Jerry Baker joins us with extensive knowledge and background on being a first responder and being a mental health advocate. He brings us some nuggets of information that will astound you and offers some advice and ways to get started on supporting the first responders in your life and your state.
*Please note: this episode may have triggers that are sensitive for listeners. Please listen safely and take care of yourselves.
Jerry Baker joins us with extensive knowledge and background on being a first responder and being a mental health advocate. He brings us some nuggets of information that will astound you and offers some advice and ways to get started on supporting the first responders in your life and your state.
*Please note: this episode may have triggers that are sensitive for listeners. Please listen safely and take care of yourselves.
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Speaker 2:Welcome
Speaker 3:To the Breaking the Stigma podcast with McNeal and Company. The mission of this podcast is to offer education and resources for first responders, wellness, mental health, and resiliency. The host of this podcast are not mental health professionals, but all information shared will be in conjunction with either a certified training or mental health expert. We are here to break the stigma around mental health discussion. That being said, some of our topics may be triggering or upsetting to our listeners. If at any time you are overwhelmed, we encourage you to pause the podcast or forward to the end where we will list the hotline. You can call for immediate help and conversation with a professional. Please be safe and gentle with yourself. We need you here and we want to help.
Speaker 4:Good afternoon or good morning, everyone. Welcome to another episode of Breaking the Sigma podcast with McNeil and Company. My name is Kayla Lyon . You all know me pretty well, and I am joined today with Jerry Baker . Jerry , how are you doing today?
Speaker 5:I'm doing great, Kayla. Thank you.
Speaker 4:Absolutely. Thanks for being here today. Um, so Jerry , I think the best thing to do, we're gonna jump right in, and I'd like to just talk about your history and how you came to be in the mental health for first responders space and kind of, you know, your life, where , where you came from and what you do.
Speaker 5:Well, thank you. Um , like a lot of folks, I mean, I just, I grew up back in the sixties and , uh, immediately after high school, didn't have money for college. And so I went in the military back in 68. There was one thing you were gonna do, and that was go to Vietnam, which I did. And I went to Vietnam , uh, like a lot of, you know, uneducated, inexperienced kids, and came back a lot different. And when I got out of Vietnam, one of the things that troubled me was just some of the things that were still hanging on and, and were still around that I had seen or been engaged in. And so I was able to use the GI bill to go to college, and I thought, well, I'm gonna get into psychology, maybe be a psychologist and try and help people figure out how to walk this path. And I was doing that and, and enjoying it actually. And was doing a project and , uh, did a project in relationships between incarcerated people and their jailers, and worked for a local sheriff's department. And as I got to know the folks there, the deputies and all of those people, I thought, what a great job to be able to go out and deal with people every day to solve problems and things. So I applied for a job and gotta remember, this is way back when, and it took me three days, but I got hired. And the rest, as they say, is history. I finished my degree, but not in psychology, and I became a police officer for 42 years.
Speaker 4:That's fantastic. And Jerry, I think I remember you telling me this is kind of a, it's kind of family business, right? Um, not only law enforcement, but also the military. Is that correct?
Speaker 5:That's correct. My , um, dad was in the Navy in World War ii. He served in the South Pacific, and, you know, he had some issues , uh, when we were growing up. And as I reflect back and I'm better informed and educated now, I realize that a lot of that probably stemmed from the things he was engaged in in the military and things like that.
Speaker 4:So let's, you know, dive into a little bit of, or the problems then, and what are still the problems now, Jerry . I mean, we've come a long way, I would say in mental health in general, but we certainly still have a mental health crisis. And not only that, but first responders in particular have some serious mental health crisis that they deal with. Um, can you tell us a little bit about your thoughts on that?
Speaker 5:Yeah , I , you're right, we have come a long way, but it's just a little blip on the map and the bigger kings of things. Uh , uh, the Ruman white paper did a study years ago, I think it was 20 19, 20 18, somewhere around in there. And only three to 5% of agencies had any kind of programs where they were providing mental health services to their officers. Now we're in 2022, and that number's probably up to maybe eight to 10, 12%, but that's still not enough with what our officers go through on a regular basis. When I look back on my 42 year career, I was a road officer. I did a stint and undercover drugs on a federal task force. I've been a road supervisor. And all of the things that you go through and the officers that you interact with, the stress that you take home, there was nothing that you could do with that. And if you even acknowledged that you had a problem, you were really kind of isolating yourself from the department, from the administration and everyone else. It was not okay to say, Hey, I need some help. And so we just kept it to ourselves and we went home and kicked the dog, drank and did other kinds of things to try and alleviate that stress that we weren't acknowledging.
