Human remains and psychological impact

on police officers:
Excerpts from psychiatric observations
The Australasian Journal of Disaster
and Trauma Studies
ISSN: 1174-4707
Volume : 2001-2

Human remains and psychological impact on police

officers:
Excerpts from psychiatric observations
Claudia L. Greene, M.D., Law Enforcement Psychiatry, Personal Practice.
Keywords: body handling, police, trauma

Claudia L. Greene, M.D.

Law Enforcement Psychiatry
Personal Practice

Abstract
This paper describes the transient psychological responses that may develop in police
officers in response to the handling of human remains and death investigation. It is based
on my 28-year study of human tragedy, as pathologist and police psychiatrist. It is a
summary of personal observations made during 3900+ tragedy-related medicolegal
autopsies, over 3200 associated death scene investigations, and 15 years of long-term
informal follow-up of many hundreds of police officers with whom I worked those death
scenes. This paper describes, in a totally anonymous way, thoughts, feelings, fantasies, and
fears shared with me by these police officers.

Human remains and psychological impact on police

officers:
Excerpts from psychiatric observations
Show me the manner in which a nation or community cares for its dead and I will
measure with mathematical exactness the tender sympathies of its people, their respect for
the laws of the land and their loyalty to high ideals. - Gladstone.

Awakening of Core Emotions, Fantasies, and Fears.

Dissociative, Sensory, Arousal, and Mood Symptoms
Most police officers consider human remains handling and death scene investigation
routine. These tasks are laden with emotional significance and are often accompanied by
sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and touch sensations of the most unpleasant kind. Both young
and older officers are vulnerable to the emotional and sensory aspects of body handling and
death scene investigation. Young police officers often have little life experience. Older
officers may have been traumatized by military combat. Officers of any age may struggle
with issues of depression, suicidal ideation, anger, aggression, separation issues,

relationship problems, or childhood physical or sexual abuse. Officers with much life and
street experience are much more resistant to the psychosensory effects of body handling
and death investigation, but even they are not immune to them. Most police officers
eventually develop tolerance for routine death on the street, and most death events would
barely rate on their Richter scale of emotion. During years on the street, they develop
mature coping strategies and responses, that allow them to shrug off all but the most vivid
of death scene and dead body experiences. Some death events, however, by virtue of their
magnitude, horror, bizarreness, or pathos, leave indelible impressions upon the psyche of
even the most experienced and mature police officer. He may show no outward emotional
response, develop transient responses to those events, or experience long-term
psychological sequelae, with significant impairment and disability.
This paper concerns the transient psychological responses that may develop in police
officers in response to the handling of human remains and death investigation. It is based
on my 28-year study of human tragedy, as pathologist and then police psychiatrist. It is a
summary of personal observations made during 3900+ tragedy-related medicolegal
autopsies, over 3200 associated death scene investigations, and 15 years of long-term
informal follow-up of many hundreds of police officers with whom I worked those death
scenes. This paper describes, in a totally anonymous way, thoughts, feelings, fantasies, and
fears shared with me by these police officers. Private moments of extreme grief, horror, and
rage- at what man can do to fellow man, man can do to himself, and natural and man-made
disaster and disease can do to the innocent and vulnerable- make up the body of this paper.
All of these feelings were shared during the heat of the investigation, or in private
conversations some time (even years) later.
Over the last twenty-eight years, I have worked with and come to know well over a
thousand police officers in the field. This is their story, in their own words. Most
contributed only one or two pieces to the puzzle of transient death scene and body response.
Those who contributed more usually entered psychiatric treatment and recovered, or retired
on medical disability. Their stories are recorded in a companion paper. This study is a
subjective and practical formulation, not a rigorous academic one. It is a synthesis of every
sort of symptom that these men and women have shared with me over the years. Most
officers had only one or two of these symptoms for very short times. None had all of these
transient symptoms at one time. I want to make it clear that these officers by and large
were, and continue to be, very high functioning, both on the job and at home.
Mental health professionals (MHPs) deal with life, not death. They exist in a world of
theory and practical application thereof in a pristine office setting. They usually have
absolutely no experience with the unpleasant physical realities of death, much less
experience responding to those realities. Yet these same MHPs may be called upon to speak
with an officer acutely experiencing them. This paper demonstrates, therefore, the amazing
array of possible transient psychological responses to bad scenes and bad bodies. The
purpose of recording these responses here is to help MHPs understand that these symptoms
usually are not pathological, and usually do not progress to diagnosable psychiatric
disorder. In my view, they are premonitory of a condition that I call street fatigue, similar
to military combat fatigue. (My conceptualization of that condition is discussed in
another paper.) With that understanding, we begin their story.

