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Healing Behind Bars and Badges: Dr. Davena Longshore on Law Enforcement Wellness Pt1 · Healthy Happy Wise Wealthy

0:05
Welcome to Healthy, Happy, Wise, Wealthy, the podcast where we take
0:08
people who have lived through some fire and now want to take that light
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and help guide others. I am your host, Mary Meyer. I'm so glad
0:16
you're here. I want you to step away from today feeling
0:19
like you know some things about how to heal,
0:23
about how to move forward, about how to create the life
0:27
that you want to live. Let's get started.
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Today we are talking to Dr. Davena Longshore with the Cummings
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foundation for Behavioral Health. This conversation went
0:37
so well that we could not stop it and so we're splitting it into two
0:41
episodes. Here is part one. Hi everybody. Welcome
0:45
back to Healthy, Happy, Wise, Wealthy. I have with us today
0:50
Dr. Davena Longshore from the
0:53
Cummings foundation for Behavioral health.
0:57
And welcome, Dr. Longshore. Thank you for being with us today.
1:00
Thank you for having me. So before we even begin
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and dive in, I want to read your bio because
1:08
you have such an impressive bio. And then we're going to
1:12
jump into what the Cummings foundation is, what your work is there.
1:15
And it's. We are recording on Juneteenth, so and this is,
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I know everyone doesn't get to listen on this day, but this, it's a great
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day to do this and I'm so excited to do this with you today. So
1:26
thank you for doing it today even though you were in the middle of moving
1:30
and all this stuff. So, yeah, it's
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always a pleasure. Always a pleasure. Yeah. Thank you.
1:37
Okay, here's her bio. It's very impressive. Dr.
1:41
Davena Longshore is the Executive Director of Research,
1:44
operations and Development at the Cumming foundation for Behavioral health.
1:48
With a PhD in clinical psychology and a specialization in
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military, police and criminal psychology, Dr.
1:56
Longshore brings a unique and deeply informed perspective to law
1:59
enforcement wellness. She also holds a Master's degree in both
2:03
psychology and computer information systems and
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is currently completing her third Master's degree in Clinical
2:10
psychopharmacology. This week she's finishing that.
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Her current research focuses on the efficacy of wellness programs and
2:17
policing, an area where she is helping to shape evidence based strategies
2:21
that support officer mental health resilience and long term well being.
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She has over 20 years experience spanning leadership, counseling and
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crisis response, including work as a critical incident
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responder in a level 4 double max security facility
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and as a court appointed competency examiner.
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Dr. Longshore's clinical experience expertise includes trauma
2:43
informed care, neuropsychological assessment and treatment of high
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stress populations. She is a member of the American Psychological association,
2:51
the American Academy of Clinical Psychology and the Society for
2:54
Criminal and police psychology. Her work bridges research and
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practice, offering law enforcement agency practical data driven
3:02
solutions to. To support the mental health of those who serve.
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And here she is.
3:11
Oh my gosh, thank God you got that fourth
3:14
degree, right. Right.
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I keep telling people, don't let me do it again. Like
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if I think about it, just say no. Did you eat
3:26
today? Are you hungry? Maybe you should eat and you'll forget about
3:30
getting another degree. Yeah, that's so
3:33
incredibly impressive. And we see some of it behind you there on the
3:37
wall too. So let's start out. Tell us a little bit
3:40
about the Cummings foundation for Behavioral Health, because I think that's probably
3:44
something most people don't know about. Right. So the
3:48
Cummings foundation for Behavioral Health was founded by
3:52
a clinical psychologist named Dr. Nicholas Cummings.
3:56
And for anyone who went to school for psychology and
4:00
read a lot of psychological history, his name
4:03
everywhere, he informed a lot of your sitting
4:07
presidents. He did psychological research that helped with the
4:10
World War II. I mean, he's published and
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written over 300 books and articles.
4:18
He is the maker of the managed care model. And
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that's kind of how the Cummings foundation came about.
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In making the managed care model, which was kind of like your first
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model for integrated care, he was paid a lot of
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money and he took that money and put it to the side
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for the Cummings Foundation. And so
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luckily for me, when
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I was solicited for the position, the family was
4:49
kind of in a place where they had this foundation. This
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money was specifically for this foundation to impact
4:57
the community. And they were trying to figure out exactly
5:00
what to do with it. So his wife, who
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passed about a year and six months ago, Dr.
