Peter Braun
Braun is a Portland Police officer who lives in Portland. The views expressed are his own.
What does policing cost?
This is a question that has been in the news a lot. Not just in terms of dollars and cents, but also what over-policing and under-policing does to communities and the people who live in them.
Those are worthy questions, but as I have spent the past few weeks at home on disability leave battling post-traumatic stress, another comes to mind: What does policing cost the men and women who do it?
The past year would have been a difficult one even if I hadn’t worked some 60 or 70 nights of protests and riots.
In the past 18 months, I have seen six people die – five from gun shots, and one from being run over by a truck. Two of them died in my arms. Most were young; all were undeserving of death. I have also seen one of my coworkers terribly injured in the line of duty, hospitalizing her for weeks. I have faced life-and-death decisions more than once.
Strangely, it wasn’t any of these that pushed me over the edge; it was a pair of photos.
I recently testified in court about a person severely injured by a drunk driver. It was one of the worst crashes I had ever seen, but one where I was able to be there in time to help the victim, who thankfully survived. During my testimony, photos from the crash were shown, which I wasn’t expecting. As soon as I saw those photos a wave of emotions washed over me. My heart began to race, my hands tingled and my vision narrowed. I felt as if 1,000 pounds were on my chest. To put it bluntly, I was terrified. I got through my testimony because that is what years of stress have done to me – taught me to hold it together at all costs. As soon as I was done, I fled. I felt like never going back.
It’s been tough to talk about this at all, let alone publicly. I have had battles with depression and anxiety in the past, but nothing like this. It goes far deeper than this one incident too. I am torn between missing the job I devoted so much of myself to and questioning whether any of this was worth it.
I am not the same person I was six years ago when I started. I am angrier, more cynical, less idealistic, and less in love with Portland — a city I’ve called home my entire life. Every night when I would clock out, I took pride in knowing that I did a good job. I always tried to find a reserve of compassion for people—even on the worst days. But that battle has gotten harder and harder.
As a patrol officer, I handle between 10 and 20 calls for service each day, often at a pace that leaves me no time to check in on my co-workers, even after shootings or deaths.
This constant cycle of stress, adrenaline and tragedy repeated every day for years shears off important parts of people.
I can say without vanity that I have been able to save at least three people’s lives, by providing medical aid, talking a person in crisis out of suicide or preventing an assault. I did this not because I am an amazing police officer, but because I chose to put on the uniform and be there when it counted. Even so, these successes are fleeting when compared with the cost. This is truer now than it has ever been. While I have many positive interactions with the community, elected officials, activists and journalists over and over have made us the politically-expedient scapegoat for years of shortsighted policy.
In the past year, I have not once seen or heard of a single elected official or member of any of Portland Police’s oversight groups coming to speak with working police officers about what we are going through and what we can do together to change. We don’t need people to “back the blue” but just to treat us like human beings. Right now, the focus seems to be on ratcheting up the pressure, without providing us the tools to do better.
If we actually want to make policing better, we need to find a way to make it a less destructive job for the people who do it. A 2012 study estimated that as many as a third of police officers are suffering from post-traumatic stress at any given time – a fact that should give anyone pause, as stress, trauma and exhaustion have all been shown to have serious impacts on bias.
As it stands, I remain on leave, fighting to recover not just from this one crash, but from years of pain and trauma that I have suppressed so that I could keep putting on my uniform and doing my job. The city is asking me and my coworkers to do a job that forces us to put our own humanity on hold, to bear the failings of other institutions and people, all while those in positions of power refuse to even acknowledge that sacrifice. If we want police who can do the job with unwavering compassion and commitment, we need to address the cost. Right now, being a police officer in this city means being willing to sacrifice your own well-being, and honestly that is increasingly difficult to justify.