Speaker 4:Can you dive into, you know, we talked to a lot of people about this, and actually my colleague Jason who, who wasn't able to join us today, he talks a lot about this fear of opening up and saying, I need help as a first responder. Can you talk a little bit about that? Why do you think that is still the case for first responders?
Speaker 5:I think a lot of it, and again, I, I think we're starting to see a little bit of change, but it goes back to, I mean, when I was indoctrinated, when I went through the field training program and things like that, it, it was very simple. You get up, you shut up and you get back to work. And that mentality was, you are really, really tough. And if an officer was exposed to a really traumatic event, like a line of duty death or a police action shooting or something like that, they had to come back the next day, go to work to be able to show their worth to the other officers and to the department of things like that. And that just, that , that was not the right way to handle things. But that has, that mentality has continued on. And we teach our officers in the academies, you know, that they do need to be warriors at times, but they're also human beings, and they need to be able to have an outlet for that frustration, that stress. They say average person, you know, in this country probably sees three, four, maybe five really critical incidents in their life . Police officers, firefighters, they're easily gonna see 150 to 200. And you can't just let go of those things when you've held a dying child's hand. Or , uh, I had a, I had a car train accident with a family, and I went to roll a family over and I stuck my hand over to roll 'em over, and I stuck my hand in this person's chest, and all I knew how to do was to clean up and go back to work that night. And that's just, that's, that's been with me forever, and it will always be with me. And I didn't have anybody to talk to, and I knew I couldn't bring it up to my supervisors, because then I'm gonna be put on day shift serving papers.
Speaker 4:Yeah. Isn't that awful? Instead of tackling it head on with, whether it's directly after the incident, having a crisis team there for, for your officers or, you know , allowing them to say, Hey, I'm human. You know, just because I went through this and I saw this, no one should have to go through this or see this. It doesn't mean that I should be, I should have my job taken away. It doesn't mean that I should have my shifts taken away. You know, every single person who deals with something like that is affected. Whether or not they want to admit it right away, they are affected. You know, we've, we've had guests on the podcast who have told us about how they weren't even, they weren't even aware they had P T S D until life really started to unravel for them, and they were forced to face it. And that's the type of thing we need to be preventing. Right, Jerry ? I mean, we need to stop that in its tracks. You know, these, these first responders shouldn't be living with these things for their entire lifetime.
Speaker 5:Yeah . We, we talk about, well, the high divorce rate , uh, the substance abuse and things like that, but it really boils down to post-traumatic stress as a result of the things they've been exposed to. And it's not always just one single event. It's that cumulative effect of what they've seen over the course of their careers. And you throw into that mix right now, the current state of, of law enforcement acceptability in the communities. You've got people out there that are against law enforcement. I mean, look at Dallas when they had a Black Lives Matter parade, and an army veteran goes up into a garage and kills five officers and wounds nine others. That's a , that's lives with these officers all the time about ambush.
Speaker 4:Absolutely. And also that , that feeling I'm sure of what could we have done differently? I mean, that guilt of how could we have been better, you know, it's constant. And like you said before, and I think you said this on our call when we first spoke, was this idea of like this hero syndrome almost, you can call it this idea that these first responders are heroes and that's all they can be, when in reality they're also human. And we have to remember that. And we have to stop taking their humanity away from them. We have to allow them to understand that it's okay to be affected by these things. This is not normal. It may seem normal for the job, but it's still not normal for human minds to process these, these tragic things that they see.
Speaker 5:Well, and even if it , it isn't normal, but the police officers and firefighters signed up for this. But again, the brain and the human body has to have time to process these things. They need a chance to take that cleansing breath to be able to express themselves in a safe environment that allows them to feel comfortable enough then to go back and do that job , uh, with a hundred percent attention. Because if they're going back and they haven't resolved some issues, then they're not a hundred percent engaged. And public safety's a job where you have to be a hundred percent engaged all the time for your safety, the safety of your fellow , uh, public safety officers as well as the public you serve.
