In this week’s episode of “Trib Talk,” reporter Benjamin Wood, Tribune deputy managing editor Matt Canham and Brent Jex, president of Utah’s Fraternal Order of Police, discuss the need for, and stigma surrounding, mental health services within the law enforcement community.
A lightly edited transcript of their conversation is included below.
Benjamin Wood: This week, The Salt Lake Tribune launched a six-part series titled “Officer In Distress.” The story, by Tribune senior managing editor Matt Canham, focuses on the experience of Brent Jex, a detective with the West Jordan Police Department.
For more than a decade, Jex blamed himself for the death of a fellow officer. That feeling of guilt, and the weight of multiple traumatic events during his career in law enforcement, led Jex to seek help for himself, and to recognize the need for a broader conversation of mental and emotional health among police officers.
From The Salt Lake Tribune, this is Trib Talk.
I’m Benjamin Wood, joined today by Matt Canham, the Tribune’s senior managing editor, and Brent Jex, a detective with the West Jordan Police Department.
Brent, tell us a little about Nov. 18, 2002, and what happened with Officer Ron Wood.
Det. Brent Jex: Well, Ron was shot and killed by a suspect that we were looking for, for a series of aggravated robberies.
Wood: And what were some of the circumstances that led up to that shooting?
Jex: There were a lot. We had been searching for these suspects for quite a long time and we were actually close to them, actually had our hands on one of them the weekend before that Ron was shot.
Wood: And when you say “we,” you mean you personally.
Jex: Me personally.
Wood: Now I understand that you had a personal connection to this case that you carried with you for several years. Talk to us a little bit about why you felt some personal responsibility.
Jex: When you get into a loss of somebody that you care about, whether it be a family member, a co-worker, and especially in law enforcement, there’s an element that’s called “survivor’s guilt.” It can impact a variety of things, it can be officers on the scene that struggle because maybe they feel like they should have been the one to lose their life. In my case, it was [that] we had our hands on the suspect, the 17-year-old that killed Ron was in my handcuffs three days before. So, you don’t just forget that.
Matt Canham: I first heard about this case a little bit after, probably a year and a half afterward. That’s when I met Det. Jex, I was a police reporter at the time. I had an editor who wanted to do a big story, he loved this idea of tracking a gun that was stolen and the crimes it was involved in.
I said, “I think I know the right gun.” And it was this one. This teenager had a stolen gun that originally came from a burglary in Uintah County. And it was one of 15 guns taken there. I reached out to the detective who said he would help me in a story about his investigation with the ATF — ATF Agent Michael Minichino — and tracking that gun.
So the first time I heard about this, and wrote about this, was in 2004. But this is a story, just like it stuck with Det. Jex, it stuck with me too. In a different way obviously and far less personal. But the impact it could have, one action can have on a community and how it could ripple from Uintah County all the way to the Salt Lake Valley into all these crimes, to a police department and the effects it had on officers.
That’s when I reached back out to Brent in 2014, I wanted to do something bigger about that. Originally the plan was to write about how stolen guns filter through the community and how law enforcement tracks them and the impact those guns can have on people when they’re used. I looked at it as a story about stolen guns, and when we started talking it turned into something far different.
Wood: I was about to ask, that timing seems a little serendipitous. In the story you wrote about that same timeline, you were struggling with that survivor’s guilt that you had mentioned. Tell us a little bit about the years in between when you first spoke with Matt and when this story kind of broadened.
Jex: One of the things that we’re really good at doing in law enforcement is we’re really good at taking emotions and taking things and just pushing them way, way down deep. It’s kind of this culture of you’ve got to be strong, you’ve got to be resilient, you’ve got to be this, stuff can’t affect you. We get really good at just pushing it down and deep. It’s like pushing potatoes into a potato sack and we don’t realize that there’s only so much room before the potatoes come spilling out the top.
That’s kind of how it went, you put things aside. It was years before I could even go see Ron’s grave. I was obviously there for the funeral and it was probably five or six years before I could even go see the headstone. And when I did I was like “Oh, that was a mistake. I shouldn’t have done that.” So you go back to pushing it down.
