HEALTH & WELLNESS
Building strength through
Cop2Cop resilience training
After 20 years at Cop2Cop, we have discovered
that we have to combat some stigma. We are pres-
ent to provide peer counseling and clinical sup-
port during crisis, suicide and critical incidents,
so it is rare that we are associated with a good or
healthy moment in an officer’s life. Although we
had 17 suicides in 2017, we also had more than
CHERIE
30,000 officers thrive and do well based on their
CASTELLANO resilience and service.
Cop2Cop
Once again, I want to highlight the movement
of both law enforcement leadership as well as
rank-and-file officers to build strength instead of discussing
weakness or challenges in their everyday lives. The military
recently partnered with positive psychology experts from the
University of Pennsylvania to identify six skillsets of resilience.
They then created a course to enhance resilience. The skills
are: optimism; self-awareness, self-regulation; mental agility,
strength of character, and connection to achieve resilience.
We at Cop2Cop were invited to join a work group led by the
Maple Shade Police Department and the New Jersey Attorney
General’s Office training leads to explore adapting this course
for law enforcement in New Jersey. There is a larger effort by
the International Association of Counterterrorism and Secu-
rity Professionals (IACSP) and UPenn to do a comprehensive
cop resilience course, but when the Middlesex County Prose-
cutor’s Office Chief MacAleer asked for a “pilot course,” we at
Cop2Cop did it!
We held focus groups and talked to officers in sex crimes
units, homicide, narcotics, internal affairs and special vic-
tim units. All said they had vicarious trauma and stress, but
they coped with it in a variety of ways. We created a resilience
course using data from Cop2Cop, stories from retired cops
and examples of how these skillsets are adapted for the law
enforcement culture. For example, mental agility is an every-
day skill. As a cop, you are going from routine action to emer-
gent crisis at a moment’s notice.
Since we first launched the Cop2Cop resilience course last
year with superb evaluations and feedback, we now have done
this course at Monmouth, Mercer and Hudson county prose-
cutors’ offices to rave reviews! It is exciting to gather the offi-
cers into small groups at the end of the course to hear about
their strengths and challenges to stay resilient on this job. If
there is one overwhelming theme, it is that you are resilient
together. Cop2Cop is more than just the title of our program
— it is how you stay strong.
UPENN POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY CENTER RESILIENCE SKILLSET
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Ret. Lt. Franklin Twp. Police
Past Delegate/President,
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(732) 328-8644
[email protected]
www.njcopsmagazine.com
■ JULY 2018 73