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Chats with law enforcement experts and leaders
Hi. This is sergeant Betsy Brandner Smith with the National Police Association, and this is the National Police Association podcast. I have with me a guest today that I just became fascinated with her, you know, because she's a fantastic fellow on x. But then I started to look into her her career, her her I she's just an amazing person. She she was a cop.
Betsy Smith:She's a psychotherapist. She's an author, and she's got opinions. And, there's nothing I love more than another woman with her opinions. Doctor Dorothy Bones McCoy, welcome to the show.
Dr. McCoy:Thank you. Thank you. So good
Betsy Smith:to see you. It's so great to see you. So I gotta ask you the thing I ask everybody, who, is in law enforcement when they come in the show. Why? Why'd you become a cop?
Dr. McCoy:I was challenged. I was seeing a number of law enforcement officers as a therapist for the, sheriff in my county, and I was doing preemployment evaluations. So a sergeant that was with them kept challenging me. You don't know anything about this. You don't know anything about law enforcement.
Dr. McCoy:You've never been in law enforcement. Now he was a nice guy, but, you know, he was challenging me. Vietnam veteran. And, so I said, okay. Fine.
Dr. McCoy:He says, you go take the training. You then you'll see. So I, decided to become a state constable rather than a reserve officer. It's a little more complicated, and you're actually chosen by the governor, and you can work at any place for any department in the state. You can't just go out there on your own.
Dr. McCoy:And so that's why I decided because sergeant Gowell kept challenging me.
Betsy Smith:That's fantastic. Now what were were there physical requirements as well as, you know, I'm assuming you had to take a written test, psychological, which had to be interesting for you, And, and the physical test. Right? What did you go through?
Dr. McCoy:Have to do the physical. Did not have to do the physical because that was up to the sheriff's department to be sure I was physically fit. And I was working out at the gym all the time. You know, the the sheriff knew I
Betsy Smith:was
Dr. McCoy:fine. So, anyway, I had to take a difficult, written test there at the Criminal Justice Academy, which was my first experience at being there. And after that, I learned sergeant Gallo was right. You should not be giving all psychologists and therapists and psychiatrists down there. You should not be giving advice to law enforcement until you've been in their shoes.
Betsy Smith:I'm so I'm so glad you say that because when when we talk about police officer mental health, that's one of the things that happens very often to officers that I talk to is when they when they finally reach out to to try and and get some mental health assistance, they they end up either counseling the counselor because there's a lot of mental health professionals that aren't prepared to hear what cops go through day after day after day. It's hard. Or or they they end up being so walled off that the mental health professional isn't able to get through to them. Talk about how things changed when you actually got into the profession.
Dr. McCoy:I, I had the sheriff behind me because he he knew that I did a good job on the pre employments because when I would tell him I told him with 1, if you send this person to the academy, they're not gonna they're not gonna get through it after the testing and all. Well, they didn't. So he had a certain amount of faith, and so they came in there with faith that I probably wasn't a total idiot anyway. And knowing that I was also willing to go through some of what they had had to go through and put on the uniform and wear the gun. And let me tell you this.
Dr. McCoy:I didn't realize until I put that uniform on for the first time and put on that gun and that badge that people looked at me differently. People that knew me looked at me differently, and I could see it. I could feel it. And I thought, oh my god. That was that was an eye opener.
Dr. McCoy:So I didn't have any trouble at all, counseling. We we would talk about, okay. You tell me what you need. I work with symptoms. I'm not gonna go digging into their darkest secret somewhere.
Dr. McCoy:I work with symptoms. What are your symptom? What do you want to go away? We're gonna use the tools we need to make you feel better, and that's what we're going to do.
Betsy Smith:What do you see as the biggest mental health crisis for your average law enforcement officer today?
Dr. McCoy:Stress. Stress. The even if they weren't going through everything that they're going through out there on the streets right now, it's hard now. We all know that. But they are they are stressed by and I told them this when I was at the academy.