Police Officers Don't Cry

All living beings and systems have fail-safe mechanisms that can malfunction under
stressful circumstances and eventually collapse when conditions are intense enough.
Anyone (police officer, emergency responder, or an actual or vicarious witness of a death
scene) can reach and exceed saturation point when exposed to the highly inflammatory
emotional and sensory stimuli associated with dead bodies and death scenes. No one is
immune. Each police officer, like any human being, can be pushed beyond the limit of his
psychological experience and endurance, to a point at which he becomes overwhelmed.
Even officers of the highest caliber training, and greatest spiritual, physical, cognitive, and
emotional strength and experience can become over saturated at some point, in the right
milieu, and with the right intensity of stimulation. Which specific individual death scene,
body, or investigation leads to over-saturation in a given officer is idiosyncratic. That
which is devastating to one officer may have little effect on another. Most police officers
are prepared by their daily work on the street for a single body or a few bodies at routine

death calls. However, a particularly poignant or awful tableau of sights, sounds, smells,
tastes, and touch experiences can assault an officer's emotional Achilles heel.
Most police officers are bound by the emotional cultures of their departments. Many
departments have historically subscribed to the idea that police officers should always be
free of emotion. Any acknowledgment of emotion was considered weak, unmanly, or
unprofessional. This philosophy is in part related to the myth that soldiers or grown
men don't cry. The advent of modern warfare and the rise of military psychiatry have
debunked this myth. Professional soldiers with the most advanced training and experience
do express emotion about their combat and war experiences, albeit usually in very private
circumstances. Their sharing is generally limited to colleagues who have been there. The
myth that soldiers don't cry was shattered with Barbara Walters' American television
interview of General Norman Schwarzkopf, by in his command tent during Operation
Desert Storm. The general admitted publicly that he cried with homesickness, and showed
the teddy bear from his family that he kept on his cot for comfort. This interview gave
many soldiers the tacit permission and courage to acknowledge their feelings about their
military duty, and even share them with their families.
In the my experience, highly professional police officers of great experience also feel
strong emotion about their varied street experiences, especially body handling and death.
These officers are willing to share their feelings under safe circumstance. Police officers do
cry, and many told me that they cried for the first time while watching General
Schwarzkopf's interview on television. However, like war-fighters, police officers shed
tears only with those who can be trusted truly to understand- those who have actually
shared similar street experiences. Bad scenes and bad bodies are responsible for many
of these strong police officer responses.

Types of Police Officer Responses

I have found that the transient responses to bad bodies and bad scenes fall into several
groups: 1) no outward emotional response, 2) awakening of core emotion, fantasies, and
fears, 3) dissociative symptoms, 4) sensory symptoms, 5) arousal symptoms, 6) mood
symptoms, 7) behavioral symptoms, 8) personal boundary symptoms, 9) secondary
symptoms, associated with substance use, 10) re-awakening or exacerbation of major
psychiatric disorders, and 11) symptoms related to the psychological struggles of fellow
police officers (contagious symptoms). Civilians and members of the military may have
similar groups of symptoms under situations of extreme stress. However, I have found that
police officers have characteristic expression of specific symptoms within each group.
The American Psychiatric Association did not officially recognize these transient
symptoms in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual until 1994. In that year, trauma
responses the first eight groups listed above were consolidated into a constellation of
symptoms called acute stress disorder. To qualify for this diagnosis, the symptoms had to
be present for a minimum of two days and a maximum of four weeks, with onset within
four weeks of the event. No provision was made for the diagnosis of incomplete
syndromes. Cultural allowances were only briefly addressed and concerned immigrants
with histories of political and war-related torture (just as in the criteria for post-traumatic
stress disorder [PTSD]). No mention was made of work-related allowances for police
officers, members of the fire and ambulance services, paramedics, or medical death
investigators. The 1994 criteria for acute stress disorder still stand today.
In my experience, symptom clusters not meeting full criteria for acute stress disorder, and
symptom clusters defined as acute stress disorder in civilians, are quite common in police
officers handling human remains and personal effects. Acute stress disorder is so
common in psychologically healthy police officers that I believe that separate, culturally
bound criteria should be established for law enforcement. If civilian criteria are applied to
this population, a stigmatizing label of a psychiatric disorder will be attached to otherwise
healthy and highly functioning professionals. This labeling induces further iatrogenic
psychological injury, with its associated psychiatric morbidity and mortality.
I conceptualize these transient job-related symptoms as street fatigue (discussed in a
companion paper), analogous to combat fatigue. I have found that street fatigued police
officers respond to a different type of intervention from that used for PTSD. I have also
found that street fatigue can progress to full-blown psychiatric morbidity, if the officer is

