Trauma and Police Work...

I never realized how traumatic it is to be a police officer. My wife has been working on patrol for about a year and has already seen scores of dead people. Last night, she had to respond to a call where a polygamist woman had accidently run over the head of her 16-month old child. The head was crushed and the baby dead. Then she had to respond to a call where a baby was dying. They had a hard time finding the home, and then the paramedics didn't follow her car, they drove up the street. My wife had to hold this baby as it was struggling for air approximately 5X per minute. She said it made a horrible rasping sound as if things were stuck in its throat. Its heart stopped a few times and she had to do CPR, but the baby never revived. They life-flighted it to Salt Lake and as far as we knew this morning, it was stabilizing, but in a coma of some sort. All this because the mother had left her morphine suckers, and lortabs, and percocets, and oxycontins, and about a million other pain medications laying around the house for the baby to get into...at least that is what they told the police. They might have done something else to it...if there is an autopsy, it should show something.

About three weeks ago, my wife responded to an accident where a man hit a cow with his car. It had peeled back the top of his car, pretty much removed the top of his skull, and smashed his two children's heads in the back seat. Again, they were dying and struggling to breathe as blood gurgled in their throats. One of the kids was only three-years old. I think they all died. She has seen others too, but she doesn't talk about all of them. It's too bad therapy is frowned on by police officers. They should have some type of mandatory incident debriefing to help the officers unload their baggage. It's no wonder that officers often become so cynical of the world. They see so much evil, sadness, and suffering nearly every shift they work.