Peer Support In Policing

Transcript of interview with Dr Jack A. Digliani

SKN

Hello there, Susanne Knabe-Nicol here from Police Science Dr with an exclusive interview for the Police Science Dr Magazine, I’ve got Jack Digliani here, he’ll tell us a bit about who he is, I just want to welcome right now, hello Jack, thank you for joining me.  

JD

Thank you it's wonderful to be here

SKN

Could you tell us a bit about your background and your career to date?

JD

I'm a former police officer, deputy sheriff and police detective, I'm currently and have been for the last 35 years a licenced psychologist. My specialty is police psychology and the development of first responder, especially police peer support teams.

SKN

Excellent. And now that you have this policing background, you’re very interested and qualified in psychology, you’ve also got a website, a consultancy, and you’ve written some books, can you tell us about that?

JD

Yes my website is JackDigliani.com I've written two books, the first one Reflections of a police psychologist and the second Contemporary issues in police psychology. In the 3^rd edition revised of Reflections of a police psychologist I have tried to incorporate much of the information that is in the Contemporary issues book. So I think the Third Edition revised pretty much sums up my current thinking on police psychology and police peer support teams.

SKN

What is your current thinking on police psychology and police peer support teams?

JD

Well, police psychology police psychology certainly has found its way into the profession of psychology. The American Psychological Association, we have our own division now that specializes in connecting psychologists that have an interest in police and public psychology. In terms of police peer support teams I can say they have found their place in American policing and hopefully throughout the world. We began our peer support team program here in Fort Collins, Colorado in 1986, so it's been around several decades now and still going strong, we're still developing teams in other parts of our state and across the United States and I hope others in other countries are doing the same

SKN

Can you explain what peer support is? What are you talking about there?

JD

I think of peer support as existing in two levels - level one peer support can be thought of as a traditional peer support. It's existed since human beings came together, it's the support that comes from someone in your group or something that you have in common with another person, it includes families and friends, it often includes giving advice, trying to help people through problems, and not really protected in any court system in terms of confidentiality.

Level two peer support is what we've been focused on for again several decades now. Level two peer support is developed, these teams are developed by various emergency service organizations, they have their creation in policy, there are state statutes and laws that regulate the confidentiality of the interactions of peer support team members and recipients of peer support. Recognized within the department, they have specified goals and they receive training and also are normally what we recommend even though the law doesn't require it here in Colorado, we recommend clinical supervision, clinical oversight. So, the peer support team members always have someone to go to, this would be a licensed mental health professional, in the event that they encounter circumstances during peer support that are a bit beyond the skills of a peer support team member.

SKN

Why is it crucial that we have peer support in policing? Why was it created?

JD

Peer support was brought in because over the years, we have recognized that some of the traditional support mechanisms, especially for policing and it developed policing, then we extended it to fire service, medical service and some other groups, those are great advances. When I started policing in the 1970s, no such support existed, today we have insurance programs that provide um counselling and cover that for individual police officers and maybe spouses and families as well. We have EAPs, and these are counselling programs or groups’ Employee Assistance Programs that are made available to employees of various agencies. But there was a gap, and the gap was we found many police officers were a bit reluctant to engage in these services due to trust issues, they were worried about confidentiality, but mostly worried about the idea that their therapists would not understand what policing was really like. They didn't think that the therapist would understand what it's like to be a cop. In recognizing this, the idea about peer support being applied in a more formal way was developed and that is because if police departments especially, but this really moves to fire and other services, but if police departments wish to do the best they can for their employees, a peer support team is necessary. Why? Well, because peer support fills a niche in the support continuum that cannot be filled in any other way. And they often ask me - Well what's the difference? The difference is the power of the peer. The difference is a police officer speaking to someone who he or she feels has done the job, walked in their shoes, knows what it's like to confront the stressors of especially modern policing in you know today's tumultuous world. So, this is why I'm a strong advocate of peer support and I've coordinated and supervised and trained peer support teams for several decades and continue to do so and encourage other departments to do so as well.

SKN

What are some of the advantages of having a peer support system in your police force or departments and where are the challenges?

JD

What are the benefits - it's poor English but it was our motto in 1986 - ‘A police officer should never not have a place to go’. So where would that place be, it would be a peer on a peer support team, where confidentiality was assured by policy and by state statute. So, that's one of the benefits, a police officer in trouble, facing psychological stressors that maybe he or she is reluctant to speak to anyone else about might speak to a peer about that. That is truly a benefit. Now, do all officers take advantage of that? No, because for whatever reasons many officers still feel asking for any degree of help is somewhat of a weakness. The idea that ask for psychological help is a weakness encouraged the development of the Make It Safe police officer initiative. This initiative contains 12 elements that are designed to reduce the stigma of an officer asking for psychological help. Oddly enough, we don't see the same issues if it's a physical difficulty, many officers are willing to ask for help if there's a physical problem, not so willing to ask for help if the problem is mental, psychological. We've tried to break this down, now what prompted that development? It was the awful statistics that showed that police officers commit suicide at a higher rate than the general population, so the Make It Safe police officer initiative significantly involves peer support teams but also involves police psychologists and other support services in an effort to lower the rate of police officer suicide.

SKN

The issue about officers taking up and being very natural about taking up physical health support or medical care, but not doing the same for mental health, I think that’s global. It’s a very strange thing in our human nature that we think if something is visible, it can be diagnosed physically, it’s absolutely okay to get that treated. But somehow, if it’s emotionally or cognitively based, we should be expected to deal with it on our own, and that is a very dangerous mindset. I don’t know if it’s correct, but I did hear statistics that in America, was it suicide or falling asleep at the wheel was actually the number 1 cause for police officer death, is that correct?