treated as a psychiatric patient. He recovers much more quickly if he is treated like the high
functioning human being that he is. Street fatigue is a normal and culturally related
response to repeated exposure to extraordinary death scenes and human remains. If the
situation is really extraordinary, or laden with extreme psychological significance to the
officer, street fatigue can occur upon a single exposure. In my experience, street fatigue
is also common among members of the fire service, paramedics, emergency medical
technicians, and medical death investigators, especially after mass fatality disaster events. I
have worked with many officers who experienced street fatigue associated the Delta
Airlines crashes in Dallas, Texas (in the 1980s) and the Branch Davidian episode at Waco,
Texas, and the bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma (in
the 1990s).
No Outward Emotional Response.
Some police officers never outwardly manifest an apparent immediate, short-, or long-term
emotional response to human remains, personal effects, the death scene, the forensic
morgue, medicolegal autopsy, or (at mass fatality disasters) the personal effects warehouse.
This non-response is actually a response. These police officers usually are older, have
great life experience, and have come to a personal conclusion and philosophy about the
roles of good and evil in life and death. They have examined the purpose of man, and his
role in the universe. They may have spent much time in spiritual contemplation and
deciding whether or not there is a power higher than themselves. Such officers are often
profound sidewalk philosophers, and/or active in spiritual, religious, or political affairs.
They often pursue intellectual avenues (advanced degrees, often in the social sciences, or
psychology) or creative outlets (poetry, music, art). Most have had earlier experience with
death, through farming, ranching, hunting, fishing, or military combat. Some officers have
come to similar understanding by more rigorous means, having survived early childhood
physical or sexual assault or abuse, and in rare cases, even homicide attempts by a parent or
other family member. Repeated exposure to aggression and death (potential and actual),
leads to fine honing of successful, mature psychological coping mechanisms. The officer
can thus defend himself against psychosensory and physical overload at bad scenes with
bad bodies.
In unusual circumstances, a police officer does not care about or acknowledge
psychosensory experiences during body handling and scene investigation because of his
personality structure, psychopathology, or psychiatric illness. The officer may lack
empathy, as in antisocial or narcissistic personality disorders. Or, he may actually enjoy
death, destruction, and carnage, as in sado-masochism and sociopathy. His enjoyment is
similar to that of some arsonists and some who commit serial (especially sexual) homicide.
Transient and Long-term Psychosensory Responses.
Many police officers have a temporary response to bad scenes and bad bodies. These
responses may be limited to the their time at the death scene, forensic morgue, or personal
effects warehouse (in a mass fatality disaster), or duty time. Conversely, these responses
may temporarily travel home with the officer in off-hours. His responses may be mild, not
bother him, not cause any interference with his work assignments, duty, or home-life, and
require only temporary respite to resolve. Or, his response to the body or the scene may be
so overwhelming that he must leave his post. He may or may not be able psychologically to
return. If he does leave (temporarily or permanently), his symptoms may subside to a
tolerable level over the next few days and weeks, and disappear rapidly thereafter.
Much less often, the officer's symptoms persist for weeks, months, and even years. He may
eventually integrate the psychosensory memories into his life experience. If this occurs, his
daily and long-term functioning will not be impaired. This officer has found some sort of
greater emotional, spiritual, and/or philosophical meaning in the incident, its associated
memories, his role in it, his own survival, the fact, circumstances, cause, manner,
mechanism(s), magnitude, and pathos or horror of the deaths of others. If he is unable to
master his experiences, and bring some meaning to them, his symptoms may persist and
interfere with his usual functioning. He is less able to function at work and home, with loss
of quality of life, and inability to find or appreciate meaning in life, or its golden
moments. He may subsequently develop mental, emotional, and physical illness, and even
die (by his own hand, others, accident, or stress-related natural disease).

