A Good Shoot Can Still Mess You Up

Foreign.

Dale Pritchett has been a deputy in Stillwater County, Montana for 28 years.

Years.

Third generation law enforcement.

His grandfather was town marshal back when that meant something.

His father was a deputy until he died of a heart attack at 58.

Dale's a patrol sergeant now.

Firearms instructor on the call out team when they need an extra body in a County with 18 deputies covering 1,800 square miles, everybody does extra jobs.

November 2022, Dale responded to a domestic call alone.

Subject was a 19 year old kid strung out on meth, armed with a hunting rifle.

The kid came at Dale.

Dale fired.

Subject down.

Clean shoot.

Subject's father thanked him at the hospital.

Three years later, Dale still thinking about.

We've been in your shoes.

Lying awake at 3am replaying that call over and over again.

Feeling hyper vigilant at the grocery store.

Watching peers struggle and not knowing what to say.

Police speak was created by officers tired of seeing good people break down.

We understand the job because we've lived it and we've processed what you're experiencing.

You'll hear stories about what's worked after difficult calls.

A framework that outlines your resilience across six key areas.

We provide peer support skills you can use starting tomorrow.

Build resilience before adversity overwhelms it.

Officers teaching officers.

Good shoot can still mess you up.

Justified don't mean it doesn't haunt you.

That's the thing nobody tells you in the academy.

Justified doesn't equal easy.

Legal doesn't equal livable.

Dale did everything right.

Department cleared him.

DA declined to file.

Subject's dad shook his hand and said he knew his son made his own choices.

That thank you stuck in Dale's throat.

Still does.

After the shooting, the department brought in a psychologist from Billings.

Two hour drive each way.

She came out three times.

Asked Dale how he felt.

I don't know how I felt.

Still don't.

She was nice enough.

Just didn't help much.

That's where it ended.

Three sessions.

No follow up, no local resources.

The nearest peer support team is 120 miles away.

Dale went back to work.

Patrol shifts.

Firearms qualification on call for the team.

Everything looked fine from the outside.

But Dale started drinking more.

Not falling down drunk, just more.

A couple beers after shift became three, then four.

Helps him sleep.

Except it doesn't.

He wakes up at 3am most nights.

Sometimes it's the shot replaying.

Sometimes it's nothing he can name.

Just awake, staring at the ceiling while Linda sleeps next to him.

Sleep less.

Get short with Linda over nothing.

No, that's not right, but don't know how to fix it.

Dale runs a small ranch on the side.

40 head of cattle.

Physical work helps fixing fences, moving cattle, checking water.

Can't think when you're working, but the thoughts come back every time he stops moving.

In a county this size, everybody knows everybody.

Dale knew the subject's family before the shooting.

Still knows them after.

The subject's father raises horses.

Good man by all accounts.

His son got into meth.

Things went bad.

Dale knows the whole story.

Doesn't make it easier.

See each other at the feed store sometimes nod, keep moving.

What are you supposed to say?

Dale carries something the investigators never measured.

The subject's dad thanked him, acknowledged his son was armed, was a threat, and made his own choices.

Dale can't stop thinking about it anyway.

Three years in, Dale's wife Linda tells him he needs to talk to someone.

The younger deputies at the office mention peer support programs.

One of them shows Dale the Police Speak podcast.

On his phone during a shift.

Dale listens, hears other officers talking about stuff they went through.

Not therapy talk, just cops talking to cops.

Deputy said I should listen.

Did.

Wife said maybe sharing would help.

Don't know that I want to, but if some other deputy in the middle of nowhere doesn't have to white knuckle it like I did, that's something.

Here's what nobody talks about.

What happens when you're 120 miles from the nearest peer support team, when the department psychologist drove out three times and that was it.

Dale's not alone in this.

Thousands of deputies in rural departments face the same long distances.

Thin resources.

Cultural resistance to asking for help.

Resources out here are thin.

Nearest pier supports 120 miles.

If you got nothing close, you're on your own.

That's a problem.

It's not just geography, it's culture.

Small departments, everybody knows your business.

Admitting you're struggling feels like admitting weakness feels like making a big deal out of something you should handle.

Dale's third generation law enforcement.

His dad worked until he dropped dead at 58.

Granddad never talked about what he saw as town marshal.

You just did the job.

But doing the job while drinking more, sleeping less, snapping at your wife over dishes left in the sink.

That's not sustainable.

Dael knows it, doesn't know what to do about it.

Three years is a long time to wait.

Dale's not in crisis.

He's not suicidal.

He's not falling apart.

He's showing up teaching firearms qual, running the ranch.

From the outside, he looks fine.

That's what makes this dangerous?

The assumption that if you're still working, you're okay.

The idea that a justified shoot shouldn't affect you because you did everything right.

This feels like the kind of thing I should have done two years ago, maybe three.

Waited too long.

That's probably part of the problem too.

Recognition is the first step.

Not the easy step, not the comfortable step, but the necessary one.

Dale's starting to see that justified doesn't equal unaffected.

That doing your job doesn't mean you're immune to it.

That waiting for it to go away on its own doesn't work.

So what's the answer for deputies like Dale?

For rural officers with no peer support nearby?

For departments with three psychologist visits and nothing after the crisis only system doesn't work.

It waits until you're broken, then offers help that's two hours away and ends after three sessions.

It assumes justified shoots don't leave marks.

The alternative is giving deputies tools before they need them.

Teaching them to recognize struggles early, not three years late.

Connecting them with other officers who've been there.

Prevention over crisis response.

That's the shift that needs to happen.

Online training means a deputy in Montana can access the same peer to peer resilience skills as someone in la.

Officers teaching officers practical tools from people who've done the job.

For Dale, having those skills earlier might have changed the timeline.

Might have given him language for what he was experiencing.

Might have shown him he wasn't the only deputy carrying something he couldn't name.

Three years is too long to wait.

But it's not too late to start.

Dale Pritchett's story isn't dramatic.

No breakdown, no crisis intervention.

Just a good deputy doing his job while quietly carrying weight he can't name and doesn't know how to set down.

That's the danger of the good shoot assumption.

The idea that justified equals fine.

That legal clearance equals emotional clearance.

Dale knows now he waited too long.

But he's starting to talk.

Starting to recognize that something's wrong.

That's not weakness.

That's the first step toward actually managing this instead of white knuckling through it.

Don't wait as long as I did to figure out something's wrong.

If you're a deputy in the middle of nowhere dealing with something you can't name, you're not alone.

The distance is real.

The lack of resources is real.

But the isolation doesn't have to be permanent.

Peer to peer resilience works because it's officers teaching officers.

No two hour drive, no three sessions in done.

Just practical tools from people who've been there.

This is Police Speak Officers teaching officers.

Visit policespeak.org RFA to learn more about Resilience First Aid certification.

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Thanks for listening.

See you next week.

Sam.