“It is widely recognized that emotional and psychological stress takes its toll on law enforcement personnel, both sworn and civilian, in the United States. (Spence et al. 2019) Such stress can come from a variety of sources, including responsibilities inherent to the job (e.g., danger, job risk, and exposure to disturbing scenes) and administrative or operational issues (e.g., shift work, inadequate supervision or management, poor equipment, and excessive paperwork). Yet it is those inherent factors that have the highest potential for causing temporary or lasting trauma—trauma that may manifest itself as more incident-based posttraumatic stress or, perhaps more significant in light of the number of personnel making law enforcement a career, the build-up of years of trauma best characterized as cumulative career traumatic stress.”