5:07
Dorothy Cummings, she was a clinical social worker. She
5:12
saw some years ago everything going on with George Floyd
5:16
and the police and the black community
5:19
and just the community at large clashing, beginning to clash a lot
5:23
with law enforcement, law enforcement policies. And she
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said, I want to help. I don't know how, but I want
5:30
to help to kind of reduce this. And
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that's where the birth of our law enforcement project
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came from. That's amazing. And they have both passed
5:41
at this point, but somewhat recently. Yes, yes,
5:45
yes. The Dr. Dorothy Cummings,
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she passed about a year and six months. Months ago. And Dr. Nicholas
5:53
Cummings passed about six years ago. Okay, so
5:56
pretty recently. Yes. And how long have you been with them?
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Two years. So I was hired
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just to do research for this particular project
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and within a year I was promoted to run the
6:12
organization. Yeah, you were.
6:17
And I've gotten to know you some, obviously before today and,
6:21
and Know what it a dear soul you are and how
6:25
impactful you are and will continue to be in this position.
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So. And so, in addition to your ability
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to research and everything you know from, from your academic
6:37
world, you also have that experience in the
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supermax prison. Not super max, level four max. Am I
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saying it right? Level four double max. Level four
6:48
double max. It sounds fun until we learn the
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reality of it. Right. I mean, it sounds like a holiday, but
6:56
just know the opposite. I'm getting silly,
6:59
obviously. Yes, the, the complete opposite.
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I mean, if you let my kids tell it, it was a nightmare for them
7:07
having to deal with me while I was working in that type of environment,
7:12
because you are working with your offenders with
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your more violent
7:19
and most violent convictions. And
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so in that type of environment, being a
7:27
female, being a black female,
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which caused me to have a lot of issues
7:35
because most of the inmates are black and brown and
7:39
them not really experiencing a black doctor
7:44
and the officers there not really experiencing a black
7:48
doctor, not knowing what the interaction is going to be like.
7:52
There were a lot of issues, definitely a lot of issues.
7:56
A lot of gangs, you know, your major gangs, your white
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supremacist gangs,
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some of your worst Mexican
8:07
gangs in California, of course, you know, the Bloods, the
8:11
Crips, which actually some of those yards were actually your
8:14
nicer, calmer yards. People don't understand that
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even in prison there's a culture and a cold.
8:22
And believe it or not, some of your more
8:26
organized gangs are pretty decent. You know,
8:30
they, they have a cold, like you can't hurt female
8:33
administrative staff. Those are pretty quiet
8:37
yards, actually, where there's not a lot of violence, not a
8:40
lot of riots. That's good. Yes.
8:46
But, you know, in the position I ended up
8:49
being in, so first when I came in, they
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knew that one of my specialties was personality disorders, which you
8:57
see a lot of within institutions like correctional
9:00
facilities. So I was placed on a yard. And most of my
9:04
caseload was individuals with personalities disorders.
9:08
And then after seeing my skill, I was asked by the chief
9:12
of mental health to take on the position as the critical incident
9:16
responder. And in that position, it
9:19
was my job to respond to inmates when they were psychotic,
9:24
when they were suicidal, when they were
9:27
homicidal. I also was responsible
9:31
for evaluating inmates after overdoses, if they
9:35
survived. So it was a pretty intense
9:38
job. And I was working there. And then I ended up getting
9:42
recruited to work part time at another prison because they
9:46
were lacking the staff. So I was working at two different prisons.
9:49
So how long were you in doing that? Work with the
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prison in California. It was
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only for a year and six months.
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I, I am too
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empathetic for that type of system.
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I am too much of the type of person who
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wants to get to the root of a problem and fix it,
10:18
not just put a band aid over it. And
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unfortunately, our correctional system is
10:25
not meant to rehabilitate.
10:29
It's not meant to truly help in that type of way.
10:33
It is designed to keep offenders in
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there. And so
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it's not designed for people to get healed. It's not designed
10:45
for them to do better. And I
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just got tired of fighting that type of system because.