Speaker 4:Yeah, that's absolutely right. So Jerry , kind of switching gears a little bit here and going into, you know, we know what the, what the problems are . So now we go into whose responsibility is this? You know, I, I think on it, and here we are, as you know, as McNeil and company. We, a lot of us are first responders in my office, but we also work with first responders every single day. And we said, you know, we need to start getting some more resources out there in whatever possible way we can. And we developed these podcasts because we thought, well, it's an easy way for people to hear that they're, at the very least, they are not alone, and they shouldn't be alone in this and there are solutions. So whose responsibility is that? Where does it start?
Speaker 5:Well, I think it's a little bit of everybody's responsibility, but it actually, you know , the, the, the chief or the sheriff has a responsibility there, the city county councils. Um, but you can't legislate and say it's gonna be all right . It's , they, they do things because of public pressure. What we need to do as line officers and supervisors is put enough pressure to let these folks know that we're hurting. And if you don't take care of us on the, in the short term upfront , the long term is gonna be , uh, higher insurance costs for you, absenteeism, substance abuse, there's gonna be lawsuits down the road somewhere because officers aren't prepared to come back to work right after a critical incident.
Speaker 4:Yeah, that's a really great way to put it. So in that, you know, what can chiefs and officer heads and sheriffs, what can they do to assist in this process? You know, what kind of training do you think needs to be there? What kind of support needs to be there?
Speaker 5:Well , you need a good wellness program, and that's expensive. And a good wellness program starts off with a good peer support program. And I've been engaged in that. I've been teaching , uh, peer support around the country for several years. And what I find is there are some chiefs and sheriffs that do it because it's a popular thing to do, but then they don't embrace what that entails to , to allow the folks that they have, that have been trained to interact with the officers in a way that will ensure that if that officer needs additional assistance, they can get that without any stigma attached to it , uh, without any, you know, problems rising or any , uh, thoughts on that officer's career being impacted. Studies have shown that about half of the officers around this country really feel that if they were to acknowledge that they had a problem, that their department, it would impact their relationship with their department, it would impact their ability to perhaps get promoted and other kinds of things.
Speaker 4:Really disappointing. I think that's very jarring to me to hear, right? I mean, no matter what job you're in, you really wanna feel supported in wherever you are mentally, physically, emotionally. I mean, life happens. This doesn't even necessarily need to connect to your job. What if something in their personal lives goes wrong? What if they are going through a divorce or they're going through a custody battle or any, any number of things that humans go through on a day-to-day basis to feel like you don't have backing and support. It doesn't surprise me that this becomes a retention problem, that people don't wanna work in law enforcement anymore, that they don't feel supported in that space. They would like to get out. Now, you discussed peer, peer support programs, and we have discussed this before , um, with another guest, but tell us a little bit more about that. What does that look like to you? You know, are these retirees that you're talking about, are they other first responders? Are they people who have left and are just coming back to help?
Speaker 5:Um , a good peer support program is exactly what the name implies. Peer meaning that you've got officers from that agency or the surrounding agencies who are doing the same or similar jobs and , uh, have been able to function in those capacities. And the problem is, a lot of the departments start a peer support program because it's a trendy thing to do, but they don't really support it. In a true peer support program, a team member should be dispatched to any incident , uh, that rises to a certain level where it involves a death , uh, not just of an officer, but perhaps a , a civilian , uh, a fatal accident. All of those things have an impact on officers. You don't lose , um, those images. You don't lose those senses that have been impacted by that event just because the event's over. I've, I've talked to a lot of over officers over the last 20 years, and I'll be talking to 'em about perhaps a line of duty death that just happened within hours ago. And as I talk to them and listen to them, they'll be talking about something that happened five, 10 years ago that they never had the opportunity to process, and it's still with them and it's those cumulative effects. And then they go home and they maybe have an illness in the home. Perhaps they have a child struggling in school or substance abuse problem, financial issues, any one of those other things just add , uh, to that boiling pot. And it's no wonder that we see officers , uh, getting addicted. We see officers becoming alcoholics, we see domestic violence issues happening. We see officers acting out on the road, which results in complaints. So I, I think that a good peer support program has to be 100% embraced and not just in name only, you have to provide the officers who are on the team the opportunity to do the things that have been proven to work and provide that bridge for that person that needs additional help.
