Every once in a while, after working long and sometimes grueling shifts, after getting yelled at and spat on and occasionally having plastic cups thrown at him, Officer Brian Vaughan feels so worn down that he wonders if being a cop is still worth it.
āI guess the answer, for now, is Iām still here,ā the 13-year police veteran says with a thin smile. Vaughan works patrol at the Brookhaven Police Department. Itās past eight in the morning as he sits down at the agencyās Buford Highway headquarters, the quiet beginning of a 12-hour shift that can spin into a major crisis within seconds.
After several high-profile police killings of Black Americans by white officers in recent years, tensions reached a boiling point in the late spring of 2020, when George Floyd died under the knee of Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin. Cellphone images were broadcast to the world, waves of protests and riots swept the country, and anti-police sentiment soared. (Chauvin was soon fired and was later convicted of murder.)
Police departments have been forced to reckon with charges of systemic racism, with their values, training and hiring practices criticized. Officer resignations have spiked, and morale has plummeted.
Discussions about police violence and police reform, the rise in crime, the Chauvin trial ā theyāre important and necessary, says Vaughan. āItās just that youāre inundated with it. It consumes you at work. Itās in conversations with friends and family. Itās everywhere.ā
Last yearās events have left another mark. Early data suggest that burnout and depression are rising among police officers, saysĀ John Violanti, a professor of epidemiology and environmental health at the University of Buffalo, and a leading expert on police stress. According to preliminary data that he and his research team collected, the rate of PTSD went up by about 30 percent from January 2020 to April 2021.
āIām very concerned about our officersā mental health,ā he says.

Resignations increasing
Officers like 35-year-old Vaughan may be among the luckier ones. Besides his moments of frustration, Vaughan ā strong build, dark uniform, and black sunglasses shoved into his short light hair ā says he likes working for the Brookhaven PD. The 85-member police force, founded in 2013 shortly after the DeKalb County community officially became a city, is better funded than many other agencies in Georgia. Officers are better compensated, and turnover and resignation rates are lower.
In contrast, the Atlanta Police Department, which declined to be interviewed for this story, is about 400 officers short of its āauthorized strengthā of more than 2,000, according to the departmentās latest filled vacancy report.
A University of Nebraska-Omaha and University of Utah study, currently under peer review, suggests that voluntary resignations in some larger police departments in the nation may have increased by 280 percent. While the study doesnāt examine the reasons why officers quit, researchers describe a general collapse of morale. Burnout probably āplays a significant part in the trend weāre seeing,ā both as cause and effect, saysĀ Ian Adams, a political scientist at the University of Utah and one of the studyās co-authors.
Mental health screening
For law enforcement across the country, 2020 brought a set of compounding and shifting pressures. First, COVID-19 added the risk of serious infection to an already high-risk profession, saysĀ Dean Dabney, a professor of criminal justice at Georgia State University. āThe pandemic changed policing significantly.ā
The job doesnāt allow for social distancing, he continues. āOfficers are literally face-to-face with the public.ā In 2020, as the pandemic raged, more law enforcement officers died from COVID than from gun violence, car accidents and all other causes combined, according to data compiled by theĀ Officer Down Memorial PageĀ and theĀ National Police Foundation.
For metro Atlanta police, a critical moment came three weeks after Floydās death when white Atlanta police officer Garrett Rolfe shot and killed Rayshard Brooks, an African-American, after a DUI stop turned violent a year ago. Brooks had grabbed a police taser and fired at Rolfe while attempting to flee.
Rolfe was dismissed a day after the shooting and later charged with felony murder. He has since been reinstated by an oversight board because of questions about how he was dismissed. The murder case is still pending. (Recently a judge allowed Fulton County DA Fani Willis to recuse herself from the case, citing the conduct of Willisā predecessor, Paul Howard. But it is still unclear who will be the new prosecutor and what the timeline is.)
Officers, in Atlanta and elsewhere, feel like police and city administrations often donāt have their backs, Dabney says. They fear losing their livelihood and freedom for doing their jobs, he says.
Only recently has there been a growing awareness āof the psychological dangers of being a police officer,ā says Violanti. A 2019Ā study by the University of Texas at DallasĀ found that 26 percent of police officers screened positive for a mental health condition, such as burnout, anxiety, depression or PTSD.
Stress arises from the dangerous and unpredictable nature of police work. āMost officers see more accidents, more dead bodies, more āblood and gutsā in one single day than many people see in their lifetime,ā says Gary Yandura, Brookhavenās Chief of Police. āThat takes a toll.ā
Police develop what psychologists refer to as cumulative PTSD. While soldiers often experience post-traumatic stress from a single horrific event, PTSD in police officers tends to build up over time because of multiple stress-related incidents.