10:52
Because I'm completely opposite of it. I was trying
10:56
to help people get better. And those who could parole, I was trying to help
10:59
them parole. And you know, I, I never
11:02
lost a victim to suicide because not only
11:06
did I respond to the incident, but I maintain contact.
11:10
Whatever the resource was that they needed to help fix whatever
11:14
problem they had, I was making sure they had the resource,
11:17
whatever complaint they had. Sometimes it was complaints.
11:22
I was negotiating with the lieutenants and the sergeants
11:26
and the captains to get resources for them and to get
11:30
those needs met. And I was doing, in doing that, I was
11:34
fighting against the system and it was just beating me down.
11:38
Yeah, because you are very solutions driven and
11:42
just having any kind of empathy in that situation, I think would be
11:47
it's needed. But how challenging is that? Yeah,
11:51
I mean, it contributed to my success in that position
11:54
because they would
11:58
just tell me what they needed. You know, they didn't feel like they needed to
12:01
lie. They didn't feel like they needed to manipulate me. They would just tell me
12:05
what was going on because they felt like I actually cared and I
12:09
actually wanted to help them. And so I even. There
12:13
were times when there were inmates who were suicidal
12:17
and it kind of went under the radar as maybe just a drug
12:20
overdose that was attributed to them using drugs
12:24
recreationally or some type of medical sickness.
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And the inmates themselves would say to these people, their,
12:32
their cellmates would say, hey, you should go see
12:36
Dr. Longshore. She could help you. So that was also
12:39
reducing our suicide rate because
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everybody was like, this is the woman that if you need help, she's going to
12:46
find a way to help you. And I enjoyed that
12:50
part of it, but it
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was, it was like a rat race and running around
12:57
in a circle because I would do something and then it would get undone by
13:00
the system, them. And I. I
13:04
know you said you've had some traumatic experiences from that, that
13:08
in your current position probably help you understand what the
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traumatic experiences police office officers have. Yes.
13:16
Yeah. Yes. So
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trying. So many. I'm trying. I'm trying
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to think of one that's shareable and. And we
13:27
don't have to share any of them if you don't feel comfortable. But
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I know. I mean, I think I'll just give one that's
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maybe an example of. And some context
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around it that's maybe an example of how I can
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relate to police officers.
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So that type of position,
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it's level four, double max.
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State of California makes you sign something and says, we won't negotiate
13:58
for your life if you're held hostage. We
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get training and videos on how people set
14:06
you up and threaten your family.
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And there were days when I would get alerts like,
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hey, you're just leaving work. You need to take your badge off, because
14:16
this gang is looking for people from our prison, and if they find you, they're
14:20
going to kill you. So there was always that aspect of
14:25
my family, and I could be in
14:29
danger. When I first took the job, they told me, you need to move. So
14:32
I had to move to someplace outside of the city
14:35
gated community. I was living close to the sheriff
14:39
because they said, you can't live around their family members.
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And right now you're currently living close to family members of
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people that you're going to be treating and who are imprisoned person.
14:51
My kids had to discontinue social media use
14:56
because there was always the fear that if I made
15:00
someone upset while I was at work, they would contact their
15:04
gang or. I mean, I've. Some of my patients
15:07
included hitman hitmen for the mob.
15:11
So there was always the fear that if you make them upset,
15:15
they'll go after your family. Inside, there
15:18
was a fear of, you could get stabbed. There have been times
15:22
I've been on yards, and
15:26
I'm walking around these yards. I'm not being escorted by anyone.
15:30
It's just me. And the inmates are
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just around me. And I'm walking through a yard, trying to
15:38
get through a gate, waiting for the person up in the
15:41
tower to see it, to let me through. An
15:45
inmate says to me, you were
15:49
supposed to come see me for therapy. What happened to you?
15:53
Then another inmate says, why aren't you my therapist?
15:57
And then they just. All of a sudden, everyone's yelling at me,
16:01
and they're all getting closer and surrounding me, and
16:04
I hear them from the tower, Yale, run.