Speaker 4:Yeah. And you know, something you just said struck me, Jerry . So when you talk about these kind of behaviors that come out of some of these spaces that don't seem to be very positive behaviors, and you know, this has been all over the news for probably, I mean, gosh, the last five years, probably even longer, maybe the past decade, sometimes time is a strange continuum, but of police officers and, and everyone not supporting police officers or, or first responders because well , they are x, y , Z type of person. And I think you bring up a really, really solid point of are they that type of person or have they been neglected and they haven't been able to heal or process all of this that they have gone through? And I think there's something to be said about that grief and trauma can change a person. Depression can severely change a person. And if we aren't giving them the tools to heal and to be to also, not only just to heal, but also to prevent, to prevent these like really terrible dips or these terrible depressive episodes, if we are not giving them those tools, how can we expect them to be the best they can be in their jobs? Um, so I just wanted to reiterate that 'cause I just think that's a really powerful point.
Speaker 5:Absolutely. Right. I, you, you, you heard it and you , you grasp it and get it. And that's what we need to the message we need to get across to everyone. Yeah.
Speaker 4:Yeah. These aren't villains, <laugh>, they aren't our villains and let's not make them our villains. Right? They are, they should not be attacked for being human. And as civilians, we may not understand what they've gone through or what they've seen. So it's important for us to take a step back and understand that trauma has a lot of layers.
Speaker 5:I mean, I've talked to people and they say, well, so-and-so is really having a problem, and this might be a supervisor or a commander or something. And you know, they're just, they're out of it . You know, we just, we kind of assign him to this shift and we leave him alone. That's just so-and-so, and my, my comment back to them is, did you hire him like that? Did you hire her like that? Is that the performance level? Is that your standard that you hire by? Well, no, no, we've got a standard . Well, what happened? And what part did you play in that by not offering them the assistance they needed to be successful, you don't have a problem giving 'em equipment, you don't have them problem having them meet their annual training needs. What about their personal needs? What about their mental health needs? And that's where the communication sometimes breaks down. Well, I don't, I don't know about that. I don't wanna spend that money. Um ,
Speaker 4:Well, yeah, so that's, that was kind of the next space I was gonna go into. So everything costs money. Of course. We all understand that unfortunately, mental healthcare is very scarce for all. Um, it's very hard to get mental healthcare , good mental healthcare . And there's something to be said about clinicians or therapists not fully understanding the first responder world. And when we spoke the first time, you know, you told me about first responders potentially interviewing psychologists. Can you tell us a little little bit about what that might look like for a department that might be large enough or have the capital to potentially have in-house or inde department help, or at the very least, to have psychologists that are readily available to their teams? Yeah.
Speaker 5:Even if it's an e p a , you know , uh, an employee assistance program
Speaker 4:Yeah .
Speaker 5:Important that the officers buy into that program. It's not a matter of the chief or sheriff going out and soliciting and then going with the lowest responsible bidder. That person may be a very good psychologist. They can't deal and haven't dealt with public safety. The officers should be involved in that. Those, those folks that are providing that service should be riding with the officers. They should have an understanding of what these officers see and go through on a daily basis. Most people go to work, they come home from work and they're there. Maybe they had a good day, maybe they had a bad day, but go to work and have people looking at you like, I mean, you harm, I would like to do something to you. Uh, that's just the everyday stress. And then you put on there dealing with, you know, the child, sexual assaults, the homicides , uh, people, shooting at police officers, all of those other things. We need a good mental health program. And the officers will not buy into something that is just put in a package and bought for them. They need to have confidence and they need to believe in that process and they should be involved in the selection process, period.
