Many non-responders do not understand the toll that being a first responder can take on the mind and body. The stress of being “the one” the public turns to when their worst fears are being realized around them has ill effects, whether a responder wants to admit it or not. This means that taking the time to put safeguards and habits into your life to manage stress is vital for your health and the wellbeing of your family and friends around you.

Here are six ways that first responders can help manage and reduce stress.

1. Take time off. One of the things that drives first responders is their commitment to their communities and their core belief that they were called to serve others and make a difference where they live. When you have that kind of calling in your life, you tend to want to be there to fulfill it, and it’s hard to take time away, because of your passion to serve. However, it’s vital that you take time away from the stressful grind of the job and allow your body and mind to refocus and heal.

2. Leave work at work. It’s hard at the end of your work day not to think about what you’ve experienced during your shift. The problem is that you can still have the impact of the stress of the moment lingering on your mind and body when you revisit traumatic situations. Develop a system where you can put your work in a box at the end of the day and refuse to allow yourself to start thinking about something bad that happened or about preparing for an emergency you might face in your next shift.

3. Exercise. While your job requires physical health and strength, there are additional benefits to exercise that can help you manage the stress of your work. Exercise releases endorphins that have been medically shown to improve mood, decrease irritability, and help the mind concentrate on tasks. A regular exercise program such as jogging or cycling can make a tremendous impact on stress management.

4. Create boundaries and realize that it’s all right to say “no.” No matter where you work, there is always one more thing to do or one more task that pops up at the last minute. Your natural tendency to want to help others can be used against you when these situations arise, because the boss will ask you to work late for “just this one little thing…” Learn that it’s all right for you to tell the boss no sometimes because you know you need the break or you need to put your family first.

5. Choose to eat healthier foods and avoid excessive amounts of fast food. Sure, many times you have to eat on the run because of the number of calls you face during your shift. That still doesn’t mean it’s all right to pile on the carbs and sugar and unhealthy fats from processed fast food every time you need to eat. Not only does eating that food on a regular basis negatively impact your overall health, fast foods can increase irritability, lower energy, and even affect your ability to concentrate. Drink water instead of soda or coffee and eat balanced meals.

6. Seek counseling or attend a support group. Many responders avoid counseling or support groups because of their fear that it makes them appear weak to ask for some help or to lean on someone else with their struggles.  Nothing could be farther from the truth! Talking to a counselor or discussing struggles with your peers can help you find ways to counter stress, ways that may have never entered your mind, and shows others that you’re serious about being the best you can be as a first responder and as a person.

While these are not everything you can do to help reduce and manage stress, making these six suggestions a part of your life will help you find that place where you can excel at your job without having it take over your life, making you a better family member, co-worker and neighbor.

KOVA Corp. is dedicated to helping public safety personnel of all kinds by providing state-of-the-art call center and public safety software. For more information on how we can help enhance your department’s performance and working conditions, contact us today.

Ah, social media: the daily time-sucking tools that have ended friendships over petty squabbles, made celebrities of people who just put the right picture on the right social media account at the right time, and showed us that cats can be pretty darn grumpy.

But while many people look at social media as some kind of lightweight thing that is a part of their daily lives without much real impact, websites and apps like Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram, and others are becoming a valuable tool for law enforcement.

Initially, many law enforcement organizations used Facebook and Twitter as a means of improving their community image. It was a way to interact directly with citizens to inform them of upcoming events, warn them of dangerous weather conditions or traffic hazards in their jurisdictions, or even just dispel the myth some try to perpetuate that police officers are always serious and out to “get you.” In that vein, social media has been a very successful public relations tool for departments.

Departments have also used social media pages as a form of cyber “tip line.” They can post photos of people who are being sought for crimes or who have missed court dates, along with contact information for someone to report the whereabouts of those people of interest.

But it’s not just in those limited ways that social media has developed into a useful tool for officers.

An example of one of social media’s uses to law enforcement comes from Lincoln, Nebraska, in 2017. The Lincoln Journal Star reported on the disappearance of a 24-year-old woman named Sydney Loofe. She had been reported missing, so investigators started combing through her social media accounts to find “breadcrumbs” that led to the discovery of her body.

A retired Lincoln police investigator, Larry Barksdale, told the Journal Star a digital footprint that gives police “breadcrumbs” is more than just tracking cell phones like you see on television or in movies.

“It also includes information from online apps such as Facebook, Twitter, and Snapchat, from credit card purchases or ATM visits, and from cameras along the state’s highways, outside gas stations or inside businesses,” Barksdale said, showing the importance of social media to the investigative process.

But it’s not just in the case of a missing person that social media can be a huge asset to officers seeking a suspect in a case. For example, many departments use Facebook profiles as a way to get information that would normally take many hours of legwork. A Facebook profile can give a ready list of friends of the suspect, allowing officers to create a list of persons of interest to contact in their search. The profile can show patterns of behavior that would give locations for surveillance. In some cases, people have even posted photos of their criminal activity that officers could then use in gaining search and arrest warrants.

And the information obtained from social media for warrants has stood up in court when challenged by defense attorneys and civil liberties groups. As an example, CNN quoted a federal judge in the case of a New York gang member who posted photographic evidence of his crimes on his Facebook page. A Facebook “friend” then allowed law enforcement to use their profile to read the gang member’s postings.

The judge ruled the gang member’s “legitimate expectation of privacy ended when he disseminated posts to his 'friends' because those 'friends' were free to use the information however they wanted—including sharing it with the government.”

A study from LexisNexus and PoliceOne showed that 81 percent of federal law enforcement used social media as an investigative tool, to go with 71 percent of state law enforcement and 82 of local departments. The highest rate of use was in the Northeast, with 89 percent of departments using social media as a tool.

With social media reaching a point of being almost vital for daily life in the minds of many Americans, these websites and apps will just continue to grow in importance as sources of information for police investigators.

This is part of a larger pattern of increased sophistication in communication techniques used by law enforcement. We at KOVA Corp. take pride in knowing that our public safety and dispatch software helps agencies take action quickly and improve their emergency preparedness. KOVA’s solutions can reduce liability and risk and reduce program costs, allowing more reach from available budgets and staff. For more information on how we can help your agency be its best, contact us today.