Giving Support

I've said it before and I will say it again, you cannot tell a depressed person to snap out of it. Can't be done! It is hard to ask for help and it is hard to get the help. Just because you are depressed doesn't mean that on your first visit to see a therapist and/or psychiatrist that you will feel comfortable enough to spill your guts out and therefore receive the help you need. You will need to see a therapist that will listen to you and the psychiatrist will give you medications. Trust me you will need both. You will also probably see more than one before you find someone you can trust and/or feel they can understand you. That right there is one of the reasons cops don't seek help. Who can you trust and who will understand a cop? A dedicated therapist will put you at ease and when you leave the session feeling that huge weight off your shoulders then you have found the right one. The struggles of a cop may be different but the right therapist will understand and will not judge you. Another important factor, you cannot be judged. This is hard to find, people not to judge you. Afterall, as cops you live a complex world and the split decisions you make on a daily basis can only be understood by another cop especially when your decision leads to the death of another. I will share a story with you. My partner and I were working a 4x12 and it was the last hour of our tour. Normally I am looking for anything to get some overtime but it had been a hectic tour and my week was coming to an end so I was looking forward to the end of tour. We got a call of a domestic dispute in a bodega. When we got there the bodega owner said the couple were regulars that had too much to drink, both were drunk, argumentive but harmless. Long story short she lived in the building and he lived elsewhere. He wanted us to escort him to her apartment so he could see for himself that she was not cheating on him with his best friend who was supposedly sleeping in her bed. She said they were now divorced and he had no business in her life. There was no assault just loud arguing so we escorted them both out the bodega. She went into the adjoining door that led upstairs to her apartment and we told her to call it a night. Then we told the gentleman to start walking North in the direction of his apartment and not to come back. We got back into our patrol car, wrote down some notes and informed central of the disposition. Our tour was over and we went home. The next day after roll call our Sgt. wanted to know about the job so we explained it was bullshit. Thats when he informed us the midnight tour responded back to that job and found the woman had been stabbed so many times they could not count all of her stab wounds...WOW. Its not something you want to hear. The story goes according to the bodega owner that she eventually came back down and had another beer eventually he also returned and joined her for a few more. When the owner said he was closing they all walked outside and he remembers she allowed him to go upstairs to her apartment. They probably got into another argument resulting in him stabbing her multiple times. I don't believe we did anything wrong and I don't believe we would have done anything different. The department agreed with us. This incident bothered me for weeks. Everytime I passed that address I recalled that night. I know not everyone could understand the unsaid.