Then there are administrative demands ā work hours, bureaucracy, supervision. Patrol officers typically work 10- to 12-hour shifts, alternating between day and night schedules. Many supplement their incomes by working off-duty gigs in security.
Between long hours, shift work and moonlighting, most officers are overworked and sleep-deprived, says Violanti, resulting in deep physical fatigue and emotional exhaustion, both major components of burnout. It affects their performance and decision-making, can fuel anger and irritability and lead to an increase in citizen complaints.
Another component of burnout, found at high levels among police officers, is depersonalization, says Violanti. Common signs are cynicism, indifference, and at times, what psychologists describe as a blunted or flat affect ā when someoneās facial expression or body language suggests a reduced emotional response.
Violanti says when officers become depersonalized, āthey also tend to depersonalize other people, treat them as objects instead of humans.ā It often happens to officers who work in high-crime areas and experience trauma for prolonged periods, he adds. āThey become jaded to feelings, and it takes away their empathy.ā
There is also a known impact on physiological health, says Violanti. Law enforcement officers are more likely to be affected by cardiovascular disease than the general population, according to his research, as well as a study by theĀ Harvard School of Public Health.
There are other grave consequences of officer burnout, like alcohol and drug abuse, says Brookhaven police chief Yandura. āAnd too many die from suicide.ā
Police suicides have steadily risen in recent years. A record was set in 2019 when 238 officers took their lives, more than twice the number of those who died in the line of duty. Thatās according toĀ Blue H.E.L.P.,Ā a nonprofit that works to reduce the stigma surrounding mental health issues in law enforcement.
Vaughan recently lost a friend and fellow cop to suicide. Other friends, all seasoned officers, decided to quit. āThatās been weighing on me,ā he says, as he leans over and rests his arms on his knees.
He adds that in his career as a first responder ā before joining the Brookhaven police he was a patrol officer at the Marietta Police Department and a firefighter ā heās experienced burnout symptoms. āJust feeling tired all the time, never getting enough sleep,ā he says.
He admits there have been conflicts with his family ā his wife, his 10-year-old son and his 5-year-old daughter. āWhen I get home, they want to go out and do things. And I just want to be closed off from society.ā
Also, he and his colleagues āhave to constantly be aware of the public perception and its possible impact,ā he says. He recalls a recent situation where he responded to a shoplifting incident near Peachtree Road.
The suspect was armed and combative. When Vaughan finally detained the man in handcuffs, traffic on all five lanes had come to a halt, bystanders had gathered and were recording the incident with their cellphones.
āIām all for video images,ā Vaughan says. āBut it often feels like people want to catch us doing something wrong.ā
Situations like the one on Peachtree Road have a unique dynamic that can escalate in milliseconds, Vaughan explains. He was by himself, trying to control the suspect, the traffic, the pedestrians, while rapidly assessing the risk and notifying dispatch. Thatās what heās trained for, he says. But now he also has to keep other things in mind: āHow does this look in the media? Am I going to be the next viral video?ā
āToo exhausted to talkā
Victoria Williams has witnessed how demoralizing the increased public scrutiny can be on officersā morale and mindset. Williams, an African-American woman with a cheerful demeanor, is a licensed professional counselor and one of four mental health professionals assigned to the Brookhaven Police Department through a partnership with Behavioral Health Link (BHL), a state contractor. She helps officers respond to calls where suspects are in a mental health crisis, which can range from psychosis to substance abuse to suicide threats.
Brookhaven was among the first police departments in Georgia to hire mental health professionals. Williams is part of a crisis intervention team created during the coronavirus pandemic.
She works with officers āwho experience stress or feel mentally strained.ā She conducts debriefings after potentially traumatizing situations like shootings and other violent encounters, but also encourages officers to just stop by for an informal ā and confidential ā chat.
In the past couple of months, some of those chats were longer than normal, she says. They revolved around work, the growing public animosity, and also the officersā private lives and their concern about COVID.
Williams noticed a lot of fatigue and frustration, but also resilience.
At other metro Atlanta police departments where she worked during the pandemic, she didnāt see some officers for weeks, she says. Staff has been stretched thin. For a while, a good number of officers were out sick with the coronavirus, and others resigned. The remaining officers had to work overtime, often 24-hour shifts.
āWhen I finally saw them weeks later, they were too exhausted to talk,ā Williams recalls. āThey just shut down.ā She pauses, briefly listening to the cracking voices coming from her radio. āIt was hard to watch.ā
Williams also observed that many African-American officers felt torn between their identity as a person of color and a police officer. āWe had a lot of talks about that,ā she says.
