Sheriff’s captain speaks from first-hand experience warning police academy graduates about PTSD
La Plata County Sheriff’s Capt. Ed Aber, who is out of the La Plata County Jail, was the keynote speaker at the Pueblo Police Academy’s spring 2022 graduation, where he spoke about PTSD and the need for first responders to treat trauma with which face jobs. (Jerry McBride/Durango Herald)
During his four decades in law enforcement, Captain Ed Aber of the La Plata County Sheriff’s Office has seen more death and trauma than most people will see in a lifetime.
He lost count of the number of autopsies he attended and the number of fingerprints removed from dead bodies — not to mention the murders, suicides and incestuous rapes he investigated — all in his first nine years in law enforcement as agent with the US Army Criminal Investigation. Division.
Witnessing trauma over and over again can have a debilitating and insidious culminating effect on first responders in particular, which if not treated properly can lead to PTSD, and very often a descent into alcohol and drug addiction, divorce and suicide.
Awareness of post-traumatic stress disorder by agencies responsible for the welfare of first responders, along with the need for treatment, has come a long way since Aber’s early days on the job, which was reflected in the choice of his to address PTSD as the keynote address. speaker at the Pueblo Police Academy’s spring 2022 graduation.
“To put it bluntly, in the ’80s when I started my career, if there was an officer-involved shooting, it would be pretty much — pull yourself up by your bootstraps and get your ass back to work,” he said. “It was a kind of mindset and mentality. It was seen as a sign of weakness or perceived as a sign of weakness if you needed mental health help.
Aber is the coordinator for the Interface Critical Incident Debris Team, which was started by other first responders in Durango in the 1980s but didn’t find its stride until 10 years ago.
“Law enforcement has always been behind the curve in looking after the well-being of their officers and emphasizing mental health and wellness,” Aber said. “But we put a team back together, built a substantial membership, and went out and did education, mostly for administrators.”
The perception that needing mental health help is a weakness has certainly changed and should continue to change until “we start seeing fewer and fewer suicides,” he said.
“In my 41-plus years on the job, I’ve been to more funerals for officers who have died at their own hands than I have been to who have been killed in the line of duty,” Aber said. “I think a lot of it is just the accumulation of these traumas.”
According to Officer Down Memorial Page 210 officers killed in the line of duty this year, 652 in 2021 and 1,823 in the last five years.
“Depending on which study you look at, there are anywhere between 300 and 600 officers who die by suicide each year,” Aber said. “And these numbers are really challenging to identify. The only thing I can base it on is my personal experience.”
Being exposed every day
Captain Ed Aber, who has over 40 years of law enforcement experience under his belt, walks through the La Plata County Jail he oversees. Aber, who suffered from PTSD in the past, now helps other first responders address the issues that can lead to PTSD. (Jerry McBride/Durango Herald)
While non-first responders may experience one or more traumatic events that will stay with them for the rest of their lives, it’s something first responders deal with on a daily basis, Aber said.
“This accumulation gets to the point where it can be debilitating,” he said. “I have a theory that when you first take an oath and swear to defend the Constitution and protect and defend the citizens, that takes precedence over the officer’s well-being. So when there’s an active shooter situation, cops run toward the fire putting themselves in harm’s way to protect someone they may never have seen before. It creates a kind of mindset that your value is less than someone else’s to some extent.”
Asked to describe the symptoms of PTSD, Aber said the simplest thing would be to define depression, “which is huge.” Critical incident reports given to first responders have a list of symptoms.
“If someone has one or two, they can probably handle it, but if they have more than two, they should seek help,” she said. “And we divide them into physical, mental and emotional.”
Physical signs may include: chest pain, fatigue, chills, difficulty breathing, increased blood pressure, fast heart rate, shock symptoms, thirst, vomiting, fainting, dizziness, muscle tremors, teeth grinding, difficulty in vision and profuse perspiration.
Mental signs are: confusion, nightmares, uncertainty, hypervigilance, doubt, blaming others, impaired thinking, poor abstract thinking, poor concentration, poor decisions, and flashbacks.
Emotional responses can be: nightmares, night terrors, fear, guilt, grief, panic, denial and anxiety.
“An officer starts this career with the concept of, ‘I’m going to save the world, I’m going to make it a better place,'” Aber said. “And when you’re responding to the same types of calls over and over and seeing the same tragedies over and over again, it affects in your sense of self-worth. You ask yourself, ‘What am I doing? I’m not making a difference.’
“So you have to redefine what you want to achieve, what you can achieve,” he said. “It really goes from ‘Hey, I’m going to save the world’ to ‘If I can make a difference in someone’s life – it’s worth it.’
