Twenty years after Columbine, states are beginning to recognize psychological impact of mass shootings on police officers.
In this April 9, 2019, photo, Grant Whitus poses for a portrait at his home in Lake Havasu City, Ariz. Whitus' marriage fell apart a year after he led his SWAT team into Columbine High School's library, where he was the first to find the dead children's bodies.
Amid the emotional toll of what it experienced, the Jefferson County Regional SWAT team began to fall apart. By 2002, only three members of the 10-person team remained. The others were reassigned or left the department. But attitudes are starting to change. A group of global law enforcement administrators recently began work on a set of uniform guidelines for psychological care for SWAT teams and other officers who respond to the worst of the worst carnage.
He rose to become head of the team, but then tragedy struck again in 2006 when it responded to a shooting at Platte Canyon High School in the town of Bailey, southwest of Denver. A man entered the school, took several female students hostage and sexually assaulted them, then fatally shot one student and himself as SWAT officers moved in.
Current Jefferson County Regional SWAT leadership declined to comment for this article. But Sgt. Sean Joselyn, who was recruited by Whitus and was a member of the team at Platte Canyon, said attitudes had been changing because of Columbine. The team had “check-in” meetings in the months after, but he doesn’t recall members talking about how they felt and doesn’t know why so many left.
Beyond post-traumatic stress, second-guessing about a department’s response and other factors can cause turmoil within law enforcement agencies. That Newtown, Connecticut, officer, Tom Bean, was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, and the department agreed to pay him $380,000 after the police union and Brown, the labor attorney, took the case to arbitration.
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