mental health for uh police officers. And um it's critical because the uh the officers feel so much more comfortable talking to one of their own that gets them, as opposed to just some random therapist out there. I'm not putting, you know, putting down therapists, but um, you know, it fills it definitely fills the gap, and it can be it can be life-saving because an officer that's in crisis can open up to perhaps another officer before they're gonna open up to a you know a therapist in the community. So um I'm right there with you, Mike. I I really support peer support.

SPEAKER_01 35:52

Thanks, Dr. Raymond. That's great. I mean, uh having the support of people having clinicians like I'm not a mental health professional, I don't know what the heck I'm doing where that's concerned. Uh, but being able to push officers to trusted people and have them say, hey, I went and got that EMDR stuff, like yeah, that was really great. I feel good about that. So then then when they come back, hey, if if you're okay with it, can we tell so-and-so to talk to you after an incident so that they can go get the help they need too? And so I I think that that's just uh it's it's great to to for officers to feel supported after a short amount of time there, where I think we had a hard time feeling supported. And uh it's it's great to work with uh people like you getting the word out there and getting information out to officers saying, like, hey, you can get help. Uh there's help out there, and and there's people who want to help you.

Voiceover 36:37

Absolutely. Mike, where can people find you or cable or anything else? Uh any other contacts, social media, website, stuff like that.

SPEAKER_01 36:44

Uh yeah, so you can find uh anything about cable is our website, cablect.com. We have a peer support training coming up in May uh at the University of New Haven. So that's open to all first responders, not just police. Um so we have that. Uh anybody, if if anybody has anything going on in the city of New Haven, you could always reach me at uh mvfumiati at newhavenct.gov uh or in the chief's office. I'm I'm pretty much always there. And so um our website, Cable has a uh an Instagram, it's uh cable CT on Instagram. And so if you were uh interested in following us for updates or different classes that we have going on around CIT or peer support in uh in and around the state of Connecticut, that's a great place to find us.

Voiceover 37:27

Fantastic. Mike, um, you're doing phenomenal work and it's really inspiring to hear everything your uh you and your team are doing. Um I think it's really bodes well for the future of not only policing but mental health first responders in general. So thank you so much for sharing all that with us today.

SPEAKER_01 37:45

Well, thank you very much for having me. I've I've got a great team of officers that really care about each other and uh that they're really making a difference.

Voiceover 37:52

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