Dr. McCoy:We're saying on one hand, you know, do what you need to to stay alive, but on the other hand, don't get sued. You know? So there's that that little bit of time that we're thinking about that if an emergency comes up. Now, of course, we should be aware of the law and the situation and all of these things, but we we I think we need better training on how to do that, how to think more quickly, how to be in the moment. It's stressful.
Dr. McCoy:It really is. And there are ways to to be able to work with that stress. Now, of course, the other one would be trauma. And I'm I'm an, certified in trauma. I work with that a lot, either law enforcement, military, or it's amazing what can cause PTSD, like a bad visit to the hospital can cause PTSD.
Dr. McCoy:So it's not that it's really unusual, but I it has a bad rep. And I try to tell people, I'm not interested in labels. I'm not interested if you have PTSD or acute stress disorder. What? Let's just look at what you don't like, and let's do something about that.
Dr. McCoy:People do not like being labeled, and they will stay away from counseling to avoid it. So we we need to get away. One mental health is a word I don't like. It's all wellness. I don't care.
Dr. McCoy:It's physical, emotional, psychological. It's part of wellness. So I'd like to get away from that and diagnosis. Now we as professionals need diagnosis to talk to each other if I'm working with, say, a psychiatrist so he knows what I'm talking about. But other than that, they're a bad idea.
Betsy Smith:Well and when we talk about, you know, wellness, we're finally, I think, talking about it in this profession, where we really didn't talk about it properly even even 5 or 10 years ago. And and we're starting to understand that it's that it's not just what happens in your head, but it's also, you know, physically and the the importance of fitness, the importance of nutrition, and limiting things like caffeine caffeine and alcohol. And I assume you talk about all of that. Right?
Dr. McCoy:Speaking of of caffeine, actually, coffee is good for you. It has a lot of benefits. I won't get into that right now. But we we do. We want to eat if we and we have to research this ourselves.
Dr. McCoy:What is healthy and what is not healthy because it keeps changing. And, we wanna get that exercise. We need that exercise. That was one good thing about my sheriff, in the low country and also the sheriff in Columbia. They really pushed exercise.
Dr. McCoy:You can handle so things so much better if you are well, if you were at your best. It I've I've stressed that since the very beginning. I'm holistic. Let's do it all.
Betsy Smith:And and now we're coming into a situation where, you know, we're the you're here in the term a lot, make America healthy again. Right? We're starting to we're starting to understand that our food might get healthy, but very often, it's not. And that especially here in the United States, you know, we have so much processed garbage and all that. And as a cop and I I remember those days on midnight ship with patrol where your only choices was, like, an overnight Burger King and maybe a Denny's and things like that.
Betsy Smith:And if you didn't have time to bring your own food, and we just didn't know what we know now. Now, I think that that you're right. People need to do their own research and and understand how much what we consume affects us, not just physically, but mentally. Right?
Dr. McCoy:We're all 1. It's just 1. And that's what I'm trying to get to that we understand maybe the carburetor needs a little adjusting over here. You know? So we we are a lot of things, and we adjust what's not working right, and we may need to also adjust what we eat and our exercise and all our vitamins, our minerals, all of these things because they affect the carburetor.
Betsy Smith:That's so well said. You know, we you talked about preemployment testing, and we're we have a a, we have a recruitment a police recruitment crisis in this country. There's no doubt about it. Yeah.
Narrator:For the
Betsy Smith:last 4 years, we have really been demonized and vilified, and cops you know, people are looking at this profession saying, I don't know that I wanna go to a job where, you know, and not only might I get hurt or killed, but I might get indicted and go to prison simply for doing my job.
Dr. McCoy:Dear god. That is a realistic fear.
Betsy Smith:So I wanna talk about and and remember, we have a lot of civilians watching this and listening this. Talk about what preemployment psychological testing involves for a police recruit and who's attracted to this profession?
