Over the past few years, he’s not sure just how many times he was called to assist the same veteran in crisis. He just knows it was a lot. “He’s a combat veteran with PTSD. His coping mechanism was alcohol and when he drank, it was ugly.”
Sean Wyman, a police officer with the Tallahassee (FL) Police Department who worked as a Crisis Response Officer addressing mental health service calls, really connected with this person. “I’m a veteran too and I understood what he was going through. We have a mutual respect for each other”.
Alcoholism had fractured the veteran’s relationship with his nearby family and often caused issues with neighbors… which led to calls to the police. Officer Wyman encouraged him to get help and the veteran sometimes called him directly for assistance or even just to talk. When the man was kicked out of his apartment after difficult interactions with neighbors, Officer Wyman worked closely with his case manager at the VA Hospital to find a housing solution that would also accept the veteran’s two dogs – Bear and Brody – “two really nice Labrador mixes.”
Soon after relocating to his new apartment, the veteran called Officer Wyman with good news. There was an opening in a long-term treatment program at the VA and this person who’d been in crisis for years was ready to get some help. However, the next question shocked Officer Wyman. “He asked me to help him get rid of his dogs – to find them a home where they would be safe.” Officer Wyman told him no. He knew just how much those dogs meant to the veteran; knew that he ran with those dogs every day; and knew that he needed to be able to come home to the dogs after the treatment program. He thought, “I can’t let this man lose his dogs. It’s not fair.”
Officer Wyman posted a call for help on his social media accounts, hoping someone in his extensive network would come forward. He made it clear that this was a temporary solution, only fostering the dogs until the veteran had completed his treatment program. A local family with teenagers, having just lost their family dog, agreed to take care of the dogs until the veteran was finished with treatment. Officer Wyman often went by to check on them. “They weren’t just safe. They were loved.” The family even covered all of the dogs’ expenses. When the family went away for a planned vacation over the holidays, Officer Wyman and his family took the dogs for a week. “We hadn’t had a dog since the kids were little and they loved having Bear and Brody around. As a matter of fact, we now have a puppy!”
After four months in the treatment program, the veteran, recovered and healthy, was reunited with his dogs. Officer Wyman understood the importance of this reunion in the recovery process, “Coming back and not having something to come home to would have been awful.” Fortunately, because of Officer Wyman’s efforts, that wasn’t the case. The veteran, Bear, and Brody still live in the area and have even reconnected with family. Officer Wyman said he’s doing well and still receives an occasional phone call from him just to catch up.
When you ask police officers why they got into public safety, the answer comes easily is almost always the same: to help people. The much harder question for officers is how? Officers, like Sean Wyman, know that the answer to this particular question is rarely simple and changes from one moment to the next. Effectively helping people requires a combination of training, awareness, experience and willingness to act based on the needs of the people you protect and serve. Officer Wyman was able and willing to use his experience – as a veteran and an officer trained in crisis response – to effectively recognize exactly what this person in crisis needed to be safe, and ultimately successful, in recovery. He ensured that Bear and Brody were well taken care of so that his fellow veteran could focus on his own health and then have the dogs he loved by his side once again when he came home. Who knows how this story would have turned out if Officer Wyman had not been willing and prepared to answer the question, “How can I help?”
In this field, the ‘how’ is what makes the difference. To learn more about how you can make a difference for someone in crisis, visit our program, CIT ASSIST.
Officer Wyman has twenty-five years of experience with Tallahassee Police Department and now serves the community full time as an officer assigned to supporting mental health services as part of the Tallahassee Emergency Assessment Mobile Unit (TEAM).