Making a difference
Captain Ed Aber of the La Plata County Sheriff’s Office shared his personal experiences and knowledge of PTSD in hopes that others will better understand and address the symptoms that can arise from an accumulation of traumatic events. (Jerry McBride/Durango Herald)
An incident occurred while Aber was overseas with the Criminal Investigation Division that remains with him to this day. There have been many child sexual assaults committed by service members against children and their children, he said.
“I worked on one particular case with a 13-year-old girl who was impregnated by her stepfather, who was in the military, four different times,” Aber said. “And on those four occasions he took her to Amsterdam for an abortion.”
The mother was in complete denial and the daughter kept quiet until one day she told a middle school friend, who in turn told her parents who contacted law enforcement. The stepfather went to Leavenworth Military Prison and the mother and daughter returned to the United States.
“And about six months later I got a card from the girl and it said ‘thank you for helping me face and deal with something that I knew I would have to deal with at some point in my life. I really appreciate you .’ I still have that card from 30 years ago. Because this is where you can make a difference, a person’s life.”
Despite having night terrors and nightmares, some so violent that his wife had to wake him because he was elbowing her in the head while dreaming he was being attacked, Aber didn’t realize he was suffering from PTSD until an incident around 12 years ago.
He doesn’t remember the specifics of what pushed him over the edge, he just remembers being at the scene of someone’s death that the accumulation of everything finally caught up with him.
“I had no knowledge of these things and it felt like I was going crazy and I was going to have to quit doing what I loved to do,” he said.
Later, he was on the couch when his wife left for work. She said something to him, but he’s not sure if he mumbled something or didn’t answer at all. She went back into the house.
“‘Do you want a divorce?’ she said. And I’m like, ‘Where did that come from?’ And she stormed out of the house. When she got home, we talked about it and she said, ‘You haven’t even talked to me in two weeks,'” Aber said.
But she was “shut up and get back to work,” he said. And that’s when Aber responded to a car crash and spoke to two firefighters he knew who were standing in the road above where a car had rolled into a ravine, killing the driver. Other responders were near the vehicle and Aber asked them both if they had gotten off? They said no.
“And I was trying to get up the courage to ask them, and finally I said, ‘Can I ask why?’ And they said, ‘You know, we see so much that if we don’t have to put ourselves in that situation, we don’t, so when we have to, we still do it.’
“And that little conversation on the side of the road helped me realize, ‘Hey, you’re not missing out. This is true.’ And it sent me on this quest to better see and understand PTSD. And for the first time I was able to go home and sleep. It was just a relief because I honestly felt like I was going crazy.”
A file system
In an emotional part of critical incident debriefing, first responders learn how to put incidents into a metaphorical filing cabinet in their mind and close the door, Aber said. It’s not erasing or burying the incident, but it helps normalize the experience. And they can always open the file drawer whenever they want.
“In summary we talk about the experience, we talk about the emotional impacts and what they’re experiencing,” Aber said. “Hearing someone else say I haven’t slept helps to normalize that, that it’s a normal reaction to an abnormal situation. And hearing that helps you say OK, I’m not losing my mind. I am in this common thing, this common event. So it helps you to be mentally prepared to go into the next situation and deal with it and not ignore it and avoid it and internalize it.”
Allison Brown Cole is the victim and health resource coordinator with the La Plata County Sheriff’s Office.
She said Aber’s willingness to share real-life experience is vital for anyone struggling with any type of PTSD. She said when that filing cabinet gets too full, too many files, it’s important to have an intervention or vent to friends, co-workers or even a pastor.
“One size does not fit all,” Cole said. “So having a robust resource complement is extremely important.”
Some other therapeutic techniques include hobbies, doing things with friends, and exercising. All these help to shift a person’s focus. The biochemical release of endorphins from exercise is huge, Cole said.
When Capt. Ed Aber began his law enforcement career four decades ago, seeking help for mental health issues was considered a sign of weakness. The culture has changed a lot since then. First responders are now required to attend a debriefing after traumatic events on the job in order to better understand the normal emotions that can arise from being placed in abnormal situations. (Jerry McBride/Durango Herald)
Jerry McBride
“When a person is engaged in an intense activity, whether physical or focused on a goal, at that moment the brain is not focused on what it was focused on, so physical activity is important because it helps shift our focus. . Cole said.
Another great tool in a situation where one is feeling depleted, angry, frustrated or sad and needs to be recharged is biofeedback, which in layman’s terms is regulating the breath, smoothing the breath which in turn helps to softening of the heart rhythm.
“The elasticity of this process involves our physiology, our mental outlook,” Cole said. “We can change what we’re currently focused on.
“I had an officer say that when he finally did it he had an incredibly exciting feeling. So this coherence of resilience includes the person’s physiology, emotional well-being. And for some people, incorporating the totality of the spiritual experience with it really facilitates an overall sense of better well-being.”
gjaros@durangoherald.com
