Tragedy on the job leaves lasting impact, police say

WARNING: The following article contains descriptions of some scenes and images that people might find disturbing.

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It’s been years, but Mike McCormack can still recall the clothes worn by a man wielding a knife near the intersection of Jarvis and Bloor.

“There’s a whole bunch of things that go through your mind. The thing that’s really amazing is the recall on it,” McCormack says.

These days he is best known as president of the Toronto Police Association, but he can still picture vividly that day years ago when as a young officer he was sent to deal with the man threatening people with a long hunting knife.

“I was trying to talk them into dropping the knife,” McCormack remembers. “That person eventually took that knife and plunged it into their own heart and fell between my legs.”

McCormack called an ambulance and waited with the man, watching the protruding knife handle tick with his heartbeat until he died.

“We found a suicide note on him when we got him to the hospital. It’ a pretty traumatic experience and back in those days that’s how we dealt with it – I got a call from the superintendent saying ‘well are you ok?’ And I thought ‘this is odd’ and then he said ‘Oh yeah nothing, I’ll see you at work tomorrow.’”

It wasn’t McCormack’s only encounter with death as an officer, nor is it an unusual story for an officer who has logged many years in the field. Most have a chest full of similar war stories.

Much attention has been paid recently to how police handle encounters with people who may be mentally ill. However a parallel issue is sometimes forgotten – how officers deal with the mental toll of what they encounter in the field.

A current Toronto police officer who preferred not be named (we’ll call him Chris) remembers being called to a home for a person with a weapon. He arrived just in time to see the person take his own life.

“There’s stuff going on you guys never hear about. There’s no question it weighs on you heavy,” says Chris, an officer with more than 20 years of experience on the force.

While he’s never fired his weapon, he says there are times when he’s come dangerously close to taking the safety off his firearm.

Chris says he loves his job and while he was never naive about the kinds of things he might see as an officer, he says it’s impossible not to be affected.

“If I’m at a funeral for example, I find I’m the only one not crying. And the body’s there in an open casket and I’m not affected by it,” Chris says.

Trusting others can also be difficult, he says.

“It’s an ‘us and them mentality.’”

The list of issues officers may face following exposure to trauma includes sleep problems, bed sweats, zoning out of conversations, alcohol abuse and relationship problems.

“Everybody handles it differently,” McCormack says.

He notes that Toronto police have made progress overcoming some of the stigma and machismo around mental health issues since he was a young officer.

“Policing has changed dramatically,” McCormack says. “The way we look at things, trying to break down that culture. Much of the narrative around it has been ‘suck it up – this is what you signed up for. You’re a police officer.’”

Today, there are a range of services on offer for officers after a traumatic event.

“We have debrief teams, we have resident psychologists, we have a very robust family assistance program, the Toronto Police Association has their own family assistance program coordinator so it’s a different environment,” he says.

Officers also have their own way of coping day-to-day.

Alex (not his real name) is another officer with more than 20 years on the force. A number of years ago he nearly died in a collision that occurred while on-duty, a situation he says resulted in stress similar to that evoked by other traumatic incidents.

“Sometimes you’ll relive a moment. You could call it post-traumatic stress or whatever,” Alex says. “You drive by the spot and that triggers the memory of those situations. You see a lot of nasty stuff over your career.”

For Alex, playing sports is a way of reducing stress associated with some of the trauma.

“Physical activity is a de-stressor. It (tension from the job) doesn’t de-escalate overnight.”

In addition to the impact of traumatic events, officers say that close scrutiny of their work and public misconceptions about how they operate are another source of job stress, especially in the wake of high-profile incidents such as trial of Const. James Forcillo, who was recently found guilty of attempted murder by a jury in connection with the 2013 streetcar shooting death of Sammy Yatim (He has not been formally convicted so far as his lawyers are trying to have the conviction stayed).

While Alex and Chris say they don’t know enough of the details to comment authoritatively on the Forcillo case, both are adamant that no officer goes out in the field itching to be involved in a deadly situation.

“You don’t wake up one morning and say I’m going to shoot somebody – that’s not in the psyche. That’s the last thing any police officer wants to do – trust me,” Alex says.

Like many of his colleagues, Alex has also been involved in his share of violent incidents, including a police pursuit that ended with a suspect being shot in the neck by another officer. The led to a lengthy review process involving the Special Investigations Unit, an arm’s length provincial agency called in to investigate whenever police are involved in an incident that results in a death, serious injury, or allegations of sexual assault.

While Alex was not the one who pulled the trigger, he says being involved in the review process nonetheless adds an element of stress.

“You’re sort of in uncharted waters. You don’t know what to expect,” Alex says. “It’s a feeling of apprehension or insecurity. Only because you’re normally in control of situations and now there’s other people judging what you’ve done.

“It’s very easy to analyze things when you’ve got all the time in the world.”

He recalls being involved in another incident a few years ago where a man with a knife was threatening people at a courthouse and was injured when police apprehended him.

“You’re just trying to handle the situation so to speak. At that point you’re not really thinking about it. It’s hard to explain unless you’ve been in those situations,” Alex says. “In high stress situations your motor skills become very limited, so you react to your training. It becomes muscle memory at that point.”

He says even if you are confident that you followed proper training, the added scrutiny of the review process is stressful.

“I’m not saying we don’t make mistakes because quite frankly we’re human and everybody makes mistakes,” Alex says. “It’s the stressor of the scrutiny you fall under after those sorts of situations.”

Chris adds that the SIU process can sometimes feel divorced from the regular difficulties of the job.

“You get that radio call and a kid’s been killed and you’re looking at that dead body and then you clear and you’re on the next radio call and someone’s screaming in your face. And then you clear and go do another radio call and some maniac comes at you with a stick and then you guys are into a fight and he hits the ground the wrong way and breaks his elbow.

“Then you got an unseen body – 80 per cent of them have never been police officers and don’t have a clue – criticizing you. And the sense of the investigation is ‘you’re in trouble, mister,’” he continued.

He adds that while SIU investigations quickly become news stories that can put stress on officers and their families, little attention is paid when officers are cleared of wrongdoing.

“If we took everybody off the street who was investigated by the SIU, there’d be few cops on the street,” he adds. “I’m embellishing but it’s a lot because it doesn’t take much for the SIU to be called.”

He says that while mental health supports are a good thing for officers, police ultimately still lean on one another in the face of a system where cops sometimes feel like they’re under a microscope.

“Ultimately I can tell you your peers are your biggest support system,” Chris says.

Alex agrees that it’s difficult for people on the outside to appreciate what police deal with.

“You try and explain it to people that haven’t been in that situation and it’s very difficult for people to understand,” he says.

McCormack is more blunt.

“We’re the ones who have to go in and deal with things when somebody’s been found dead in their apartment or we get a dead baby – we’re responding to those calls as well,” he says. “I’ve done CPR on people where it has been a very grotesque experience. And seeing people in the most degrading time in their life.”

But says McCormack, even with better mental health services available, the realities of the day-to-day job are inescapable.

“You’re walking on the train tracks because somebody’s jumped in front of a train or throwing body parts on a stretcher, you walk into a place where people are dead or people have been shot and you’re holding people’s heads together and everything else.

“And then you’re supposed to go ‘ok, just another day at the office.’”