Beyond the trauma

Auburn attorney Elliott Epstein started his true crime manuscript "Lucifer's Child" almost 24 years ago after watching the trial of John Lane and Cynthia Palmer, accused of murdering 4-year-old Angela Palmer.

- Jose Leiva/sun Journal

Guy Desjardins had been out of the police academy three months when he responded to his first fatal, a parent and child dead. Their car had hit a tree in Sabattus.

"The accident scene was horrifying enough, but then I was told by the chief and the district attorney I had to attend the autopsy," he said. It was a more routine part of police work in the 1970s, but another on-the-job first for the officer.

He sought out a state trooper friend.

"I ended up at his house, 'Geez, I've got three months of experience, you've got 15 years, how do you cope with it?" Desjardins recalled.

The trooper drew a map of the morgue so Desjardins knew what to expect. The pair played pool and talked until 4 a.m. Then it was off to the autopsy, back to work.

Flash forward 30 years. Desjardins, now Androscoggin County sheriff, says that when one of his corrections officers recently found a man hanging in a cell, trying to kill himself, Desjardins gave the female officer a counselor's business card. She took a few days off. Staff sat down to play back details.

That's the way things are done now.

Over the past 10 years, police and fire officials say there has been more emphasis on addressing the many traumatic scenes first responders deal with on the job, and more effort to get out the message: It's OK to ask for help.

"Twenty years ago the mentality from the older officer at the scene was, ‘Suck it up. You better live with it, and if you can't, you need another job,'" said State Police Lt. Gary Wright who oversees Maine State Police's five-year-old Critical Incident Debriefing Team. "Ultimately, (that sort of stress) can be physically debilitating."

In some cases, it can be too much to endure.

After Angela Palmer's murder 25 years ago this week, when the 4-year-old Auburn girl was killed in an oven by a man who claimed she was the "devil's spawn," several local police and firefighters walked away from the job.

"Many left the force or went on disability within the year," said Elliott Epstein, an Auburn lawyer who has written a manuscript about the infamous case. "These were the people who would have been there when the oven door was open."

Children's deaths are the hardest, said Auburn Fire Chief Wayne Werts. He was with the department 25 years ago and worked with the men who had to answer that call.

"There's much more in place than there used to be. Twenty, 30 years ago, we were just floundering," Werts said. "It's a hard thing to tell someone it's not their fault."

Twice a year, Ann Marie Mullins counsels Auburn and Lewiston police and firefighters about sharing their feelings — one sign of the change in philosophy.

"They always moan and groan because they're going to hear about warm and fuzzy stuff," she said.

Mullins coordinates St. Mary's Employee Assistance Program, which has contracts with the cities of Lewiston and Auburn and the Androscoggin County Sheriff's Office.

"They think they're going to walk away untouched by the sadness," Mullins said. "‘This is my job, I can do this, I can walk away.' It isn't about that. Your mind, it does something, no matter who you are."

She's given her pitch for the past five years. Afterward, when they need help, they do call, she said. Chiefs also send them.

The highest divorce rates are among police officers, Mullins said, a casualty of carrying stress home.

Depression and suicide are also concerns. Nationally, three times as many law enforcement officers die every year from their own hand as from an assailant, said Steve Webster, a detective sergeant in South Portland and president of the Maine Association of Police.

He's on a formal, in-house peer support team.

"The people you don't expect to share, do," Webster said. "You've got to get it out. Better out than in." 

When an event affects several first responders — an officer's shooting or death, a deadly accident — departments often call on the help of an outside Critical Stress Debriefing Team with local mental health professionals. Lewiston, Auburn and Farmington have all used the team.

Maine State Police created its own team in 2004 after the chaplain found himself too busy with critical incident stress, said Wright, who is the team administrator.

"When (an officer-involved) shooting takes place, a few members of the team immediately respond to make sure they're OK to go home — I don't mean that they're physically OK — that they understand what their body is going to go through," Wright said.

"Your body ends up dropping a bunch of chemicals, adrenaline, adrenal cortisol, into your system."

They're told to drink lots of fluids. Watch for irritability and nausea. Don't turn to alcohol.

"We're recognizing that we're actually getting our people back to work sooner," Wright said.

Two years ago, the team started approaching new officers' spouses, telling them what to look for as signs of work-related stress. It can mess with a person's heart, wear at tendons and ligaments, Wright said.

"You start getting the guys that snap, crackle, pop all the time," he said.

Statistics aren't kept on marriages saved or positive outcomes from all the increased attention, but anecdotally, police say it has.

"Keep people healthy. Keep them working healthy. You're in it for the long run," Wright said.

John Rogers went to his first critical debriefing in 1997 as Farmington police chief. The car of a couple driving back to Vermont after a concert in Limestone struck a tractor-trailer, decapitating both. Rogers worked the scene with officers, state police and emergency medical personnel.

"When it was all over and done, we called in a team of trained people and (first responders) had an opportunity to vent and express their feelings," Rogers said. "It was eye-opening for me." He hadn't realized how each person takes a scene in differently. As chief, "I would be thinking very long range: How do you deal with the press? How do you deal with the long-term investigation?"

Now director of the Maine Criminal Justice Academy, Rogers has State Police Chaplain Donald Williams teach an ethics course, one way of introducing him as a resource to new officers.

"You don't need an officer losing sleep, you don't need an officer losing weight, having problems at home because he can't handle what he's seen," Rogers said.

It costs $30,000 to send one person to the academy, he said. "Do you want that asset to go by the wayside by not providing (help)?"

Lewiston Police Chief Michael Bussiere said one of his department's last debriefings happened several years ago, after a person his officers were talking to committed suicide in front of them.

"These guys and girls aren't robots; they have feelings, too," Bussiere said.

When Androscoggin County Sheriff's Deputy David Rancourt suffered a fatal heart attack in 2006 while searching for evidence in the Androscoggin River, "We brought in a critical stress debriefing team that afternoon," said Auburn Deputy Chief Jason Moen. "It's good to talk. The last thing you want to do is get them bottled up and have that eat at you."

Auburn Fire Chief Werts said people in the department still think of the Palmer anniversary every time October rolls around. Now, after a death in a fire or fatal car accident, there's a post-incident analysis, he said. What worked? What didn't? If they need outside perspective, they ask.

"That's just one of those calls there just was no answer for," Werts said, referring to Palmer's death. "Twenty, 30 years ago, you might have been looked at as weak. There's been a cultural change, a good one."

kskelton@sunjournal.com