The problem with law enforcement is that we see so much on a recurring basis. Things that, if people are very unlucky they may see once or twice in in their lifetime, and we’re seeing it probably on average seven or eight times a year. And it all just keeps building and building and stuff that you don’t think affects you, ends up affecting you. And you have no control over it.
Wood: What was it that made you first consider seeking some professional help, some therapy?
Jex: I didn’t realize it at the time, but my personality was changing. I couldn’t see it. I knew that I was kind of grumpy. And it wasn’t until a friend who had gone through it pulled me aside. We were teaching out at the police academy and he kind of pulled me aside. He was like, “Hey, here’s kind of what I went through. Everything.” I’m like, “Oh man, that sucks. Let me know if you need anything.” He’s like, “Let me know if you need anything.” And I’m like, “OK, but you let me know.”
It was kind of this verbal standoff. And I got thinking about it. Why would he say that to me? And, quite frankly, it was because he was now on the other side of it looking back and could see everything that he had headed down, and could see that I was right in that path.
That’s probably the first thought that I had. But it wasn’t about me. I thought it was just, I’ve got a close friend that is telling me about this circumstance that he went through. Oh man, that sucks for him but I’m glad he’s OK.
Wood: In addition to being a West Jordan detective, you’re also president of Utah’s Fraternal Order of Police. Talk to me a little bit about how that puts you in a position of, I guess one, being aware of things happening to law enforcement all across the state, and two, and also your position of leadership to potentially advocate for some change.
Jex: It’s really kind of an interesting position. Yes, there is that ability to interact with officers from across the state, to be involved with the Legislature and things of that nature. But at the same time, it’s kind of an awkward thing especially as we were going through this and going through this story. I knew that once I signed on to this, that it was going to not only put me under a microscope, but it was also going to put my agency under a microscope and also the FOP under a microscope. Being willing to sit down and fork over everything, it was kind of a daunting thought.
But being in that position, and one of the things that we had talked about, was that after I had gone through therapy it was still a while before I could actually talk to somebody about having gone through therapy. It wasn’t until I had talked to somebody that I very much respected, and a lot of great leadership qualities — a lot of people looked up to him —it wasn’t until he said that he had been through [it] that I was like “Oh man, maybe this is OK. Maybe it is OK to talk about it.” And the more that I talked about it, the more I realized that it was not only helping me, but it was also helping others that were in that same situation. We looked at it and the avenue of the FOP was the prime vehicle for that.
On a national FOP standpoint we’ve got an Officer Wellness Committee. And each state FOP is coming up with their own officer wellness and their mental health programs. We’re trying to get it up to that next level where quite frankly the profession has done a poor job of watching out for that.
Wood: Matt, you spoke with a therapist who works with police officers. We hear a lot about the stigma surrounding mental health services, but it also sounds like there’s some unique aspects to law enforcement in terms of that type of stigma.
Canham: I obviously have an outsider’s perspective, and I never served in the military, but all of us know that if a soldier experiences trauma, he or she might experience PTSD. That’s kind of like, everyone in society has heard about that. But when I started asking Det. Jex about this case, and he said that it affected him personally, deeply, and he started opening up, I had a couple of thoughts. One was, at some point he’s going to tell me I’m not allowed to use any of this. Like, there’s no way he’s going to let me print this. It didn’t happen, he was open about his goals there and I thought that was an incredibly brave thing to do. Most people wouldn’t talk about these really sensitive, personal moments to a reporter.
But there’s also this other thought I had that was, why haven’t we talked about this as a society before? Kind of like what the detective says, they see regularly death, and suicides and traumatic events involving vulnerable people like children. And if any of us saw any of that, it would be just horrible, right? How would you as a human being deal with something like that? And yet, if you’re a paramedic, a firefighter, if you’re a trooper, if you’re a police officer, you’re going to run into these things multiple times a year. As he said, seven to eight times a year. How would it not start weighing on you?
