Alaska’s public safety departments are working to better handle police officers’ stress, after a recent change to state law and as discussions of mental health and wellness are becoming more common for employers nationwide.
At the Anchorage Police Department, managers of its peer support program hope clearer rules around confidentiality in support sessions, part of the recently passed Senate Bill 103, will help more officers take advantage of mental health services.
There’s a small room on the sixth floor of the department’s downtown headquarters with a dark blue light, some circular lounge chairs and a soft fuzzy carpet. The sound of rain played in the background.
There’s normally a mix of sweet and sour candies, aiming to engage with the standard five senses of sight, smell, touch, taste and sound, said Sgt. Matthew Hall, coordinator of the police department’s peer support program and an 11-year veteran of the force.
“What these rooms do is focus on each one of those senses individually to level each one out,” Hall said. “So when you exit the room, or when you’re done going through all those senses, every piece of your body is kind of stabilized, and it’s almost like hitting the reset button.”
There’s a focus on a few other senses as well through a series of deep breathing exercises, Hall said.
“Vestibular is kind of that balance that we have, that inner-ear balance,” Hall said. “Proprioception is kind of your spatial awareness, or how much force you need to use to, say, pick a pen up off of the table. And then your introspection, those are kind of your internal senses as well, like, ‘Am I hungry? Am I thirsty?’”
A lot of Hall’s job involves helping officers navigate critical incidents. Those are the kind of calls that include serious injuries or deaths caused by auto accidents, suicides or when officers use deadly force.
“Officers will go to upwards of 200 critical incidents throughout their career, which is a huge number for anyone to go through,” Hall said.
The Anchorage Police Department launched its peer support program at the end of 2020, coinciding with a wider national discussion about mental health, Hall said.
“If we just look at society in general, right now, mental health wellness has seen a huge increase, I think, over the last few years,” he said. “Before then, there was kind of this stigma about mental health, both in law enforcement and outside law enforcement, but the need is definitely there.”
When officers are confronted with potentially traumatizing critical incidents, Hall’s team checks in with the officer to determine the best way to handle their stress. Sometimes that involves what’s called a “critical incident stress debrief,” with members of the peer support team acting as moderators.
“What that looks like, if we decide to hold one of those, is it’s basically like a group stress debrief,” Hall said. “We don’t necessarily talk about the tactics on the calls or the things that happen. We more talk about our reactions that we had to said call.”
Hall said he’s hopeful that new legislation the state Legislature passed earlier this year will encourage more officers and non-sworn staff, like dispatchers and records clerks, to use peer support services. Senate Bill 103 establishes clear confidentiality rules for the peer support sessions.
State Sen. Forest Dunbar, a Democrat from East Anchorage, sponsored the bill, after hearing feedback from law enforcement agencies and their unions.
“The problem was, we were worried that people wouldn’t be totally forthright with them or wouldn’t utilize the program if they knew that those programs could be, you know, subpoenaed, or the confidentiality wasn’t there the way it would be for, say, a chaplain or for a medical provider,” Dunbar said.
The law includes exceptions to confidentiality rules, like if an officer admits to a crime during a session.
Hall said he also wants officers to have a better relationship with the public. Community members have expressed grief and anger toward the department in recent months, with seven police shootings since May resulting in four deaths.
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“There’s not a single officer that I’ve talked to that wants to go to that type of call, those calls where we’re going to have to use a significant amount of force, or maybe even deadly force at times,” Hall said. “So generally speaking those always take a toll on both us as officers and the general public, like we’re all affected by these incidents.”
Whether they’re participating in group stress debriefs or using one of the sensory rooms, Hall hopes that, as officers continue to take advantage of peer support services, the benefits will spread by word-of-mouth and generally improve mental health at the department.
Wesley Early covers Anchorage life and city politics for Alaska Public Media. Reach him at wearly@alaskapublic.org and follow him on X at @wesley_early. Read more about Wesley here.