Talks that Police Lt. Abrem Ayana has not only encouraged, but also initiated. Ayana, 35, is the unit commander for Brookhavenās criminal investigations division and oversees crisis intervention training.
āIn the wake of the George Floyd killing we brought our African-American officers in to have this conversation,ā says Ayana, who is Black. āAnd we talked about our own experiences with the police prior to being in law enforcement.ā
He also had conversations with his white colleagues about poverty, crime, history and trust. With 22 percent of officers being African-American and 17 percent Hispanic, Brookhavenās police force is among the more diverse in Georgia.
Ayana, who worked patrol until recently, says he can relate to both sides. āI get the anger and the angst thatās been out thereā in the African-American community, says the Atlanta native. As an officer, he also understands the job that police are doing. āI know my role.ā And he adds that personally, āI never had a negative experience with police.ā
He, like Vaughan, has experienced a rise in animosity toward police. Sometimes it helps to strike up a frank conversation with citizens about race and policing, he says. He also sees it as part of his responsibility as a public servant to maintain his mental health.
āBecause if you donāt, it can become destructive,ā he says. Dwelling in the belief āthat everybody hates you is a hazardous attitude, itās poisonous, it can lead to outbursts and ultimately cost you your job.ā
Stigma of mental health
Police agencies and criminal justice experts have long looked into options to better support officersā mental health and wellbeing. Employment Assistance Programs, or EAPs, designed to provide officers with mental health counseling and occupational stress management, have been around for decades, but never seemed to work well for law enforcement, says Violanti.
Counselors like Williams, who are embedded in specific departments, get to know individual officers over time. Police chaplains are another resource to support officersā mental and spiritual well-being by offering a listening and confidential ear.
However, most police officers prefer to speak with one of their own, ābecause people outside of law enforcement often donāt understand what their job is like,ā says Williams. Thatās why most police departments have some sort of peer-to-peer support program with specially trained peer counselors.
Experts like Violanti have found that the so-called ācop cultureā ā where showing vulnerability is considered a sign of weakness ā stands in the way of true mental and emotional self-care, and the stigma around mental health, even though itās getting weaker, is still out there.
āOfficers are hard to crack,ā Williams says, adding that there have been pilot projects offering meditation, mindfulness and yoga at police departments, but overall, sheās found that āthose are a tough sell.ā
Vaughan believes itās also a generational thing. āWhen I came on to the force in 2008, there was more of a āsuck it up, buttercupā type of attitude. You were supposed to deal with it and get on.ā Newer officers are more open to mental health awareness and emotional well-being, he says.
Regardless of age, many officers are also wary about addressing their mental health struggles because they fear that it could be used against them, adds Ayana. āAs police officers, that gun and badge are how we identify.ā If a supervisor takes the gun and badge away and sends the officer to a psychiatrist, āthey take your identity and along with it, the means to provide.ā
Thatās why Ayana chooses to address mental health openly and proactively. He talks about his own challenges and tells his team about the benefits of counseling.
āI talk to a therapist myself,ā he says. āIt really helps me prioritize and put things into perspective in my personal and my professional life.ā
Violanti agrees that breaking the stigma of mental health in law enforcement is primarily a leadership issue. Right now, he says, future officers at the academy learn how to shoot and how to drive, and they learn about the laws. āBut what about psychological survival? A two-hour course in stress management wonāt do it.ā
Criminal justice professor Dabney says that some aspects of police reform that are currently being discussed may have a de-stressing effect. āWeāve known for years that among the most stressful calls for police are those surrounding mental health, addiction, homelessness, or domestic and youth violence,ā he says.
In the future, under some reform proposals, social workers and mental health professionals should act as primary responders to these types of calls, while police should play a support role.
āThat would take a lot of pressure off the officersā plate and could have a significant impact in reducing police stress,ā Dabney expects.
While police reform may be a highly contested political issue, all sides seem to agree at least on one goal, says law enforcement researcher Adams. āWe want better policing. And if we want better policing, weāre going to need healthier police officers.ā
Meanwhile, Brookhaven PD officers are grateful for gestures of support from the community, whether they consist of food and water deliveries or āthank youā cards.Ā But itās the small personal interactions that can make the biggest difference to an officerās mindset, says Brian Vaughan.
As he drove through town in his squad car one recent morning and stopped at an intersection, he looked around and noticed everyone staring at him, expressionless.
āJust one person smiling or waving would change my whole outlook on the day,ā he says.