SCHUYLKILL HAVEN - Hoping to acquire a $500,000 federal grant to develop an assistance program to help state and local police officers cope with the stresses of their jobs, students and faculty at Penn State Schuylkill are in the process of conducting research.
"We will eventually apply for the grant through the National Institute of Justice," Dr. Salih Hakan Can, administrator of the campus justice and sociology department, said Friday.
Can discussed the project, "Partner Aggression and Coping Mechanism Among Police Officers," at a lecture held Friday at the R. Michael Fryer Conference Center before a crowd of 20. It will include a survey of more than 240 municipal and state police officers from Berks, Lehigh and Schuylkill counties, and will be wrapped up this summer, Can said.
Two police officers and the wife of a retired police officer were in attendance and they said such an employee assistance program should include opportunities for officers to talk out their stress.
Dr. Elinor M. Madigan, program coordinator for the college's information sciences and technology department, said her husband, Thomas, worked for 32 years as a police officer in Florida.
"When my husband came home from work, he suffered from a lot of repressed anger. You can't be angry at the people you work with and you can't be angry at the public, so police officers end up pulling it in because they have to be a strong figure, a figure of authority. But you have to let it out somewhere," Madigan said.
Students conducting the study include Brice Brazinsky, Port Carbon, a senior criminal justice major at Penn State Schuylkill.
Can is supervising the project. A native of Turkey, he has a police background. He worked for the Turkish National Police and retired from police work in 2003 as a chief superintendent for Interpol in France.
"We're doing it out of his office," Brazinsky said.
Can and the students chose which police stations to include in the survey. Officers participating are filling out anonymous questionnaires by regular mail and online via www.surveymethods.com, Brazinsky said.
Those in attendance at the lecture Friday included two full-time officers who work at Muhlenberg Township Police Department. They are participating in the study and they're also students at Penn State Schuylkill.
They are William Raibeck, Frackville, a senior administration of justice major, and Wayne Moreland, Landingville, a junior administration of justice major.
Can said the study is showing that one of the contributing factors to stress on the job is repressed anger.
"I'm not surprised," Moreland said.
"I think that comes from guys not being able to let their job at work. They're taking their work home from them. It can create that verbal abuse or problems at home," Raibeck said.
But acquiring a mindset to keep the two separated isn't so easy, Raibeck said.
"They have to talk it out," Moreland said.
"The need an outlet," Raibeck said.
"And I've been talking a lot more since I've been a student here," Moreland said.