Helping cops

[Mitzi]

I was once at the emergency room with my son who was getting stitches from falling off his bike. This ambulance came in with a little girl that had been in a car accident. The mother arrived with a cop walking beside her.
Sadly, the little girl had died enroute and the mother, understandably, went hysterical. She ran out of the room and grabbed the cop and screamed, "Please, save my baby! Save my baby!" Nurses and drs took her away to help her but no one looked at that poor cop. I just happened to be sitting in the hallway.
He leaned up against the wall, crying his eyes out, almost sliding down the wall. He kept saying, "If I had just gotten there earlier...." I expected someone to help him but no one came.
I got up and walked to him and helped him to a chair. It was so sad. I knelt before him, crying with him and telling him there was nothing he could have done. Someone finally brought him a glass of water and another cop came in. He also sat with him but there was very little we could say to him. He was just devastated. More cops arrived so I left him with them.
A few weeks later, I got a letter from this gentleman, thanking me for being there before his buddies got there and helping him through this. I could cry now just thinking of that mother's pain.....and of his.
My son said that he should not have cried...that he was a cop and should be "used" to this. I told him that cops were human beings too and then I asked him how someone was supposed to get used to something like this? He said nothing.




[This message has been edited by Mitzi (edited 07-13-2001).]

[Pig]

Mitzi
You're right. No matter how many lives we see lost, there is no way you can get "used" to it. Anyone who has done this job any length of time has been devasted about something and cried or gotten angry or somehow broken down to let it out. Anyone who says they haven't is lying. Sometimes we have to be strong for others, but sometimes like the cop you saw it's just too much and we have to let it out. We may seem like a bunch of macho guys and girls, but like you said we are people too. Thank you. It's support like yours that keeps us going.

[ftrphxcop]

I hope my way of helping is enough. I volunteer at one of the local precincts. Its a huge learning experience. And I have the most awesome boss.

[powveronica]

What a said story. Thanks for sharing your thoughts. We have a close family and my police officer spouse shares his day with me and like said - it is very hard for any of them to deal with someone elses loss. Lots of times they have to put the hard cold shoulder on to keep their emotions tough - to help others through difficult times, but it's not easy I've seen it in my man!

Take care.

[Z28CBR]

I usually don't post much, but I've been reading here for over a year now and I just had to say Mitzi thank you for lending that officer a hand.
I believe it's true that a lot of officers don't let accidents and the like get to them personally but when something terrible such as the incident you described relates to home and the officers personal life that's when it gets to them, even when it happens to innocent victims. And especially when there are children involved. I know when I have a call involving children you just go that much faster and I have a picture of my 2 girls in the back of my head.
That officer did the best he could do and in the end he needed a little help too, thank you Mitzi for being there for him.

[FLLawdog]

Mitzi, I know your gesture made a definate impact on him.

No matter how many dead bodies we see, no matter how battered and bruised we see adults, an injured child always hits us hard. I heard a term this week called "work product". When you go to the scene of a dead body, no matter what condition it's in and no matter what the cause of death is, detach yourself and treat it as a "work product". It's tough with kids.

A couple years ago, I'm tooling around town just minding my own business. Rush hour was almost over and I was ready to get out of traffic mode and into creepy crawly mode.

I get up to one of our big intersections and see steam coming from a van. When I get closer I see one mangled car then another. As I'm calling it out, the driver comes out of one of the cars holding this limp child, who was six. She was a wreck, as could be expected, and layed the child down on the road. He was breathing, but was unresponsive, so we maintained the airway until rescue got there.

As it turned out, she was in a hurry and didn't strap him in, and then, on top of that, rode through the yellow striped saftey zone prior to the turn lane at a high rate of speed. She impacted the other car and slung the child into the now deploying air bag. A 40 pound child moving at around 40mph versus a 200+mph airbag isn't much of a match.

He turned out to be OK, but it was touch and go for about a month. I was a wreck for a while and called the hospital every day looking for updates.

Seeing children get hurt, especially needlessly, never gets easy.

[Mitzi]

When my son ws 10, he was playing ball out in the front yard. He ran out into the road, after being told how many times not to. Luckily, it was a friend on a bike that hit him. He was thrown over the bike and landed on his head, knocking him out. The kids ran to our front door, screaming. The first sight I had as I open the door was of my son laying unconscious in the road in a pool of blood.
It racked my soul, really. I went into auto mode tho and did what had to be done then cried later. He had a concussion and was in the hospital 3 days with stiches in his head but was ok.
When it's a child, particularly your own child, it is just heartwrenching.