Dr. McCoy:As I was saying to you earlier when we were just chatting, I'm also an expert in on personality. I've written a couple of books of personality quizzes. That's really fun too. But, anyway, certain per the Myers Briggs, there's 16 personalities in the Myers Briggs, and I use that all the time with everybody. Everybody.
Dr. McCoy:Now Myers Briggs
Betsy Smith:is the little pictures, right, that you hold up and Oh, no. Blame on to people.
Dr. McCoy:I I consider that nonsense. The Myers Briggs is a test that you take. Actually, a mother and daughter created the Myers Briggs during World War 2, and it's been refined, refined, and refined since then. So it just tells us a lot of things about what we can expect from ourselves, what works, and what doesn't work. So in doing the pre employment, it was funny.
Dr. McCoy:In the beginning, I kept getting the same personality type over and over and over again. I was asking the sheriff, do you have these pay people in a warehouse somewhere? Because I keep getting the same thing. ISTJs and ESTJs, very responsible, dependable people, very do the right thing, don't do the wrong thing. That can go too far, but, anyway, that's another subject.
Dr. McCoy:So those people now I also other than the Myers Briggs, I did an IQ test. IQ is important. It really is. You're not gonna get through the police academy without a fairly good IQ. Law is not easy, and it's always, well, under these circumstances and under those, which drove me crazy.
Dr. McCoy:But, anyway, I also did I had this sneaky little test that a, professor at the University of Tennessee had developed and I found out about. It was a cloaked aggression test. So it was I think the, the name of it was rational reasoning or something like that, But nobody knew what it was, and they would answer the questions. It not only picked up, physical aggression, the kind of aggression we think about, but it also picked up passive aggressive. I'm gonna be late.
Dr. McCoy:I'm gonna talk about, everybody else with somebody else. I'm gonna stir things up. That type, we've seen it. Right? We've all seen it.
Dr. McCoy:Yeah. So it also picked, that up. And other than an interview now everybody has their own their own way of doing this. I went by tests that were research approved, had been other than the cloaked one, but it had it had really good science behind it. These are things that had been around forever.
Dr. McCoy:So it gave me a really good little synopsis on that person. Now it wasn't up to me to say if the person had hired or not. That's not my job. My job was just to get a little concise report. This is what I see from this report, that report, and this report.
Dr. McCoy:And then they took that information and just added it to everything else they had in making a decision. So it it is very helpful because we rule out the ones that are obviously a problem. Too much aggression, personality. No. Any anybody, I'm gonna say, any personality type can be at some area of law enforcement, but they are the ones that are most likely to be there.
Dr. McCoy:And military, law enforcement and military, those kind of go together with the Myers Briggs. But the aggression and the, intelligence test, I thought were, very indicative of what might be expected in the future. There are no tests that are perfect, but it just gives them a little something extra than the interview to go by.
Betsy Smith:And there's correct me if I'm wrong. I don't think there's a huge pool of people that are appropriate for the law enforcement profession. Am I correct?
Dr. McCoy:There there are not no. There's not. It's very demanding. We know that. It is very demanding, stressful.
Dr. McCoy:You have to love it. You've got to be dedicated. And I always ask the first thing I ask my candidates was, why are you doing this? Why are you going into law enforcement? You know, you could make a lot more money as a plumber.
Dr. McCoy:Why are why? And almost every single time they said, we wanna help people. We wanna help people that need help that can't do it themselves. Now were all of them telling me the truth? You you're gonna have a few cowboys out there.
Dr. McCoy:You are. So yeah. But it it is a fairly small tool, and it's someone that has to be dedicated to public service.
Betsy Smith:You got involved in psychotherapy, then you get involved in law enforcement and training and all that. Then you didn't have enough to do, so you started writing books. Talk about that.
Dr. McCoy:Yes. I started writing self help books. Again, I wanna help people. You know? So I wrote self help books.
