Poison Seeds

by Jeremy Rebmann

Most people know that a person who has served in the military is called a “veteran.” If you did one enlistment in Texas as a mess-hall cook, you’re a veteran—and your service should be honored.

We don’t really have a word like “veteran” for former law enforcement officers, though. We don’t think of them the same, either.

We know that military veterans deserve quality mental health care. Heck, veteran suicide hotlines pop up in my internet feed so much, I’m afraid I’ll click on one by accident. But how do we care for the mental health of the men and women in uniform who fight for us here at home?

My training Agent once told me he was squeamish about knives but was reluctant to say why. Once we built trust, he told me that when he was a new police officer, he responded to a domestic violence call. When the door opened, a man cut a woman across her stomach with a hunting knife. My training Agent instinctively caught the woman as her intestines spilled out on him while her boyfriend ran out the back door. He knew he couldn’t save her, but she asked him not to leave her alone. He had to live with the tension of whether to abandon her as she died or let the boyfriend-turned-killer escape. His hands shook a little and his eyes darted around when he told that story. It was as if it took him back to that terrifying moment.

One of my last partners had responded to a suicide call, and while just an arm’s length away, he witnessed a young man detonate his head with a high-powered rifle. My partner shivered as he recalled wiping brains off of his face. He was remembering something from seven years ago, but the memory was still fresh.

One of my best friends from the local department still thinks about the day he had to kill someone. He wrings his hands when he talks about it, even though it happened almost twenty years ago. It seems like a lot of my friends have a story like that. But they don’t have a VA clinic to go to so they can talk to someone about it.

I have put several bodies on a litter in my career. Some were still warm, some cold and stiff, and one burned to a cinder. I’ve seen the physical wounds on children and listened to them tell me about the emotional wounds left behind by predators. I’ve been shot at, treated a teammate’s gunshot, killed a man, and treated the gunshot wounds of a man who shot at me moments earlier.

I still remember with startling clarity the facial expressions and voices of victims telling me their horrors at the hands of criminals. I swore to pursue justice for them. I autopsied the bodies, packed bloody wounds, and took photographs of the carnage. I testified in court about the ways monsters carved up the bodies and souls of children for their own pleasure. I don’t know very many cops with even a few years of police experience who haven’t seen the shadow of the devil at a fresh crime scene.

Military veterans get pretty decent mental health care these days, after decades of being ignored—and that is truly wonderful. Everyone knows about the importance of veteran mental health. However, only about ten percent of military members ever see combat. Let’s be clear: I’m grateful for all of my fellow veterans, regardless of whether or not they were in Combat Arms. But by comparison, nearly every police officer I have met in 25 years in law enforcement has seen first-hand the results of rape, drug overdose, murder, incest, child abuse, the carnage of car wrecks, and violent assault. They don’t have a mental health hotline to call.

That’s 800,000 cops in the US—most of whom have no access to affordable mental health care. That doesn’t include all the retired police, either. And that spans from rural deputies to federal Special Agents. Yeah. Even the big, rich federal agencies like the FBI don’t have viable mental health programs. Most municipal departments struggle just to pay for body armor and gas for patrol cars. There’s certainly not enough money in their budget to get quality mental health care to every officer—every officer who fights to bury the seeds of lucid nightmares. They fight to bury those seeds only to see them rage into mental weeds years later in broken sleep, damaged relationships, or the bottom of a bottle.

Most cops I know love a good joke, enjoy good friends, and will laugh off their worst day. We know how to bottle it up. Make a joke about it. Move on. After all, there’s always another call coming. Another case to solve. There’s no time to linger on the seeds we’ve successfully buried in our minds.

Or is there?

We need affordable police mental health care options in the US. And it needs to happen soon. But if you don’t have good health care in your department, call your buddy. Call a local pastor. Call anyone. You deserve access to affordable mental health care. Until that day comes, we have to be there for each other.

Jeremy Rebmann
Author of Send Me: Chronicles of an FBI Sniper
eBook and paperback available at www.fbisniper.com or via Amazon.

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Jeremy was raised in a college town by a single mother. He graduated from the U.S. Air Force Academy and served as a Sortie Generation Officer, later becoming a Special Agent (Captain) in the U.S. Air Force Office of Special Investigations (OSI), where he was assigned to Air Force Special Operations Command (AFSOC). While serving in OSI, Jeremy was recruited by the FBI. He went on to serve 23 years as an FBI Special Agent, spending 21 of those years as a SWAT Operator, Assault Team Leader, Lead Medic, Senior Firearms Instructor, and Sniper Team Leader.

Jeremy has participated in medical mission trips to Mexico, Ghana, Uganda, Togo, Ecuador, Haiti, and Nicaragua. Providing free medical care to others has always felt like a natural extension of his faith as a follower of Jesus. After completing 32 years of government service, he now volunteers at his church, local shelters, food banks, and serves in a lay-counselor ministry.

He is the author of the top-10 best-selling non-fiction short story Glass Mountain, and the newly released book Send Me: Chronicles of an FBI Sniper, available on Amazon (https://a.co/d/iX29RoP) or at www.fbisniper.com.

As the Voice of the Veteran Community, The Havok Journal seeks to publish a variety of perspectives on a number of sensitive subjects. Unless specifically noted otherwise, nothing we publish is an official point of view of The Havok Journal or any part of the U.S. government.