16:09
And they slide the gate open slightly so that I can run
16:13
away from these angry inmates that are angry with me for
16:16
whatever reason. Yeah, so there was always
16:20
the fear of when I walk through this gate,
16:24
which once you walk through, some of the similarities to an N
16:28
are you can't take your cell phone. There is no contact with the outside
16:32
world. There is no YouTube. It's blocked. There's
16:35
no Gmail. It's blocked. So there's absolutely
16:39
no contact with the world. And so there's always the fear that once I
16:43
walk through there, I may not walk out. Yeah.
16:49
Wow. I have to say, wow a
16:52
little bit. That's. That's
16:56
intense. That's intense for sure. And I'm kind of
17:00
thankful you're not doing it anymore. So are my
17:03
kids. Because it does. It puts you in a state of
17:07
high alert all the time, which is what officers
17:11
are in. You're always looking over your shoulder. You're
17:14
always expecting someone to do something
17:18
wrong. Because I'm treating the person that you just
17:21
saw on the news shot up the bus. You know, these
17:25
are the people that I'm treating. And so now all this
17:29
negative stuff has become my reality, and I start to see
17:32
the world that way. Like, people are evil and you have
17:36
to protect yourself. So you get kind of this chip on
17:40
your shoulder. You're always looking over it. You're distrustful of everyone.
17:44
You have a difficult time now attaching to people because you
17:48
don't trust anybody also, too. Because
17:52
now what you learn to make of humor in that type of environment,
17:57
the average person is like, that's not funny. You know, like, it's dark or
18:01
it's morbid or it's weird. So then now there's
18:04
the isolation, Right. Where you're isolated from people
18:08
because you don't. They don't understand what you're going through.
18:12
And your conversation is different from theirs because of the
18:15
things that you see every day. So then that isolation
18:20
further impacts your view of people.
18:24
Yeah, it makes you think even worse of people. So
18:27
it changes your personality. It changes the way you see the world.
18:31
It changes your personality. My kids would tell me, man, you were on
18:35
edge all the time. We couldn't drop something without
18:39
you going for a weapon, thinking that you had
18:43
to defend yourself against someone. So it's
18:47
a very intense experience. Experience. And even though I'm out of
18:52
changes you neurologically, like, you just don't see
18:55
the world the same way as other people
18:59
do. Like, my partner is happy. Go lucky.
19:03
Running through the. The grass with
19:07
the daisies while I'm like,
19:11
is there a gun? You know, like, do you see that building? Did you look
19:15
in the building and make sure no one's trying to shoot at you while you're
19:17
running through the grass. Yeah. And, you know,
19:20
unfortunately, it's very similar to law
19:24
enforcement who can go to a routine traffic stop and
19:28
lose their lives. Yeah. And so how
19:31
does that. How does that impact your work? Because I know you've said some things
19:35
about, you know, officers, and for example, what you're talking about,
19:39
you can't have a traumatic experience like that and go home and tell
19:44
your spouse or, you know, or. Or your friends or like
19:48
how. Like how, you know, and then it's just maybe dark humor
19:52
between, you know, other police officers if you feel comradery
19:55
with them or, you know, how. How. How do. How does. How
19:59
do they cope? Unfortunately,
20:03
what we've seen in
20:07
that population is
20:10
depression, high rates of depression, high rates of
20:14
anxiety, high rates of substance use,
20:18
and definitely high rates of ptsd.
20:22
And the feeling like,
20:28
how do I cope with this? Especially because majority
20:31
of law enforcement is male. So, you know, you
20:35
have our societal issues when it comes to patriarchy
20:39
and men and the roles and behaviors
20:43
that society has told them are masculine, that they try to meet
20:46
every day. And then you put on top of that, you're a law
20:50
enforcement officer. So the feeling is
20:54
I don't really have an outlet. Who do I talk to? What
20:57
do I do? I really don't have an outlet. And
21:01
how sometimes that comes out in men in general,
21:05
not just in law enforcement, is through anger. Yeah.
21:09
And then anger can be what we see and what we can be afraid
21:13
of. Yep. You know, because that. That is scary. Anger can
21:17
be scary. Yes. So there's a track there that
21:21
I know with the programs that you're developing, you want to kind of
21:24
meet that. Meet that area in there that's not
21:28
being met. And you. You have said that there's sometimes resistance to
21:32
this. Right. When you forces. Yes.