Awakening of Core Emotion, Fantasies, and Fears

Police officers pride themselves on being unflappable and un-shockable. They have seen it
all. Over time, officers develop great street confidence, and rightfully feel that they can
handle almost anything. They develop a practical sense of invincibility, which is
supported by their departmental and fraternal cultures. With this great confidence comes a
comfortable sense of control and ownership of a situation. This mind-set accounts for the
saying that, when a police officer arrives on the scene, it becomes his scene, under his
total control. He can structure the scene and its participants in any way that enables him
legally to gain control over it, with the goal of limiting further destruction and protecting
the evidence. With practice and tutelage from more experienced peers, he quickly learn
how to bring stability and control to the most chaotic of routine situations. The most
common and effective technique is to set strict limits on his own (via standard operating
procedure) and others' (via directions or commands) behaviors.
The officer is usually in both physical and emotional control of the scene and its elements.
However, sometimes the circumstances of the death are such that routine structuring
techniques do not bring immediate physical control of the scene. In these situations, the
officer may feel an acute loss of both physical and emotional control. Mature coping
strategies honed on the street can no longer quash previously unconscious fantasies that
flare in the face of bad scenes, bad bodies, violence, mass destruction, or catastrophe.
Primitive fears of annihilation, castration, mutilation, unrestrained aggression and rage,
homicide, abandonment, humiliation, shame, betrayal, and inability to trust come rushing to
the fore. The officer's fantasies, fears, and sense of loss of control grow at a given event, as
the nature of the scene becomes more discordant with the expectations of reality,
circumstances of the death become more violent, bizarre, or tragic, and/or the magnitude of
fatalities increases. At ordinary death scenes, the officer may use intellectual defenses and
bothersome aspects of the event to others. Intellectual defenses frequently fail at bad
scenes with bad bodies, especially during mass fatality disasters. Mere words are found
to be inadequate- indescribable terror, unspeakable carnage, and sorrowful horror.
The officer normally expects and experiences an unusually high level of control at the
scene. When he loses command of an extraordinary scene, the accompanying fear and
horror magnify the overwhelming sense of helplessness, powerlessness, and sense of loss
of control. The police officer no longer owns the scene; it owns him.

Symptoms
Dissociative Symptoms.
By definition, dissociative responses to trauma involve uncoupling of the usually wellintegrated functions of consciousness, memory, perception, an/or identity. These symptoms
appear primarily in the various dissociative disorders, but they also occur secondarily in
acute stress disorder, PTSD, and somatization disorder. However, in my experience,
isolated, paired, and clustered dissociative symptoms are common in otherwise healthy
police officers exposed to extraordinary death scenes and human remains conditions. They
also occur in similar circumstance in police officers with pre-existing psychopathology.
Police officers do not speak voluntarily of dissociative amnesia, but its presence is made
known when groups of officers meet to discuss the event, informally or during formal
debriefing. In my experience, selective amnesia occurs the most commonly. For example, I
once met with a group of ten highly trained, high functioning surveillance officers who had
suddenly witnessed explosion of a drug house and incineration of its occupants. Each
officer had several points of observation that the others could not recall, but which were
later verified on videotape of the event. Sounds, colors, textures, location of movable
objects, relative positions of both landmarks and officers, and time sequences and intervals
were all points of disagreement.
Similar disparities in recall of event details occurred with federal law enforcement agents
who were in their offices in Fort Worth, Texas, when they were hit directly by a Force
Three tornado. Disagreement on event details also occurred with officers who assisted in
body search and recovery and general clean-up operations following the conflagration at
the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas. These observations were shared with me
after the formal critical incident stress debriefings.
Localized amnesia is less common. An example comes to mind of a police officer who
specialized in white-collar and cyber-crime in a large department. His academic
background was in finance, computer science, law, and accounting. He had little experience

