Police Burnout

Once fatigue has taken a toll on police officers burnout and disengagement take over. This is particularly dangerous because once a police officer becomes disengaged with their work; they lose the passion for their job, which results in a half-hearted effort to protect and serve the public. Burnout causes officers to become complacent and can cost them their life (Amendola et al., 2011). When officers experience high levels of stress accompanied by little sleep, fatigue can creep into their daily lives. However, once this trend continues for weeks, officers experience burnout and disengagement.

Perhaps the biggest factors of burnout are the numerous encounters on a daily basis, confronting those who hate you, spit at you, and curse at you, all the while officers are just trying to help. Being confronted by these people on a daily basis is a primary factor of why a large amount of police officers experience burnout at some point during their career. Burnout does not just affect an officers work life, but most of the time follows the officers home into their personal lives. As a result, officers experience family problems, which only results in more stress for the officers (Olson & Wasilewski, 2014).

Likewise, the longer officers experience long, rotating shift the more susceptible they

From experiencing life-threatening situations, to seeing children being abused, to seeing others die on a regular basis, officers experience much more stress than the general population does. Because of the high stress nature of the job, officers often turn to alcohol to alleviate that stress. A study conducted across 29 departments, including 2,200 officers, found that 23% of the officers had a serious issue with alcohol consumption (Hurrell et al., 1984; William, 2012). It was also found that police officers were more at risk to abuse alcohol than the general public, most likely due to the stressors they face on a daily basis (Lindsay,