We continue to roll out MuniSquare with introductions to our contributors. Today, Lisa Layden shares her perspective on how policing is changing—and where it still needs to grow.
Highlights:
1. Evolution of Mental Health Awareness in Policing
People are looking for something meaningful. They want purpose in life. Most people are definitely looking for an environment where they feel valued. Do they care about me? We're so much more aware of stress, trauma, things like that. We treat that so differently in policing, at least most police departments do, we have CIT teams now.
If officers have been through something traumatic, we're not saying suck it up, we're like, hey, let's have our chaplain core come in and have lunch when the officers are not on call and they can be in the room without the police chief there and talk about some of these things.
2. Career Concerns Among Criminal Justice Students
I tell my students that are even considering a career in policing... You ask me a question. You tell me what you want to know about. So many of those things come back as, How do you deal with this or have you ever experienced this and how did you handle that?
That's what they want to know, they don't realize but what they're asking is, am I gonna be traumatized, what kind of career field is this gonna be? Am I gonna be taken care of because we have that awareness now like it or not. That's where society is at.
3. Challenges for Women in Policing
Overall in the United States, I got my statistics from the Bureau of Labor, Department of Justice. Women remain, maybe the late seventies, eighties, I think peaked in some places at around 15%. But then as we go into the nineties, it goes back down to around 11, 12 percent and then just stays there for 40 years.
That's an interesting thing right there, because when you look at a comparative field, like law, you see a completely different thing happening. Women gain access and then continue to reach, some approximate gender balance there. You don't see that in policing.
4. Family Leave as a Key Factor in Retention
Just in the last couple of years, there's some very large police agencies, finally establishing paid maternity paternity leave.
It's for the men and the women, here's paid leave. That really is the key. In my research, I talked to so many women about their experience having a child starting a family while being a police officer. And that's just the thing.
5. Positive Peer Relationships Despite Challenges
Overall women are saying my peers were very supportive. My peers were very respectful. That's actually my same experience. 99 percent of the police officers I worked with in my departments, all the neighboring departments, state level, federal level, very respectful, professional, great, some of the best friends I've ever had in my life. Truly considered some of them my brothers.
6. Addressing Systemic Issues in Policing
I think we're definitely changing and things are getting better, but, that's definitely what I still see.
And it was shocking to me because there were things I went through when I first came on the job many years ago that I put away. Oh, that was one very negative person, or that was one bad department but it was shocking to do the research in 2021, 2022, and hear about incidents that were, very significant things that were still happening.
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