in street-oriented policing, other than his requisite rookie year in a very quiet suburban
jurisdiction, and had extremely limited exposure to urban violence. He had recently been
transferred to a multi-city task force unit that assisted a nearby urban violent crime team,
and had occasion to interrogate a suspect in a drug-related torture-homicide. He had been
with the search and recovery team when the body was found. It had suffered massive
antemortem blunt force injury with a shovel. The officer was stunned, when during
interrogation, the suspect began smiling and laughing, while describing the means of torture
in great detail. The suspect then related with great glee how much he had enjoyed seeing
the young woman plead and bleed. The officer readily recalled the beginning of the
interrogation and the interchange up to that point. However, he was very concerned that he
could not recall what questions he had asked the suspect during the middle and end of the
interrogation, until several days later. He had been amazed to hear his own voice, and that
of the suspect, on the audiotape made at the time.
Depersonalization is also a common response to overwhelming death scenes and grotesque
body conditions. The police officer with depersonalization describes himself as a robot or
an actor in a play. He is just going through the motions. Some officers describe
themselves as videographers, watching themselves in the viewfinder of the camera. One
officer described feeling like a marionette, walking weightless on the moon. Another
officer, who assisted in the collection of fragmented body parts from a high speed, high
impact, two car crash site, recalled watching his gloved hands (seemingly unattached to his
body) picking up the pieces, like it was on TV. A third officer recalled gathering up body
fragments at a bomb site, but he could not recall any feeling in his hands as he did so. Yet
another officer saw himself on television, giving a report about a young child burned to
death in a house fire. He recalled interacting with the news reporter in front of the camera,
but thought at the time that his voice belonged to someone else. One officer, who handled
remains at the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, after the conflagration, noted
that his mind became the S.O.P. (Standard Operating Procedure manual). It was on
autopilot. I wasn't even attached to it (his mind), yet I knew what to do.
Derealization is also very common. The police officer may report that he is the only real
person in a film and that others are automata. The physical world seems wrong. Objects
seem much bigger or smaller than they actually are. Loud voices seem quiet and far away,
while whispers sound like shouts. Colors may appear gaudy and loudly fluorescent, when
in fact they are muted. Reds seem redder and purples seem more purple, especially in
blood stains and puddles. The officer may suddenly experience comfort smells. He may
smell perfumes used by a beloved mother, aunt, or grandmother when the officer was a
child. Or, he may smell meatloaf and mashed potatoes (or other comfort food). Another
common comfort smell is that of soap used by the officer as a child. Time sense also
becomes warped. Complex ballistics investigations that really take hours may fly by in
minutes at a particularly violent and bloody mass gang shooting. Conversations really
lasting moments may seemingly last hours. Total time spent at a difficult scene or with
distorted human remains may be grossly over-estimated or under-estimated.
For the vast majority of the police officers, these symptoms disappear after several hours at
the scene or within several days of leaving the scene. However, I have worked with many
officers who experienced recurrent prominent sensory and time distortions at a series of
bad scenes with bad bodies, even though they were symptom-free between scenes.
They were not free of such symptoms during scene investigation until they had worked five
to ten such scenes. Curiously, all of these officers reported histories of childhood physical
abuse and yet were high functioning. I also worked with several high functioning officers
without childhood abuse histories, but who served in military combat during the Viet Nam
and Desert Storm wars. They too had frequent depersonalization and derealization
symptoms at bad scenes with bad bodies, in the absence of clinically diagnosable stress
disorder symptoms. One officer had a history of combat stress (battle fatigue) and
childhood sexual abuse. He developed chronic depersonalization and derealization in the
context of borderline personality disorder, and was forced to take medical retirement after
serious self-mutilation following investigation of the suicide of a neighbor in his small
town. He eventually hanged himself.
Several high functioning officers with history of childhood sexual or physical abuse have
told me that they have learned to dissociate at will (go into a trance, just to get the job
done) at bad scenes with bad bodies. While in the trance, they report being
oblivious to the sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and touch experiences of carnage scenes.
They also told me, however, that both they and their partners thought that they were fully
in tune with the investigation, their colleagues, and standard operating procedures. One

officer describes willed dissociation as a combination psychic gas-mask and biohazard