Speaker 4:I mean, my brother, my brother was in the army and him thinking about seeing a therapist was like, absolutely not. They're not gonna understand what I saw. They're not gonna understand what I went through. And I can't blame him because he's probably on a lot of levels, he probably was right. Um, therapists are probably shocked to hear some of those stories, and it's probably actually unsafe for them to kind of hear all of that and not know or not be trained in that specific space to be able to handle it and to know how to respond, to know how to relate and to, and to be on the same level as these first responders. So you bring up a , a very good point that you can't just throw any clinician in there and kind of hope that it sticks. Um, the first responders will either not use that program at all, or that therapist will just kind of, it'll just be kind of a null and void work. And we don't want that. We want resources that these first responders are actually going to use.
Speaker 5:Yeah. And you know, this carries with it a , a front end cost . And having been a chief for a while , I , I know line item budgets and things like that, but as a chief, I was also dealing with the more my officers are injured, then I've got workers' comp issues. I've got a number of claims. I've got increased sick time , uh, days loss because of injuries. Uh , there's all kinds of costs that can be impacted in a positive way, but you won't see it as a line item budget savings, but you'll see it in a mental health way and you'll see it in a , a much more stable agency, a much more outgoing agency, willing to go out and do their job. Right now we got officers leaving , uh, the ranks I would've never imagined 20 years ago that we would see departments offering bonuses for signing on. It's unbelievable. And that's how desperate law enforcement is right now to find good quality people.
Speaker 4:I guess that's what's even what's even scary as well is like you said, the cost of ignoring this. And it's not just fiscal, right? It is absolutely our community suffering from not having enough law enforcement. It's our community suffering from not having a fire department may be in a certain locale because that those firefighters got sick and tired of not being taken care of or not getting the help that they need, or feeling like they're , they're workhorses and all they're there for is to do the dirty work that nobody else wants to do in the community. And then not being backed by that community, right. To keep moving forward. What's next? You know, we, we talked, when we spoke, you had said a five year plan. Nope, it has to happen right now. So how can departments, even if they're small steps forward, how can departments start making headway on this? And these programs?
Speaker 5:First of all, they need to include their officers in this process. But again, I go back to the peer support program because it's the, the least expensive start. It trains individual officers to be able to go to their coworkers after a critical incident and sort of do a check-in and be able to do a , a mini assessment, not a psychological assessment, but just a field assessment and follow up with that person in two or three days and then determine, hey, you know, this is gonna be okay. It's gonna work out. Or do I need to hand this person off to someone else? We need to save every officer that we can. We need to recognize that this job is much more dangerous than it's ever been. The amount of killings that we're seeing, the amount of mayhem that the officers are being exposed to on a regular basis, and then not thinking that they're supported by their own department as well as the community that puts 'em on edge. And that creates all of these leads, all of these other problems. And I've done many, many incidents out in the field with officers, and I can tell you that it's thinking that the administration has their backs, means more than anything in the world that their department caress enough about them to institute some type of program to make them well. And that's what the chiefs of chairs need to hear. Yeah , I care about my people. Well prove it.
Speaker 4:What would you say, you know, we've talked a lot kind of at our leadership. What would you say to those first responders who may not even recognize that they have a problem, or maybe it's, it's more they don't want to recognize that they're dealing with this, or they, they think, oh, well, this is just part of the job , so I just have to get over it. I have tough skin, I just have to have tough skin. What would you say to those first responders , um, from your, from your own life or what, what you've done for your life, what would you say to them if you were able to give them one message?
Speaker 5:Don't be afraid to ask for help. The , the longer answer is, I mean, in Vietnam, if we lost someone when we were at a base, we'd get together. But alcohol was involved. And I can tell you from personal experience that didn't work. You know, that didn't help anything. It didn't solve anything. Through my years on the job , uh, I, I was involved in a police action shooting , uh, three other officers. Nobody was killed, no officers were injured. Uh, but my supervisor comes up to me, pat me on the back and just wants to make sure I've got enough ammunition to finish my shift. And, you know, I'm sitting here thinking, I just fired my gun at another human being in the United States. I didn't kill them , but could have. And what are the consequences of that? And my sergeant wants to know if I've got enough bullets to defend my shift and get my report done, it would've been helpful to be able to talk to somebody at that point in time. Uh, I have kicked the bucket. Uh, I have had instances where I probably shouldn't be drinking off duty , but I have, and it, it solved nothing. Um , it, there's just nothing there that would do that. Officers that are exposed to these incidents become bitter. They go out in public, they sit with their back to the wall. Every time somebody walks into a restaurant, they're assessing that person. Is that a threat or not a threat? And they're doing it subconsciously, and that's okay, but they've gotta do it in a healthy way, and they gotta recognize why they're doing that versus sitting there thinking, do I reach for my gun right now? And I, we can't do that unless we reach these officers and tell 'em it's okay to not be okay. It's okay to ask for help. Nobody's gonna think less of you as a result of that reach out. And that's why the peer support team is so good. If they establish a rapport, they have that confidentiality established, that peer support person isn't gonna give them counseling. They're not going to solve their issues for them. They're just gonna have them help them look at them a little bit differently. So that person might say, you know what? I do need to talk to somebody. And that is the first step into making a much more mentally healthy officer, an officer's family and the agency.