When he started talking about it, it just seemed so obvious that this is something that his profession should make a higher priority than they apparently make. When we were done with that interview I went back and started searching online thinking, clearly there’s going to be a bunch of stuff, and there’s really not.
Wood: Brent, how did your attitudes about therapy change before and after you went through this personal experience?
Jex: Before I thought it was a sign of weakness to have to go. Afterwards, I realized that it’s a sign of weakness not to.
Wood: You talk about the common occurrences of these traumatic events in a police officer’s career: seven to eight times a year, like Matt said, responding to calls of murder, suicide, accidents, terrible things. How universal do you think this personal trauma is for members of law enforcement? Is this something that your average cop is likely dealing with?
Jex: Yeah, I do. I also think that it’s important that we realize that it’s not just for law enforcement. It’s first responders, it’s judges, prosecutors, defense attorneys, jurors on a really gruesome case. Those things that they hear and they experience, even though it’s secondhand, can still cause all of those things. We’re the first ones there and we’re the first ones to experience it. We’re the ones to experience the raw scene of it.
That’s kind of the impact and depending on your shift and depending on your assignment you can see it over and over and over and over again. And I would say, just based off my experience and the assignments that I’ve had, I would be surprised if 75 percent or greater didn’t suffer from some sort of job-related trauma. The hard part is that we can never get an accurate statistics because, quite frankly, we’re just not going to cough up the info.
Canham: But there are statistics about how there are police officers who have heart problems later in life. They have some health issues that could be partially how they respond to this. That there are at least anecdotal evidence about domestic violence or prescription drugs or alcohol abuse, which could all be partially impacted by the burying these traumatic events and having it lash in other ways.
There’s also suicide and in this story we write about one officer who died by suicide, his name is Mike Valdez in West Valley City. And Mike served two tours in Afghanistan, and he saw some really bad stuff. An RPG attack directly hit one of his fellow soldiers, and one of Mike’s responsibilities was to pick up the pieces and put them in a body bag. And it affected him.
And when he came back [to] West Valley, he was a resource officer who loved working with kids, got a change in assignment, and in one month went to the scene of three murder-suicides. And it just sent him into a tailspin. He ended up taking his own life on a roadway in Wyoming. Mike Valdez was someone that Det. Jex knew, and that also played a role in part of the conversation that we had and how the FOP is trying to help officers get access to therapy outside of the normal department channels.
Wood: Tell us a little about that. You’ve been working to implement a mental health program within your position as president of the Fraternal Order of Police. How does that program work, and what do you hope it can achieve?
Jex: The program is fairly basic. We run it through our foundation and Clint Bobrowski who works for Layton PD, he was on our state FOP board, it was actually kind of his brainchild. We basically get donations through the foundation and we have a pre-screened group of therapists across the state. We have particular qualifications that they have to meet. They have to be experienced in EMDR [Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing], they have to have worked with law enforcement or military prior to this.
One of the problems that we were seeing with a lot of the work-related therapy groups was that some of them had never experienced this. We actually had, on a couple of occasions throughout the state, therapists that would stop the officer in the middle of the first conversation and say “Hey, you gotta stop talking to me about this. You’re freaking me out.” And so, that did a couple of things to where now the officer is going “I must really, really, really be broken.” And it’s almost impossible to get them back in to another therapist. So we didn’t want to do any of that.
For me, getting through the door the first two times was the most critical part. So we started out with the assumption that if we can get cops through the door for at least two visits, then they’ll feel that relief. If they were anything like I was, it was about halfway through my second session where I knew this was what I needed. And that if we can get that, then they can kind of continue on the road to recovery.
Canham: As part of this story I asked Det. Jex if I could talk to his therapist. And once again, I expected him to tell me no. And he didn’t. And I went and visited with Brian Murdock and I sat in the same chair that Det. Jex sat in and I asked Brian to explain to me what EMDR is and how it works. And EMDR, I’m going to screw this up but it’s Eye Movement Desensit[iz]ation — I can’t say it right — and Reprocessing, and basically what happens is you go through a series of questions about a traumatic event that happened to you. How did it make you feel? Not emotionally but also physically. Did you have a pit in your stomach, or goosebumps? What did you think of yourself about that event?