suit. Several officers reporting this voluntary phenomenon have received commendations
for their work at catastrophic scenes.
I have also been told of volitional use of dissociation by several police officers who
handled human remains at the Branch Davidian compound, at Waco, Texas, the bombing of
the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, and the two crashes of Delta
Airliners in Dallas, Texas. All of these officers were high functioning before these
incidents. Some of them had significant histories of childhood physical abuse, but others
did not, and just stumbled onto the technique, or learned it from a partner. At much
later dates, all of the officers with histories of abuse, still high functioning, recalled using
voluntary dissociation techniques as children. Yet none of these officers connected that
phenomenon with their voluntary use of dissociation at bad scenes with bad bodies.
Well after the death incidents, several of the officers (both with and without abuse
histories) told me that they continued to use their abilities, to induce trance-like states for
relaxation, meditation, and study of the of the martial arts.
While the specific dissociative phenomena of amnesia, depersonalization, and derealization
are common at overwhelming scenes, general dissociative phenomena are even more
common. Most police officers recall their first death scenes, whether an unexpected natural
death, high-profile mass fatality disaster, or something in between. In my experience, most
police officers, immediately upon entering their first death scene, make some sort of remark
indicating their state of extreme cognitive discomfort (dissonance). Many describe their
first death scenes as a dream state, associated with tremendous slowing of both their
thoughts and actions. I was wading through gelatin, as one officer put it. All of their
senses feel muted, and there is also a sense of being in a fog or in a daze. Thought
processes no longer seem to shift from one idea to the next with alacrity. Most officers
comment upon a perceptible delay between stimulus and response, particularly with respect
to sounds. Some perceive a profound lag between a thought and its final utterance. One
officer describes the sensation as wearing a translucent blindfold for all the senses.
Another describes a large wad of fuzz intervening between his thoughts and their
expression. Many officers known for their quick study described fuzzy thinking when I
worked with them at their first death scenes. Fifteen to twenty five years later, these
officers still recall those perceived sudden changes in mental acuity. Officers who worked
the Delta crashes and the Branch Davidian affair tell me that their dazed feeling was
present for the first two to three days, and then began to wear off rapidly. They were
completely connected again by the end of the first week. All of these officers remain high
functioning today.
By my observation, the most common dissociative response at a bad scene with bad
bodies is a total lack of feeling of emotion. While the literature uses terms like
numbness, flatness, or detachment, police officers tell me that the experience is
much more profound. It's like your being and self are encased in concrete. Everything is
black, white, or shades of gray in your thinking and experience. It is being in a hyperanalytical state, with thinking so crystal clear and rigid that you think it might break.
Many officers liken this state to becoming a computer-brain. Everything is a data bit
keyed in. Nothing has any meaning. It's just facts and observations. They're all sterile and
unconnected, except that they are in my brain. Associated with this state, many officers
report increased rigidity of thinking and decision making, strict and obsessive reliance upon
the letter of the standard operating procedure, and over-attention to detail. As one officer
put it, The worse the body and the worse the scene, the more computerized I become.
Keeping it in RAM (random access memory) means I can download it and get rid of it as
soon as I leave the scene.
Sensory Symptoms.
Almost all police officers who have a strongly negative psychological response to body
handling and bad death scenes have intrusive and recurrent images, sounds, smells,
tastes, and touch memories of the event. These symptoms can occur singly or in clusters, as
well as spontaneously or in response to reminders (triggers) of the event. When clusters of
sensory memories occur, the officer re-experiences or re-lives the event. At times, he can
identify the symptoms as being just that. At other times, the symptoms are so convincing
that he cannot tell them from reality. A dissociative response combined with sensory reexperiencing results in a full-blown flashback.
At other times, the sensory events become entwined with dreams or nightmares. Officers
mistakenly, but descriptively, call this combination of symptoms night terrors. The