Speaker 4:Is there anything that we've missed, Jerry , that you really wanna touch on? Or any points that you'd like to revisit?
Speaker 5:I hope the listeners recognize that all of the data that they're getting and the , you know , the ROTTERMAN report, I mean the University of Phoenix did a study. All of that stuff is data that's collected from agencies that give them data. It's just like the uniform crime report. There's about 40% of the law enforcement agencies country that don't report to that. The suicide rates and the numbers that they see, those are under-reported because people don't report that. Uh, as an officer, you, you know, you go to a scene, you're gonna try as much as you can if that's a shift partner or something to, to, to see what you can do to make it look like perhaps an accident or something like that. In 2020, you know , there were 126 firefighter suicides that were reported and 113 law enforcement suicides, that's more than we're felonious killed or actionably killed on the fire ground. And that's a problem. And people need to realize that. And that has a financial cost with it. And every time this happens, those fingers spread out through the families, through the agencies and the friends of that officer. And so it , it's not just, well, that officer took their own life or that officer's , um, in rehab right now, it impacts many, many people. It's like that pebble in the, in the water,
Speaker 4:You know, these numbers are already outstanding. So to think that they're actually larger than we even know is, is pretty, pretty upsetting and sad. And it needs to change. I agree. It needs to change. And we need to get better about this as a whole, as a , as communities, as departments, as organizations, as municipalities , um, our cities, our states . Hopefully we can get some state legislature that would help , um, mental health for first responders because it really is a huge crisis.
Speaker 5:Yeah . They're starting to , there is a proposed amendment to the public safety officer benefit for suicides, but there's gonna be a lot of involvement to be able to get something that, for the officers, you know, just for the officers themselves , not talking about peer support or anything else, first and foremost, talk to your family. You folks need to recognize, and your family needs to recognize that you're gonna come home and have had a bad day. And to be able have a plan so that you can have some space to breathe and, and do that cathartic ventilation with somebody that you trust. If that's necessary. You need to have a life away from the department. Um, you can't live at 24 7. It just is not healthy for you mentally. So have some friends and some organizations that you join in and outside of there. The other thing is, is learn to let go. They go through a lot of training and , and when, especially police and firefighters, when they answer the alarm, they're sent there to fix something. In the fire department's case, they're there to save something. And in the law enforcement side of things, they're there to solve a problem. And nothing follows a lesson plan. Exactly . You can learn all the fire science you want. You can learn all the police stuff you want, but nothing follows a lesson plan 100%. And there are going to be mistakes that are made. It's the outcome that's important and the ability to recognize that and then to let go.
Speaker 4:That's wonderful. Jerry , I think that's all I've got for this episode, but it was lovely having you on. We'd really love to talk to you again. Hopefully we'll be able to make that happen. Um, again, thank you so much for being here and for providing this information for us.
Speaker 5:Not a problem. I enjoyed it. But more importantly , uh, I just hope the listeners that, that they recognize they're important, every single one of them and not be afraid to ask for help.
Speaker 4:Thank you very much everyone for listening. Um, thanks for being here. We always appreciate you. And as Jerry said, please continue to take care of yourselves and be safe.
Speaker 3:This concludes this episode of Breaking the Stigma with McNeil and Company. If you or someone you love needs to speak to someone immediately, please reach out to the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-662-FOUR 3 5 7 . We look forward to you joining us for future episodes of breaking the Stigma, be well and go safely.