21:36
So, you know, America
21:39
doesn't have the greatest. The greatest track
21:43
record as far as law enforcement and the
21:47
black community. And, you know,
21:50
many. Well, I don't even want to say many people know, because
21:54
I've learned more as I've traveled and
21:58
lived in different states that a lot of Americans don't know history.
22:03
They don't know a lot about what has
22:07
transpired, the roots of many things, the roots of
22:11
some of the systems that exist in the U.S. i
22:15
was fortunate enough to be raised by a father
22:18
who was a cotton picker, who marched with mlk,
22:22
who helped integrate schools in South Carolina. He was
22:26
an educator. He was a civil rights activist. And so
22:30
he made sure I understood History. Because if you don't understand
22:35
where things are coming from, you won't understand why they
22:38
are the way they are in the present. And so
22:43
we know in the south that law enforcement was originally
22:47
slave catcher. And the black community
22:51
just doesn't have the best view of law enforcement. And
22:54
unfortunately, it runs deep on the opposite
22:58
end. And so I've had situations
23:02
where we've reached out to law enforcement agencies.
23:06
My chief of staff, who's a white male, normally does it for me.
23:10
They're all on board, and then they meet me and see I'm a black
23:13
female, and they back out. And that, you
23:17
know, I heard. You have heard, you said that before, and it is
23:20
shocking in a way.
23:24
It's shocking to me, you know, not that I don't think racism is real,
23:28
but. But what you're offering is your. Because. Because the Cummings foundation
23:32
offers money to help. You're giving money. You're.
23:36
You're. Would you like this check for these programs? Right.
23:40
Can we implement these programs at no cost to you? Right. So
23:44
that's. That's. It's
23:48
telling. It's like, you know, this is Juneteenth, and it's telling.
23:51
Right. That there's there's still. There's still ways to
23:55
go, there's still issues. Yes. And
24:00
honestly, I feel like you are the woman to address so many of these things,
24:03
and I'm so honored to have you on the podcast for that reason.
24:08
I mean, I. I feel like I see the problem from
24:12
both worlds, you know? Right.
24:16
Because I have had pushback from the black
24:19
community, you know, like what, you're working with the police.
24:23
What is wrong with you? You know, and. Oh, so
24:27
you're gonna blame everything they do on
24:30
mental health issues and negate the fact that they're
24:34
racist. And so, you know,
24:38
I've had negative feedback even from the opposite end. But
24:42
for me, working in corrections,
24:46
working in the jail before that, and
24:51
becoming colleagues with these people, going through
24:55
the same things that they go through, and seeing how it impacted me,
24:59
I began to understand that our problem is way
25:03
more complex than someone doesn't, like, somebody who doesn't look like
25:07
them. Yeah, I can. I. That
25:10
makes sense. Maybe you could talk a little bit more than that. Like, I know
25:14
you've had. You've told me some things about. Just like you're in a situation,
25:18
it's a heated. You know, you have to make a decision very quickly,
25:22
and a bias might come in at that point, and that might
25:26
be where that happens. Yes. So humans
25:29
think in something we call in the psychological world as schemes,
25:33
schemas. And I'm going to try not to be too technical
25:37
for everyone. But we, we think in something
25:40
called schemas. It allows us to think quickly under
25:44
duress, and it's evolutionary. It
25:47
existed back when we were hunters and
25:51
gatherers and out in the wild where you had to think quickly and
25:55
if something or someone did not look like you, you had to
25:58
fight or run. Unfortunately,
26:02
the human mind has not evolved much past
26:05
that. And we still operate in a capacity where
26:09
you have to make your mind put in the energy load to
26:13
think logically. If you do not, it will think
26:17
in patterns. It will think according to
26:20
what is the quickest way that I can make a decision about the
26:24
situation. And that's where biases come in, which
26:27
we all have. Yeah, I have a bias
26:31
against snakes. I don't care what snake it is.
26:35
If I see it, I am running for my life.
26:38
Yeah. But I've lived places. I grew up in South
26:42
Carolina. You know, we had rattlesnakes, copperheads, you run from
26:45
those. Right. But then I moved to Georgia and I
26:49
saw things like black snakes, which actually eat other
26:53
snakes. You want them in your yard, they're not poisonous
26:56
and they'll eat other snakes. But I still saw this
27:00
snake and was like, absolutely not. I don't care what kind of
27:03
snake you are, I'm running because you're a snake.