significant other is usually the first to know of (and report) this phenomenon, when her
flailing, yelling, but quite asleep partner kicks her out of bed. When awakened, the officer
is quite convinced that the event he dreamed about really recurred. Similar events can occur
waking hours; locally, they are known as daymares. They are as equally frightening as
their nocturnal counterparts. Poignantly, one officer, whose small son suffered from true
night terrors, found comfort when he was offered a well-loved and bedraggled teddy bear,
which had already seen similar duty.
The images and smell memories of the human remains, personal effects, and death scene
especially haunt new police officers, those inexperienced in body recovery or transport, and
those who have never witnessed a medicolegal autopsy or visited a forensic morgue. Smell
memories are usually the main response to mass fatality death scenes. These memories may
be strong or weak, transient, lingering, or overwhelming. Smell memories are also the
sensory responses that last the longest after the event. Illusions are also frequent, as are
changes and distortions in interpretation of other sensory stimuli.
Some officers report that the vividness of visual memories of a death event can reawaken
sounds, smells, tastes, and touch memories of the body and scene. One officer likened this
experience to his response to seeing a television advertisement for fried chicken. He
developed a subsequent image in his mind of dinners at his grandmother's house, associated
with smells, tastes (even watering of his mouth), sounds of family laughter, and memories
of the feel of juices from the chicken leg running down his chin. Other officers noted that a
visual image strongly reminiscent of the body or scene could re-ignite the slowing down
of time, and mute or magnify real-time sounds, reproducing the experiences that he had at
his first death scene. The changes in sound are more likely, and the more intense, at mass
fatality death scenes. However, they can also occur with routine and regular death scenes,
with one or a few bodies.
Arousal Symptoms.
Physical and emotional exhaustion based on sleeplessness is one of the biggest physical and
psychological dangers to police officers working a death scene and handling bodies,
especially, during mass fatality disasters. At a bad scene with a bad body, or a disaster
scene, the associated adrenaline surge makes it difficult for the officer to remember or want
to sleep. If his partner intervenes and insists that he take a break, he may find it impossible
to fall asleep. Many things may keep the officer awake. He may be 1) replaying the events
in his mind, 2) critically reviewing and assessing the actions of the responses agencies, the
individual responders, and his own actions, inaction, or omissions, 3) incessantly berating
himself and others for not doing more, or being unable to do more, 4) ruminating about
why he is alive and others are not, 5) consumed or overwhelmed by survivor guilt, 6)
worrying about the deceased and their families, his own mortality, and that of his own
family, 7) bombarded by images, sounds, smells, or nightmares of his experiences, 8)
refusing to fall asleep, for fear of dying in his sleep, 9) pondering the need to be on call
twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, three hundred and sixty five days of the year,
to prevent potentially fatal emergencies in his own home, 10) planning, and experiencing in
fantasy or dream, his own funeral, and 11) having hallucinations upon awaking or falling
asleep of his funeral's reality. He may do anything to avoid sleep. Even when oversaturated emotionally and physically by the death event, he may watch its television
coverage, or return to the scene to volunteer for a double or triple shift. Frequent attempted
contact by media representatives, continual stimulation by repetitive media accounts, and
constant questions from voyeuristic, well-meaning, and fearful family and friends can also
keep him awake. It may not be possible for the officer to escape from or to turn off the
death event, its body, and the scene.
Lack of sleep and intrusive psychosensory symptoms combine forces to interrupt the
officer's attention and concentration. Officers who are normally highly focused describe
their faculties as going to mush, scattering like feathers in the wind, or going from a
laser beam to a flashlight beam. Distractibility also plays a role. Their short-term memory
is impaired, and they lose patrol car keys, forget orders unless they are repeated, and rely
increasingly upon pocket calendars and note cards to recall important dates and facts. In
one extreme case, an officer who had not slept for seventy-two hours following a mass
disaster, and who was having strong smell memories, repeatedly misplaced firearms and
ammunition.
The exhausted officer's usual high alert status and street paranoia are enhanced by his
constant hypervigilance and scanning for specific psychosensory reminders of the event. As
the paranoia and scanning increase, he develops increasing physical (muscle) and

