To improve policing, Moorhead adds a counselor to the force
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After working his way up through the law enforcement ranks for nearly three decades, Shannon Monroe knew firsthand the effects of stress and mental health on police officers.
Then, shortly after he was hired as police chief in Moorhead two years ago, something happened that made him realize he needed to confront the issue head-on.
"Within the first few days of being on the job, I had a 20-year employee, who was an excellent employee, arrested for a DWI by our department," recalled Monroe.
The arrested sergeant resigned. Losing that employee prompted some soul searching for Monroe.
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"The warning signs were there, and they weren't communicated,” he said. “There was no process for it, and how could we have done something for this person to have avoided this?"
The city has counseling available through an employee assistance program, but Monroe said statistics and personal experience tell him that police officers typically don't ask for help.
He decided embedding a counselor in the department might be a way to change that culture and normalize talking about mental health.
So earlier this year he brought in Aaron Suomola Folkerds as a department wellness coordinator on a part-time basis. Folkerds teaches counseling at Minnesota State University Moorhead, and spent about four years as a volunteer chaplain with the Police Department.
While a growing number of police departments have mental health professionals or social workers who help police respond to calls for assistance, Folkerds found not many smaller police departments have embedded counselors whose job it is to focus on the mental health of officers. He found only about 20 similar positions across the country.
A 2019 report by the U.S. Department of Justice on law enforcement mental health recommended support for programs to embed mental health professionals in police departments.
Folkerds, who started in the part-time position in April, spent his first few months on the job building relationships by spending time on patrol with officers.
Those relationships are key to his longer term goal of creating a culture where talking about mental health isn't just accepted, it's expected.
"So that from day one, when officers start here, they know that it's OK to talk about how you're doing. Taking care of yourself is part of the job of being a police officer," he said.
Chief Monroe has been a cop for 26 years. He said the standard approach to officer mental health is to debrief after a critical incident like a plane crash, a fire with multiple fatalities, or a shooting.
But the stress can be overwhelming when an officer has to deal with repeated tragic events. Monroe gave the example of a new, young officer who handled nine suicides during her first four months on the job.
"You have an officer that needs to be going to these calls and having care and empathy for other people. And pretty soon there's that empathy and compassion fatigue that starts to happen because it's been one thing after another after another," said Monroe.
That repeated trauma builds stress until it spills over and affects job performance
“When you are overwhelmed with stress and not showing that compassion and empathy for people it can lead to anger, apathy, just poor choices, not only on the street, but when they go home,” said Monroe.
Folkerds is trying to teach officers to make daily mental health checks a routine part of their work day.
"When an officer gets ready, they check in with all of their equipment, make sure that their squad is working, make sure everything is calibrated,” he said.
“We're now trying to help officers work to calibrate themselves, using some mindfulness strategies to ask the question, ‘where am I at today?’"
Folkerds sees his role as a front-line mental health worker. If an officer needs ongoing counseling they will be referred through the city employee assistance program.
Monroe isn’t sure how he will measure the effect of this program. But a recent incident gave him hope that officers are starting to understand the value of mental health care.
On Father's Day, four officers tried to save the life of an infant by doing CPR. The child died. The supervisor on duty recognized the trauma and called Folkerds in to talk with the officers.
Folkerds said it's valuable to simply acknowledge the emotions of a traumatic experience.
“Just to say, 'that's OK’. When you experience a traumatic situation like doing CPR on a child, that's normal to feel sad, that's normal to feel scared, or it's normal to think about your own kids," he said.
After the event, Monroe got a message from one of the officers who said talking about the experience was helpful. For him, that's a success — a small indication that mental health awareness is becoming part of the department culture.