NYPD Officers Cope With On-The-Job Trauma; Laud Mental Health Support
By: Hadassa Kalatizadeh
In the aftermath of at least three NYPD Officer suicides last year, a two-day seminar was held last week by the Police Organization Providing Peer Assistance (POPPA), a nonprofit aiming to help NYPD cops cope with their gut-wrenching experiences on the field.
More than 50 police officers, detectives, sergeants and lieutenants attended the seminar in Staten Island, and more seminars are in the works for the future. “They saved my life,” Retired NYPD Detective Lou Yero, said of the organization. As reported by the NY Post, Yero said he was so traumatized by the terrors he witnessed on patrol that he took to drinking, and even came close to shooting himself in the head with a gun. “And then I looked in the mirror and saw my son’s room,” Yero said speaking last week at the first seminar. “I said, ‘I can’t let my son find me.’ I even unloaded my gun, but then I reloaded it.”
He says he sought out the help of POPPA to help him deal with the trauma from especially horrific cases he worked on. The veteran cop noted that among the most disturbing, was a case he worked on in 2009, where a 2-month-old boy was found buried in a concrete container. Also, in 2011, he investigated the case of a missing 8-year-old boy, whose body was ultimately found in a suitcase, while his feet were found in a freezer, he said at the POPPA gathering. “I started drinking more every day, as soon as I got home from work,” he said. “It got to the point where I gained weight. My suits didn’t fit. I had high blood pressure, cholesterol and became a diabetic. Things were bad at home.”
POPPA, founded in 1996, provides struggling police officers with help via mental-health professionals, as well as specially trained volunteer current and former cops. “Cops are exposed to horrific incidents every day,” Dr. Jennifer Taylor, a clinical psychologist, said at the seminar. “It can be overwhelming. We try to help them cope. We look for red flags. We look for signs of PTSD, ask them if there have been changes in their eating, sleeping habits,” Taylor said. “You have to get them over the stigma of seeking help.”
As per the Post, POPPA Director John Petrullo, himself a retired NYPD cop, said the organization receives between 600 to 700 calls annually from active officers, and hundreds more calls from retired cops. He said that unfortunately the NYPD faces an average of four or five suicides annually. “We hope to teach participants how to take better care of themselves, deal with stress, learn how to separate their job from their outside life,” Petrullo said. “We are dealing with a population that is resistant to mental health,” he said. “We have to try to make them understand it is alright to seek and get help.”
Officers seeking help are encouraged to reach out by calling POPPA at 1-800-COPSCOP.
