What’s The Point?

What is it that is at the intersection of all the problems confronting your people and your policing agency?

If yours is like most law enforcement organizations you may be facing issues of high turnover, citizen complaints, unnecessary accidents, too many on-the-job injuries, too many excessive use of force complaints, low morale and perhaps even an officer or employee suicide.

If you will bear with me, I can help you improve your people and your agency but the first step is just realizing what is at the root of all of your issues.

I have an activity for you. You can do this alone or with your peers, roll-call team, command staff, dispatch staff etc.

#1 WHAT’S THE POINT?
Take a blank piece of paper (or use a whiteboard or flipchart) and draw a dot in the very middle.

In the space… Continue reading

3 Tips to Help You Build Effective Wellness Systems for Your Policing Organization

Here are 3 tips and 3 questions to help you build a better wellness system for your law enforcement organization.

First let me tell you what I believe, then I’ll give you 3 tips and ask 3 questions to help you, and then I’ll ask you what you believe about police wellness.

I believe: Police wellness should NOT be a program, it should be a system!

Effective Wellness Systems should be strategic, comprehensive, specific, measurable and sustainable.

There are three reasons why most law-enforcement wellness programs aren’t making their people, healthier, safer, nor more professional… Continue reading

Blue Trauma Syndrome 2024

When I wrote the resilience building textbook Armor Your Self: How to Survive a Career in Law Enforcement several years ago I coined the term Blue Trauma Syndrome (BTS) as a means of discussing all the many factors that erode an emergency responders resilience. I used it to go beyond the simple label of “stress” as a catch all, and frankly far too simple, a description of the toxic effects of this career that eat us up from the inside out.

I want to raise that term again in 2024 to renew our on-going quest to make our law enforcement and other emergency service professionals as healthy, effective and resilient as they can be.

If you read my previous article “The High Cost of Unwellness in Policing” then you know about my beliefs regarding the importance of building resilience within our profession and you know that I believe that it’s not as simple as many people think. I suggest that many police agencies are just “Dabbling” in wellness without any clear strategy nor set of metrics by which to measure their effectiveness.

What I would like to do today is to CHALLENGE YOU to pick up this discussion in your agency, team or with a couple of peers and see what YOU THINK.

WHY?

Because, analyzing and discussing the challenges… Continue reading

Building Small Police Agency Wellness

Do you want to start or enhance a police wellness program in your small law enforcement agency?

What do you say when the public and media ask: how do police officers stay healthy and fit for the job?

Small law enforcement agencies deserve the best possible wellness initiatives to keep their people physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually fit.

For small agencies, usually with less than twenty-five employees, paying for training, both in time and money, can be daunting. It’s hard to get everyone together for a class and then sometimes that information is lost without regular reinforcement.

What would you say if I told you that for less than $300 you can harness the makings of a full wellness system and get started immediately. The scheduling, implementation and reinforcement are totally within your control and it will create the foundation for a life-long learning experience for your people.

I believe wellness… Continue reading

Try an Awe Walk

The Law Enforcement Survival Institute (LESI) is launching a series of short Resilience Building Challenges to expose you to new ideas about resilience enhancement from a group of experts within our wellness field, and specifically targeted to benefit emergency responders. So whether you want to armor your Self, build your emotional survival skills, your spiritual survival skills or just want to learn new and simple ways to add resilience building techniques to your life, we’ve got something for you. I believe that the police need to be more resilient!

Are you in?

Here is the first LESI Mini Resilience Building Challenge:

Topic: Building Resilience Using Awe

Title: Try an “Awe Walk”

Defining Awe
The Oxford Dictionary defines awe as: a feeling of reverential respect mixed with fear or wonder.

The Collins Dictionary says that Awe is the feeling of… Continue reading

Eric Potterat’s new book: Learned Excellence

Law Enforcement Survival Institute Associate Director Eric Potterat, PhD has just announced the pre-release of his book Learned Excellence with co-author Alan Eagle the former Managing Director, Sales and Executive Communications at Google, Inc.

Learn how to perform at your very best, from the psychologist who has advised elite military operators, Olympic medalists, big wave surfers, neurosurgeons, cliff divers, first responders, Cirque du Soleil acrobats, professional athletes and coaches, Fortune 500 business executives, and CIA analysts.

Learned Excellence is a comprehensive and practical guide to the mental disciplines of high performance, from the expert who developed the US Navy SEALs mental toughness curriculum and has worked with thousands of top athletes, elite military personnel, business executives, and first responders.

To Pre-Order Your Copy CLICK HERE

These stars perform across a wide variety of fields, but they all have something in common: when they are at work they know how to… Continue reading

Dabbling in Police Wellness

Is Your Agency Just Dabbling in Law Enforcement Wellness?

There are three reasons why most law-enforcement wellness programs aren’t making their people healthier, safer nor more professional. First, they’re not comprehensive enough. Second, they’re not doing anything more than just adding new training programs and creating more “flavor of the month” initiatives. Third, they are not investing time in their people, but rather using “band-aid” measures to try and fix complex problems.

As the public asks for police reform, I recommend… Continue reading

Wellness Focused Policing

The world needs healthy cops!

The world EXPECTS healthy cops!

The Law Enforcement Survival Institute is proposing a new policing initiative we call Wellness Focused Policing.

Wellness Focused Policing is a people focused policing strategy to promote wellness within law-enforcement first, and then to spread that sense of care, and focus on well-being, outwardly to the people served by the police.

When we are appalled by police officers doing things that are abhorrent and we want to fix the entire profession with new legislative initiatives, I think our society is focusing on the wrong solutions and those solutions might actually hurt the first responders who are doing everything right.

First, I believe that in order to be effective, change in policing practices must come from within the policing profession itself, and secondly, I believe the solutions lie in leading the people working within the profession to be their best, then supporting and sustaining exceptional performance. We must challenge everyone within the profession… Continue reading

A Season of Giving

A Season of Giving

Today is Giving Tuesday and in this season of giving, I would ask that you consider supporting some of the many organizations that support law enforcement. Here are some I recommend:

Concerns of Police Survivors (C.O.P.S.)
Each year, between 140 and 160 officers die in the line of duty and their families and co-workers are left to cope. C.O.P.S. provides… Continue reading

NEW Armor Your Self Study & Discussion Guides

Armor Your Self 5 book study package for small groups or book clubs.For those of you who loved the Armor Your Self book, but wanted to share that information with your peers, the Law Enforcement Survival Institute has just released several different Study & Discussion Guide Packages designed to assist individuals, small study groups and law enforcement book clubs.

The two study packages, built around the book Armor Your Self: How to Survive a Career in Law Enforcement, include either 5 or 10 copies of the Armor Your Self: How to Survive a Career in Law Enforcement resilience building textbooks. These collections are a Do-It-Yourself package for book clubs, small groups or academy classes that can’t afford more expensive training, but want to explore the Armor Your Self textbook more deeply. These two packages include… Continue reading