27:07
I do that to preserve my life.
27:11
Right. And so humans, we tend to
27:15
think in a way that if we don't understand something,
27:19
if something is different, different from us, we will automatically
27:23
reject that thing. We will run from it or fight
27:27
it out of the need to preserve
27:30
ourselves. It's, and it's not logical. It's
27:34
an evolutionary behavior to
27:38
stop it. You have to think logically. You have to step in and now
27:41
start doing some decision making, some weeding out of. Is this really
27:45
dangerous for me? Is this really a bad thing? What, what evidence do I
27:49
have that this thing is actually bad for me? But
27:53
most people, unfortunately, research shows
27:57
most of us as humans don't do that regularly.
28:00
And definitely in a situation where your life is in
28:04
danger, you don't have the energy or mental capacity to do
28:08
it. Your brain is sending all the blood into
28:11
your body for you to run or fight. And so you're
28:15
going to start operating unknowingly off of your
28:18
biases. Yeah, yeah. And
28:22
you're, you have a proprietary program that you're going to be writing
28:26
and, and publishing later this year. So you can't say a lot about it. But
28:29
I know that's a piece of it is, you know, let's, and, and,
28:33
but everyone can, let's talk and if we, if you don't mind talking in general
28:36
terms about that, like, you know, not just, you know, a
28:40
police force, but all of humanity needs
28:44
to look at like how you describe this, the schema, the, the, the
28:48
training we've gotten or just our knee jerk reaction is maybe a word
28:51
I phrase I would use. And here's a situation, here's how
28:55
I'm going to respond to it. Here's a person, this is what I know to
28:59
be true about this person, you know, you know, here's
29:02
an event, this is what I know to be true about this event. There's
29:06
a mindset I know to be for or against this mindset. And
29:10
you know, in, in, I mean, not that I talk about politics on
29:14
here, but of course politics is, has been very heated. So you
29:17
know, we're all, we're all very for, against different things and that
29:21
can get in and that kind of, you know, it's, it's, it's draining, right? It's
29:25
very, very draining. So for just anyone
29:29
listening, do you have any ideas on, you know,
29:32
what can we do when we're thinking of, we encounter
29:36
a bias and maybe we're not even thinking about it, but we're just like,
29:40
that's bad.
29:44
So something very simple you can do is
29:48
Harvard did an implicit bias
29:53
research study. And so they have several assessments,
29:57
they're free. You can go to just
30:01
Google Harvard implicit bias and the website will
30:04
come up and they have every single common bias that you can
30:08
think of. Even from the standpoint of
30:12
do you associate women with
30:15
staying in the home and taking care of kids and men with work,
30:20
or do you like science
30:23
more than reading? Like every bias that you can think of, they have
30:27
it. And you can take these tests and they'll
30:31
tell you whether or not you have certain biases and
30:35
what they're for. Another thing that research says,
30:38
the biggest thing research says that helps you to
30:42
get rid of negative biases is
30:46
to entrench yourself in that group
30:49
that you have the negative bias against. And so for me it
30:53
was, I said, I'm going to work with
30:57
law enforcement because I am deathly afraid of them.
31:01
I grew up afraid of them. We did not view in
31:05
our community, we did not view the police as helpers. We
31:08
viewed them as terrorizers and people who put us in prison for no reason.
31:13
So I was deathly afraid of them. And that was my bias. Because
31:17
now working with them, that's not always true,
31:22
but I entrenched myself in the community. One of
31:25
the agencies we support, they do something
31:29
called community policing, but they do it the right way. So
31:33
what they do is they assign an officer to a
31:37
community, but the assignment is not
31:40
just to protect the community. It is to get to know
31:44
the community. They are to have lunch with them and
31:48
talk with them. They're taking the elderly in their
31:52
community their medications from the pharmacist. They're
31:55
raising money for kids who don't have food in their
31:59
neighborhood. And it significantly reduced the
32:03
crime. It significantly reduced,
32:07
you know, officer violence among the community. And
32:10
one of the times when I was visiting there was the most amazing thing for
32:13
me to see, because this department is majority
32:17
white, but these neighborhoods are majority black.