JD

It is correct with the information I have as well and the information to the best of our ability. Gathering statistics is difficult but police officers can die on duty in two different ways. One is by accident, you know you get in a car accident and a police officer is killed, and another is by felonious action, the police officer is assaulted, murdered by another person. What we have found in the last several years with the best statistics we have available and again I'll caution that these statistics are very difficult to develop, is that the number of suicides in the American policing profession has exceeded the number of police officers killed by accident and by felonious assault combined in the last several years. This again was one of the considerations about why these 12 elements for the Make It Safe initiative were created, we are we are trying to impact that particular phenomenon.

SKN

So, higher rate of police suicide than accidents and felonious activities combined, that is very, very heavy. You’re working on getting some legislation through, can you tell us about that?

JD

In 2005 we were successful, colleagues and myself, in getting a law passed in Colorado that provided some privilege of confidentiality in the court system systems for recipients of peer support. This was the first time in our state that recipients of peer support had a claim of privacy, confidentiality in the event they were sued or somehow became involved in court proceedings. That particular law has been amended several times, actually just last year in 2024 we were able to amend it for the final time and I think over the years it existed we now have that law fairly well developed where we want it. In 2025 and currently, I have a bill going before our House of Representatives in Colorado in fact the hearing on it is just next week,  we're trying to enhance the coverage of that particular statute by including a section for our first responder peer support team members in a different title that will provide greater confidentiality outside the court system, so whether we're successful with that or not I guess we'll know soon.

SKN

We’re recording this on the 7^th February 2025, so I keep my fingers crossed. What would you say is the main challenge in policing?

JD

I mean other than the primary challenges that police face, and that's working in all types of weather, dealing with aggressive assaultive individuals and the primary duties of policing, that in my mind constitutes the primary danger of policing, and everyone's familiar with it. It doesn't take much to learn about the primary danger of policing, watch a news report anywhere in the world and you will see where police officers’ physical safety is challenged, and certainly as that is ongoing, the mental health of police officers is challenged. But there's also the insidious secondary danger of policing and this is the idea about believing that doing anything for asking support in the psychological world is somehow a weakness. In the secondary danger of policing, asking for psychological help is viewed as a weakness. Now the fears come from not only other peers or the way policing has developed, It also sometimes develops in an officer's own mentality – ‘Well if I have to ask for help I must be weak, what kind of police officer am I?’ and again contributes to the dangers of growth of suicidal ideation. People often ask me ‘Well, how dangerous is secondary danger, this idea that asking for psychological help is a weakness?’ and I will tell you that this is so dangerous that some officers will choose suicide over asking for help for psychological difficulties. How do we know this? We know this from suicide notes that have been left by police officers and we also know it from police officers that have attempted suicide and yet have survived, when asked ‘Why did you feel so reluctant to ask for help?’, ‘I didn't want to be seen as weak’. So, what's the challenge, to get to your question? The challenge is officer wellness, how do we help protect and how do we help treat, how do we help to make it more acceptable for officers to stay healthy throughout a police career, not only physically but psychologically so that they can retire and enjoy retirement afterward, how do we do that? That's the challenge, the basic challenge, especially for the secondary danger of policing, because a lot of departments lag way behind in preparation for that than they do for the primary danger, police officers receive a lot of training on how to defend themselves, how to deal with aggressive folks and so on, we're catching up but not a lot of training in how to keep yourself mentally healthy, that's the primary challenge in my mind.

SKN

Do you have any suggestions on how to overcome this challenge? You mentioned training there – what kind of training would you suggest and what else do you think needs to happen?



JD

I've tried to sum it up in the Make It Safe police officer initiative - there are 12 elements there, they include development of peer support teams, availability of psychological services, veteran officers with a degree of information they care to share to not disparage anyone else, seeking psychological support, training in stress management, stress inoculation, ongoing training throughout their career, support groups, many of our police departments now are engaging in yoga programs, physical fitness programs and these are incentivized. Proactive annual training programs or proactive annual counselling or check-ins, this is something that we've initiated here in Fort Collins and we have it in many places throughout Colorado and other states as well. These are the things I think we need to do to try to address that. I know I've mentioned the Make It Safe initiative, where can I learn more about that? You can learn more about that by going to my website, it's fully exposed there and a person can read that, they can Implement some and maybe all of the 12 elements there, all that information can be downloaded without cost and I also make available to any department anywhere - contact me directly, you can do so via email through the website and I'll be happy to speak to you or to consult in developing these programs, this is our commitment to our profession.

SKN

We’ll put these links into the Magazine so people can download those 12 steps. It’s something that’s very important to do. My last question to you – if you had a magic wand and you could wave it to make one change in policing, what would that one single change be?

JD

Magic wand that's pretty powerful, wouldn't it be great if we could magic wand the entire world into behaving kindly toward one another, I guess if that were the case we wouldn't need police departments and we certainly wouldn't need armies if we could get that done. But being more realistic, I think it's time that we end this long tradition in policing about having to be super somehow, about having never to be affected by the kinds of work we do in policing. Most people know, especially if you've been involved with policing in any way, that there are significant stressors that can be generated out of a single event and there are cumulative effects of smaller stressors that occur over a career or a period of time. So I would like at least to have a significant recognition of these two types of stressors, the development of programs designed to deal with each of those so that our police officers can serve their community in the best way possible and enjoy a career that is also designed to support their wellbeing, that would be something if we could accomplish that.