My career in law enforcement spanned nearly 47 years. I worked in patrol, criminal investigations, the gang unit and the emergency response team. I held many pivotal positions, including supervisor of the Metro Anti-Crime Unit, supervisor in the gang unit, Crisis Negotiations Team leader, Emergency Response Team lieutenant, commander of the Violent Crimes and Juvenile Crimes Division, and commander of the Southeast Area Command. I probably interacted with several thousand police officers throughout my career.

I worked for three different agencies and served as chief of police for both the Rio Rancho and Albuquerque police departments in New Mexico during the last seven years of my career before retiring in 2020. I missed police work and looked for something to keep me connected to my profession during retirement. I stayed in touch with many officers who would call me from time to time to discuss personal and job-related problems. I saw how police work would often take its toll on many of these officers. In addition to the various assignments mentioned, I was also a member of APD’s peer support team and attended the first crisis intervention class back in 1996. In both of those assignments, I was able to counsel and help many officers and others through some difficult times. I found those opportunities to be very rewarding.

In spring 2021, I saw an ad looking for retired police officers interested in joining a program called CopLine. I checked it out and applied to be a crisis listener with the program. I was vetted and attended a weeklong training class in Los Angeles with other retired officers from several different agencies. We were trained in active listening and communication skills, and we all brought the knowledge and understanding of the many psychological stressors that officers experience both on and off the job. Throughout our careers, we had been exposed to many similar situations that officers face today.

To many of the callers, that “street credibility” was a huge factor in their decision to call CopLine. Some officers are reluctant to seek help because of the stigma they believe it carries. They feel it might be viewed by other officers as a sign of weakness and may have been told by old-school cops to just “suck it up.” Some officers don’t want to seek help through local civilian employee assistance programs or other similar programs offered by their departments. CopLine is strictly confidential, callers can remain anonymous and there is no fear of embarrassment or punitive repercussions from initiating the call. CopLine also offers additional resources to callers, including referrals to trained and certified counselors and therapists approved by CopLine in their jurisdictions. These services are also guaranteed to maintain confidentiality.

After completing this excellent training, I worked with another listener for a few weeks before being certified to start taking shifts with CopLine. During my first graveyard shift, my first caller was a young new officer who was having a difficult time with his field training officer. I listened to his concerns and was able to help him regain his confidence and find a new approach to help him survive and succeed during this challenging time as a brand-new officer. This young man’s outlook changed dramatically by the conclusion of our call, and he was extremely grateful for our conversations that night. It was a “feel good” experience for me that day.

CopLine is different from other crisis lines. It is the first international law enforcement officer hotline staffed by retired police officers. Listeners can relate to callers and help them discover different ways and approaches to resolving their issues. In my four years volunteering, I have answered calls from officers struggling after handling the death of a child or being in an officer-involved shooting. Others have expressed problems at work, such as facing discipline or experiencing conflict with other officers or their supervisors. Some officers are going through relationship issues and divorce. Some callers are intoxicated during the call and may admit to having a drinking or substance abuse problem. I have taken four calls from officers who were suicidal.

I felt a sense of relief and great satisfaction knowing I had possibly saved a life.

The goal of a listener is to be nonjudgmental and develop a rapport with the caller. We want to guide the caller to think for themselves and find their own solutions to their problems. We listen with our heads and our hearts. We will “sit in the hole” with a caller for as long as they need.

On one night that I will never forget, I received the following call sometime after midnight. It started off like this:

Me: “Good morning, this is Mike from CopLine. What’s going on?”

Caller: Silence and a couple of deep sighs.

Me: “Can you tell me what is going on right now? I’m here for you.”

Caller: Long pause. “OK, this is how it’s going to go. I am sitting in my kitchen, and I have my gun in my hand. My finger is on the trigger, and the gun is pointed at my head. Let’s start talking and see where we will go from here.”

I spent about three hours “in the hole” with this officer before I got him to put the gun down. It turned out that he had been involved in five shootings during his career. He had been with his department for 15 years and chose to work in the high-crime neighborhoods of a large city where he grew up. He was a former Medal of Valor recipient. In one of those shootings, he was wounded in the head but recovered and was able to return to work. He was then assigned to the graveyard shift back on patrol and advised to maintain a low profile.

He was very upset with how he was being treated and with what was happening in his city and his own department. There had been an in-custody death where an offender died during a confrontation. There were numerous violent protests and demonstrations as a result. Officers were attacked, and the top police officials seemed to not support the officers. This caller explained how it seemed the mayor and police chief did little to protect officers. He explained that on many calls, he did not receive backup because officers did not want to get into any confrontation that could get them in trouble if something went wrong. He was very discouraged and frustrated, and these issues led to his suicidal ideations that night after he had a few drinks.

I was very empathetic and tried to remind him of all the good things he had accomplished as a decorated veteran of his department. I shared with him that I was a retired police chief and reassured him that, in my eyes, he was a hero. We developed a great rapport and talked about the way policing has changed over the years. I remained on the call with him until he assured me that he was OK, was not going to kill himself and would speak with a police chaplain he was friends with. He thanked me and left me with these words: “I would have been proud to work under your command. You are a cop’s cop.” I was so moved by this that I included those words in the title of my book, The Blue Journey: Memoirs of a Cop’s Cop. The entire call lasted a little over three and a half hours, and I was physically and emotionally drained afterward. At the same time, I felt a sense of relief and great satisfaction knowing I had possibly saved a life.

As I mentioned, this officer suffered a head injury after being shot in the head. In the past year, we have received training regarding the connection between previous head injuries and officer suicides. This is a whole new area of study that will hopefully prevent such future tragedies.

When I retired, I wrote an op-ed for our local newspaper. In that article, I said that my biggest accomplishment in police work was always having my officers’ backs. After this particular call, I was reassured that by giving back to today’s officers through volunteering as a CopLine listener, I am still having the backs of today’s generation of cops. Printed on a T-shirt given to listeners at our first conference are the words: “Courage to call, an honor to listen.”

CopLine is a valuable resource for today’s officers. They will always be my heroes. May God watch over them and keep them safe.