Dr. McCoy:One of them that's done quite well was the manipulative man. Those are the guys you wanna look out for. You don't wanna date these guys. Okay? And but they're usually very charming and, and attractive and all that in the beginning.
Dr. McCoy:So then after a while, I decided since I love mystery books well, why don't you do that? That would be fun. And so I decided to write, I love Winston Churchill. So I decided to write, historical fiction mystery with, he's one of the characters in there. This was the, first one.
Dr. McCoy:And so and today, the galley for the last one in the series came in. So that was I thought, well, that's nice. I'll have it. And I just I enjoy it. It's something else that I'm and it's freeing.
Dr. McCoy:I'm I'm god when I'm riding. You know? Especially when it's paranormal. If I want them to get killed and come back, hey. I can do it.
Dr. McCoy:So that's why. Would you call it therapy, doc? Yeah. Yeah. Therapy.
Betsy Smith:So, we just have a couple of minutes left. One of the things I I want to hear about you hear from you is where do you think we're headed as a profession as we go into 2025, and and a a pro police administration in Washington? Do you think that's gonna be good for us? What what's your thoughts on that? It it has to
Dr. McCoy:be good for us. It has to be good for confidence. It's going to have to filter down as we talked about, earlier, filter down to the police chiefs. The sheriffs are usually more pro law enforcement than the police chiefs that are sometimes appointed by people that are not necessarily pro law enforcement. So if your boss up here is you went into this because you wanted to help people and you wanted to enforce the law and you have someone that's not necessarily of that same mindset, then it's a challenge.
Dr. McCoy:If everybody is on the same page, and I think that's gonna happen as time goes by, that we will things will go back to being, as it filters down, more pro law enforcement. I think we need, better training. We we need, higher salaries so that we will attract these people that could go into plumbing and make a lot more money, you know, not have to wear a uniform. Nobody's shooting at them. So, benefits and community show our law enforcement and make our law enforcement part of the community.
Dr. McCoy:I had one sheriff that did that. Coffee with your policemen. Policemen walking a beat so that they can meet their people. Let's get them back together with the people.
Betsy Smith:How important is it to the to the wellness of your average police officer to know that their leadership supports them, that their community supports them?
Dr. McCoy:How important is that? It's extremely important. I don't care what you do. You want to feel appreciated. This is not an easy job.
Dr. McCoy:You're sacrificing yourself and your family to some extent to do it. And just now just hearing, hey. We really do appreciate you. Thank you for being out there doing little things for again, working together with the citizens. So they hear these things.
Dr. McCoy:Gosh. We're so glad that you're here. I feel so much safer knowing that you're walking down the street. It is absent for everybody. You know, every once in a while, one of my patients would say, you know, I really appreciate you and I'm like, oh, why?
Dr. McCoy:That's so nice. We all we all need that. It makes us stand a little taller, put our shoulders back, tighten our belt, and go forward.
Betsy Smith:Absolutely. Doc, where can people find the books? Where can they find you, follow you, and keep up on what you and Winston are doing?
Dr. McCoy:They can just Google me, and my website will come up for my books. And, also, I'm on on Twitter, cop doc 1. That's me on Twitter. So they can find me by just googling me. I'm out there.
Betsy Smith:I love it. I gotta tell you. I can't thank you enough for spending time with us today. And if you'd like more information about the National Police Association, visit us at nationalpolice.org.
Narrator:Every day, the brave men and women of law enforcement put their lives on the line to keep us safe. But they need our help to continue their mission. Activist politicians, progressive prosecutors, the ACLU, and the rest of the anti police forces, receive 1,000,000 in donations from extremist pro criminal elements like George Soros and Woke corporations. The National Police Association is fighting them in courts around the country, including the United States Supreme Court, defending officers who are being attacked for doing their jobs. Additionally, the National Police Association works year round to pass tough on crime legislation to put and keep criminals behind bars.
Narrator:Consider going to nationalpolice.org and donating to keep us in the fight. Together, we can win. That is nationalpolice.org.