emotional (psychic) tension. He feels wired, tightly wound, or keyed up. His
physical and psychological agitation are reflected in marked motor restlessness and
thoughts bouncing from one to another in no particular fashion. Some officers suddenly
increase their workout routine frequencies and intensities after bad scenes with bad
bodies, but they may or may not consciously make the connection between the case and
the need to let off steam.
Some officers are on such high states of alert after a bad scene that they develop hair
trigger reflexes, associated with a marked startle response. When the officer has access to
his duty weapon, this combination of symptoms can be deadly. Unfortunately, innocent
family members have been accidentally shot, when they have unwittingly surprised such an
officer, who misperceived their actions and intent, and reacted spontaneously.
Mood Symptoms.
Rage is a common underlying theme in the police emotional response to body handling and
grotesque or tragic death scenes and circumstances. Most officers mask the rage well,
allowing only anger or irritability to emerge. This anger or irritability may flicker, erupt
sporadically, or develop into long-lasting and externalized rage.
The anger and rage are merely masks for the deeply hidden roiling core emotions that occur
in almost every officer exposed to death scenes of any intensity. These emotions come
bubbling to the surface in even the most experienced and mature officers after bad scenes
with bad bodies. The degree of anger and rage increases in proportion to the magnitude
of the officer's sense of loss of control, fears (of annihilation, castration, uncontrollable
aggression, homicidal impulses, humiliation, shame, abandonment, and betrayal), and his
increasing inability to trust. The irritability that accompanies the anger also has a
physiological component; it is associated with the general state of arousal at and after the
scene.
The anger also masks a sense of helplessness, which further fuels the rage. The officer
develops a heightened need to do things for himself, so as to regain a feeling of some
degree of control in his life and over the death situation. It is very difficult for him to be
immersed in brutal and often grotesque death at work, and then suddenly be exposed to life
and all of its vicissitudes immediately upon arrival home. At home, the officer's sole focus
must shift rapidly from the darkest corners of human existence, to the mundane routines of
everyday life. He must relinquish his psychological armor that he dons daily to confront
and protect himself from the horror of violent death on the street. He must instantly be able
to relate in the usual way to the lives of those he loves, but who cannot possibly
understand- spouses, children, parents, and civilian friends. (The latter are scarce for many
law enforcement professionals and their families, for that very reason.) All of these people
demand his full attention and his full appreciation of the events of their lives. These events
are of greatest importance and significance to them, but only of small or little significance
to him, compared to the events from which he has just returned.
Repeated exposure to bad bodies and bad scenes changes the officer's view of life.
What he sees as important and of priority may be radically different from what his family
considers important and of priority. Over due bills and mechanical difficulties in the family
car headline the family news bulletin given the officer when he returns home from work.
A supper grown cold, while the family waits [again] for the officer to return home (when he
has forgotten to call, to say that he will be late), is an urgent event. A child's illness
constitutes a crisis of greatest significance to the family. However, after immersion in a
tragic death scene, the officer has different thoughts of importance. He contemplates and
ruminates about many issues of deep personal significance- the sanctity and fragility of
human life; the suddenness and capriciousness of death; the ubiquitous opportunities for
catastrophic injury and death for family, friends, and self. He experiences great irritation at
the stupidity of things that otherwise intelligent people do to put themselves at un-necessary
risk. He feels the urgency to savor the insignificant' things in life. He desperately searches
for golden moments, to help restore his rapidly waning faith, confidence, and trust in his
fellow man.
Suddenly, the police officer and the ones he loves are on two widely divergent roads. If the
officer and his family are far enough apart, and if his family has not been educated and
prepared as to what to expect and how to react, a great schism can develop between them.
If not addressed in time, even the strongest personal, marital, and filial bonds can snap. The
resulting failed relationships and divorce are especially common among homicide
detectives, tactical and gang unit members, youth division and high risk patrol officers, and

members of dive, search and recovery, disaster, and dog teams. (Similar high rates of failed
relationships and marriages are also seen among other emergency responders, members of
the fire service, and medical death investigators.) Police officers who handle human
remains and/or personal effects directly and/or on a regular basis are at even greater risk.
Even officers frequently exposed to human remains in a virtual way (by photographs or
graphic written reports) are also at risk.

References
This article is referenced only from my personal and professional observations and
experiences working with the men and women of law enforcement.

Copyright
Claudia L. Greene, M.D. 2001. The author assigns to the Australasian Journal of
Disaster and Trauma Studies at Massey University a non-exclusive licence to use this
document for personal use and in courses of instruction provided that the article is used in
full and this copyright statement is reproduced. The authors also grant a non-exclusive
licence to Massey University to publish this document in full on the World Wide Web and
for the document to be published on mirrors on the World Wide Web. Any other usage is
prohibited without the express permission of the author.
| Home | Current | Back Issues | Reports | Conferences | Books | Links | Information |
Comments to
Trauma.Webmaster@massey.ac.nz
Massey University, New Zealand
URL: http://www.massey.ac.nz/~trauma/

Disclaimer
Last changed October 19, 2001
Copyright 2001 Massey University