32:21
And I was at the station, it just happened to
32:25
snow, which is not normal for that area of South Carolina.
32:29
And you had black kids calling the
32:33
station saying, I want my officer to come play with me.
32:37
And they answer, and they said, hey,
32:41
this officer, they're off today. Can we send someone else to play with you? And
32:45
they're like, oh, we like our officer, but okay, you can send them.
32:49
And these are black kids with white officers that they're
32:53
asking, will you come play with me? And the officers, go play with them.
32:57
Yeah. But these stories you don't see
33:01
on social media. You see, you don't see on
33:04
the news. You see violence, you know, one
33:08
against the other. You see division, but you don't see the
33:12
agencies like this who care. This agency also
33:16
makes their officers continually go through simulations.
33:20
They. They didn't have a lot of money, which is why we're supporting them.
33:24
The little money and grant money they got, they spent it on this simulation
33:28
because they're so expensive. They got one of the cheapest ones, which is around
33:32
$100,000. Okay. But they got it.
33:35
Because what they do is they take officers over
33:39
and over and over again through real life situations.
33:43
And bodily harm is the last thing
33:47
they teach for them to use. And in these simulations, when
33:50
they use it, they're required to explain, why
33:54
did you do that? Instead of de. Escalating, instead of doing
33:58
this. This department also has a clinical social
34:02
worker on staff. When they get a mental health call,
34:06
that social worker is in the car with them. They do not respond
34:10
without a mental health. Some type of mental health technician.
34:14
But also they know their community. So if they get
34:18
a call that Bob is walking naked down the
34:21
road, they're answering the call, like, oh, no, it's
34:25
Because Bob has schizophrenia and sometimes
34:29
Bob forgets their medication. Let me go call their doctor
34:33
and, and get the doctor there and help Bob. Not let
34:37
me go arrest Bob. When I went
34:40
there, they were commending an officer because two officers
34:44
responded to a situation where a person was drunk.
34:50
They didn't, there was, there was
34:54
not even an attempt to arrest. They got his car to a safe
34:57
place and they got him home to his wife because they knew
35:01
him. They know the community, they talk to them. They
35:05
know what they're going through and they're now human to them.
35:08
They're not separate. They're not this person that looks different from me
35:12
and I don't understand. They're a human being just
35:16
like them. They found a common ground. But
35:20
like I said, these are not the stories that make the news.
35:24
No, right.
35:27
I won't even say that. But yeah, there is a, there is a clickbait factor
35:31
and, and sometimes the nice stories are on social media, but
35:35
they usually are not on world news or anything like that.
35:39
Yeah. Is this the same community that you guys
35:42
built the gym for? It is. Okay? It
35:46
is. They have a female chief and
35:50
she is amazing and she just
35:54
wants what's best for the community and best for her
35:57
officers. And the little funds that they could
36:00
acquire, they spent on the simulation so they could
36:04
teach their officers how to regulate themselves
36:08
better in high stress situations, how to de.
36:11
Escalate instead of responding in violence. And I
36:15
mean, I was just so impressed by how I saw
36:19
them interact with the community, the care that
36:23
they had, that I said we have
36:26
to help you. And so we did. They didn't. We wanted to do
36:30
physical training, which is one of the programs that we offer. They didn't have
36:34
a gym. We built them a gym free of
36:38
charge. Yes, Built it, bought all the
36:41
equipment and sent in the physical trainers to train their
36:45
offices. Yeah, I, I want to just put a short call
36:49
to action because if you have, if you'd like to see
36:52
programs in your area, in your precinct,
36:56
with your police officers, you can email you about that.
37:00
And also if you want to donate towards this
37:04
because this is a thing that brings a lot of healing and
37:07
health and safety to the community and to the country,
37:11
you can also donate also, which is
37:15
Cummings C U M M I N G and
37:18
S. That's on the end of it. And then c
37:22
f b h.org
37:25
Cummings foundation for Behavioral Health.org and that is part one with
37:29
Dr. Davena Longshore with the Cummings foundation for Behavioral Health.
37:33
Stay tuned next week where we continue this amazing conversation.
37:37
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38:03
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