You’re supposed to capture this singular moment in your brain and then the therapist starts these paddles that buzz in your hands. They vibrate back and forth alternating. Another way to do it is to have a finger where you’re supposed to track it with your eyes back and forth. That’s where the eye movement comes in. And the idea is, you stimulate that kind of response and it allows your brain to take a very traumatic moment, break it down, and put it into a healthier part of the brain, kind of like what we do when we have REM sleep at night, it simulates that.
Now, when the detective told me about it and when I researched it, I thought it sounded ridiculous. And I think that Brent also, similarly, had the same view when you hear about the idea. But when I sat in Brian’s office and we went through one of these sessions, I thought “If I ever need help, this is the kind of help I would like to have.” Because it feels tangible, it feels like something that you can say, “OK, these are the steps, this is how I’m going to gauge its success or failure.” And, it’s something that I think would allow you to break down each individual piece of a traumatic event and talk about it in full.
We actually had Brian Murdock simulate one of these sessions in a video that’s going to be a part of the series. So if you go to part six of our series, you can actually see Brian walk you through how this actually happens in his office.
Jex: And one of the good things about it that I didn’t realize is this wasn’t something like you see on TV. There was no lying on a couch and “Tell me about when you were 5,” and things like that. It was clearing out a lot of the cobwebs so that your brain can function and your brain knows how to heal itself. You just have to let it. That’s one of the things with EMDR is that you’re kind of focused on the paddles, and I would find myself sitting there with the pattern going “OK.” And then my mind would just kind of wander and we would stop and he’s like “OK, tell me what you’re thinking about.” And I’m like, “Man, the craziest thought.” He’s like, “It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter. Just tell me where it’s going.”
It was amazing how it would come full circle. And it was amazing how my stress level talking about different incidents, whether it was Ron [Wood], whether it was [Sgt. Derek Johnson], whether it was doing CPR on a baby, anything like that. Now, all the sudden, it wasn’t. … My anxiety level in thinking about and discussing those incidents was greatly reduced. And it would go until it was hitting at a 0 or a 1 on a scale. So it’s remarkable stuff.
Wood: We’re now 15 years removed from the death of Officer Wood; how has your perspective of that day changed?
Jex: The day will never change. For a lot of us, it will always be the day that it is. But I think through this, from this side of it, I have learned how to process things differently. Encouraging other officers, and even myself, to talk about things that bother us. That’s the biggest thing. You’re always going to learn something from the stuff that we get involved in, whether it’s split-second decisions, whether it’s whatever that is. There are consequences to every action we take. Sometimes the consequences are good. Sometimes the consequences are bad. But it’s how we process and learn from it and implement it that I think makes the biggest difference.
Wood: Do you still blame yourself for what happened?
Jex: Boy, that’s a really good question. There’s always going to be that level that I wish I could go back and take that Friday before over again. But that’s the benefit of hindsight. It’s always easiest to solve a maze starting at the ending, because you can always trace your way back. There, in the moment, we have no idea what life hands to us. We have no idea what lies around the corner. I think there’s always that element of “If I would have …” or “If only …” and there’s nothing that I can do to change it, other than to make sure that in the future, if presented in a similar circumstance, I now have the ability to know what different consequences look like.
And as far as the blame? Not like I used to. I used to look at it as a very personal blame. When we have the opportunity to go back and look at it and review it, the other detectives that were there on scene, if you take what happened to Ron out of the equation, we didn’t have enough to continue the detention [of the suspect]. There just wasn’t enough there. And that’s one of the things that we have to do. We have to look at it for what the incident is, versus lumping everything together.
It’s a hard thing to do in society nowadays, because we want to look at everything. You take a terror incident that a police officer may have stopped him for speeding three months prior and they’re like, “Why didn’t they do this and this and this?” That’s the danger of hindsight. So, we just have to plug forward and do the best that we can with the information that we have at the time.
