The Phoenix Police Department has emphasized employee wellness over the last five years and has become a leader in employee wellness. Despite this, the Department continues to explore additional opportunities to provide more resources and expand employee wellness. In 2020, quiet rooms were added at Communications Bureau for dispatchers ,911 operators, and Laboratory Services Bureau personnel to have a place to take breaks and relieve stress. The Department also added InnerSpace Grounding Stations with a donation from the Phoenix Suns. The grounding stations were placed in police employees’ facilities, as police officers and communication operators have very stressful jobs. The grounding stations offer police employees an opportunity to have a rejuvenating experience, as the stations provide a place for peace, healing, and calm meditation (T. Thomas, personal communication, November 5, 2020).
In October 2020, EAU partnered with the Fetch Foundation, who provided two therapy dogs to EAU as a wellness tool (Facility service dog program memorandum, 2020). The two therapy dogs recently started working with their EAU handlers. They will be used to improve the level of service, and emotional support EAU provides employees and their families dealing with critical and traumatic incidents, stress, PTSD, depression, suicide ideology, and other mental health issues (Facility service dog program memorandum, 2020). The dogs will be used when EAU detectives go on walkabouts as a tool to break down barriers and encourage employees to feel more comfortable talking about wellness topics. The handler and the dogs will respond to critical and traumatic incidents when requested, sit in during critical incident debriefs, walk around bureaus such as Body-Worn Camera Detail when they are redacting footage of graphic incidents, EAU training, and any other request to assist with employee wellness (Facility service dog program memorandum, 2020).
The Department is also exploring expanding EAU, to include two civilian positions, as a resource to facilitate engagement with civilian employees. Civilian employees account for almost 25% of department staffing (Police employment totals, 2020) and having civilians at EAU would improve the unit’s understanding of different job stressors and as well as aid in identifying possible solutions to the stressors. EAU is also looking at providing more resources for soon-to-be and current retirees. EAU recently developed a retirement readiness class to prepare officers mentally and emotionally for their identity change from police officers to civilians. EAU is also currently requesting the City of Phoenix Human Resources to allow retired officers access to the City’s EAP and mental health services 12 months after retirement. Many retirees lose their sense of identity and no longer have the same support system after they retire, and many retirees go on fixed incomes, as they are not bringing home the same amount of money as when they were working. Allowing retirees access to free mental health resources for up to 12 months after retirement would enable retirees an opportunity to get help for many of the issues that come from the policing job.
The Phoenix Police Department is also currently exploring ways to improve its Early Warning system, emphasizing employee wellness. The new system will not go live until 2021, but the Department is looking at best practices from all over the country. The Department is expanding the mental health wellness checks to all sworn personnel and many civilian work assignments on January 1, 2022. This allows the Department’s contracted behavioral health team CPR time to have the counselors in place to meet the need of approximately 3,500 Phoenix Police employees receiving at least one mental health wellness check a year. A long-term wellness goal is to create an Employee Wellness Bureau and have a wellness center that provides physical and mental health providers, physical therapy, nutritionists, phlebotomists, and more. The Department will need to find financial resources to help with the initial cost of a location for this wellness center and to pay for the medical providers, that would provide services to Department employees.