Canham: When I thought about this over the months and years that Brent and I have been talking about this, I think it really comes down to levels of regret. I don’t think regret ever goes away, because with that hindsight, you know that there’s an action that could have changed. But there is a healthy level of regret and there’s an unhealthy level, where it becomes so omnipresent in your thoughts that your piece of it was the problem. I think that’s, watching and talking to Brent as this has changed over the years, that’s what has changed.
It’s not that people at that scene, and he’s not he only one who feels regret. There was an officer who got that call, who showed up a minute after Ron Wood did. If she had shown up just a minute before, what would have happened? Would she have been able to change the circumstances or not? Does she feel regret? Yes. Hopefully not an unhealthy level of regret.
An interesting thing happened when we were writing this. Horribly, Officer Doug Barney was ambushed and shot and killed, not totally unlike what happened with Ron Wood. I asked Jex that day if he knew Officer Barney and he said he did. And he went out to talk to the officer’s family before he passed away and talked to the officers who were involved and my thought and Brent’s wife Katie’s thought was “How does this affect Brent and is this going to change the way he has responded to his therapy?” And on that day, Det. Jex’s thoughts were about the other officers who were at the scene of that shooting, who might be feeling that unhealthy level of regret in the weeks and months to come.
Jex: Yeah, that was definitely one of those days, and it was really kind of the first day since that it really put into practice everything that had happened. I knew Doug very well. He was a great guy. The world is definitely a lesser place without him in it. And I even found through that, that I kind of had some old habits start to creep up again. I needed to go in for a checkup, just like with anything else. It does give you a different perspective. It gives you a different outlook and we’ve added to our state FOP Shante Johnson, who is the widow of Derek Johnson. We took her up to the hospital with us and just watching her and her interaction.
It’s always about continuing to learn about how to care for each other and how to be there for each other. Just all the different things that go through the mind of a spouse and of a family. A lot of times, we tend to look at things only through our lens. It’s been a really good opportunity to have her involved in all of this, to where we learn on a continual basis what it’s like and how to do it better.
Wood: Matt, there’s an event the Tribune is hosting later this month. Tell us more about that.
Canham: Yes, so we want to continue this conversation and we’re going to do it at the Salt Lake City library on May 24 at 7 p.m. We have four panelists to talk about first responders and mental health. Those four panelists include Shante Johnson, the widow of Sgt. Derek Johnson. She now works with the FOP as the detective said and has a very interesting perspective. We also have Rep. Lee Perry, who works with the Utah Highway Patrol and pushed through legislation that creates better confidentiality when officers talk to fellow officers who are members of the peer support team. Then from Salt Lake City Police, we have Sgt. Lisa Pascadlo, who is a member of the peer support team, leads it in that police department. And then finally we have Captain Mike Stevens from Salt Lake City Fire, who has also personally gone through EMDR therapy and is an advocate for mental health within the firefighter community.
We’re going to get the four of them together to talk about first responders and mental health. The reason Det. Jex won’t be there is some job-related responsibilities that make it so we’re going to push the conversation, broaden it out with four other people.
Wood: You said that’s May 24 at the Salt Lake City library.
Canham: Yes.
Wood: Free event? Tickets?
Canham: Free event. Just come down to the library, talk about first responders, get a sense of what these people see in a day-in and day-out basis, which is largely what I tried to do with this story. To allow readers to get inside Det. Jex’s head, see the world through his eyes, when he encounters these traumatic events, and get a sense of what first responders experience.
Wood: So the conversation continues at that event as well as the entire series, “Officer in Distress,” available at sltrib.com. We are out of time but Det. Brent Jex, Matt Canham, thank you so much for coming on today.
Jex: Thank you.
Canham: Thank you.
Wood: Trib Talk is produced by Sara Weber, with additional editing by Dan Harrie. Special thanks to Smangarang for our theme music. We welcome your comments and feedback on sltrib.com, or you can send emails to tribtalk@sltrib.com. You can also tweet to me @BjaminWood or to the show @TribTalk on Twitter.
We’ll be back next week; thanks for listening.