Just Show Up: The Power of Peer Support in Policing

Foreign.

Was empty.

Second shift cleared out an hour ago.

Home to families or bars or whatever.

Waited on the other side of the badge.

Darnell Price sat alone at his desk, staring at a report he had been trying to write for 45 minutes.

The cursor blinked, waiting.

He hadn't typed a word.

Darnell had been a detective for five years, Special Victims, the kind of work that makes most people change the subject.

At parties.

He'd built cases against predators that would turn your stomach.

Interviewed children who'd been through things no kid should know exists, testified in court without flinching, looked defense attorneys in the eye while they tried to tear apart victims on the stand.

He'd watched things that would break most people.

And he kept showing up, day after day, year after year.

But tonight, sitting in that empty squad room with the fluorescent lights buzzing overhead, Darnell couldn't make himself type a single word.

Six weeks earlier, he had closed the biggest case of his career.

18 months of undercover work, evidence review, coordination with federal agencies, operation broken silence.

14 children rescued from a trafficking ring that stretched across three states.

Everyone caught it.

A success.

Everyone was patting themselves on the back, and Darnell Price was falling apart.

This is the story of what happens when the container gets full, when compartmentalization stops working.

And it's the story of a colleague who noticed, who didn't have answers, who didn't try to fix anything.

He just showed up.

We've been in your sho lying awake at 3am replaying that call over and over again, feeling hypervigilant 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.

I'm Michael Simpkins, and this is Police Speak.

Before we go further, today's episode discusses child exploitation investigations, cumulative trauma, and their psychological effects on the officer who worked these cases.

We're also going to talk about isolation, relationship strain, and what it looks like when someone is struggling to stay afloat.

If any of that hits close to home for you right now, the resources in our show notes are there for a reason.

Last episode, we talked about the appreciate phase of peer support, learning to notice when a colleague isn't okay, developing that situational awareness most of us already use on the street but forget to apply to the people standing next to us.

Today, we're moving to the next step.

The harder step.

Honestly, what do you actually do when you notice someone struggling?

The answer might surprise you.

Because sometimes the most powerful thing you can do is nothing.

Not nothing as in ignore it.

Nothing as in resist your instinct to solve, to fix, to make it better.

Sometimes you just show up and stay.

This is the story of two detectives in the same special victims division, both working cases that would keep most people up at night, Both carrying weight that civilians can't imagine.

One of them was drowning.

The other decided to sit on the shore and wait.

To understand how Darnel ended up staring at a blank screen in an empty squad room, you need to understand who he was before, what made him good at his work, and what made him vulnerable to it.

Darnell grew up in Atlanta, first in his family, first in his family to go to college, criminal justice degree, the whole nine yards.

His father worked for the Postal Service for 32 years.

His mother taught elementary school.

Good people, stable home.

The kind of upbringing that doesn't usually produce cops, if you believe the stereotypes.

But Darnell had always been drawn to work that mattered.

Not just a paycheck, a purpose.

When he graduated from the academy at 25, he told himself he was going to make a difference.

He did three years in patrol.

Handled it fun.

Liked the variety, the unpredictability.

Got good reviews, no complaints.

Then a spot opened up in investigations, and Darnell put in for it.

Specifically, he wanted special victims.

Now, if you've ever worked svu, you might wonder why anyone would choose that assignment.

It's not like it's a secret what you're signing up for.

Child abuse, sexual assault, trafficking.

The worst things human beings do to each other.

But there's a certain type of officer who gravitates toward that work.

The ones who believe that what they do can protect the most vulnerable.

The suffering means something if you can stop it from happening to the next kid.

Darnell was that type.

I wanted to do something that mattered.

Protect kids, make a difference.

All that.

He got assigned to the human trafficking task force to join operation with federal agencies, local departments across the region.

High profile work, important work.

And work that would slowly fill up a container Darnell didn't know he was building.

Here's the thing about compartmentalization.

Every cop learns some version of it.

You have to.

You can't take every call home with you.

You can't lie awake thinking about every victim.

Every scene every moment of human cruelty you witnessed during your shift.

So you build a box.

You put the bad stuff in the box, you close the lid, and you go home.

For some officers, this works.

They've got outlets, family, hobbies, faith, whatever.

The box gets emptied regularly.

The system stays in balance.

For other officers, the box just keeps filling up.

First few years, fine.

You do the job, you go home.

Don't bring it with you.

That's what everybody says, right?

And I was good at it.

Or I thought I was.

That last part is doing a lot of work.

Because while Darnell was building his reputation as a solid investigator, while he was closing cases and getting commendations, while everyone saw a detective who had it together, something else was happening underneath.

His marriage was falling apart.

He and Keisha had been together since college, Married the year after he joined the department.

She was a hospital administrator.

Long hours, high stress.

The kind of job that should have made her understand his.

But it's one thing to understand intellectually that your spouse works difficult cases.

It's another thing to live with someone who comes home and isn't really there.

She said, I stopped coming home even when I was home.

I don't know when that started.

Didn't notice it happening.

The divorce was finalized two years ago.

They share custody of their daughter, Amaya, who just turned seven, every other weekend.

That's what Darnell gets now, 48 hours twice a month to be a father.

And lately, even those hours have felt like something he's surviving rather than enjoying.

But we're getting ahead of ourselves here.

Operation Broken Silence started in spring of last year.

Multi jurisdictional, long term, the kind of operation that consumes everything.

Darnell was on point for the local task force component 18 months of his life.

Maybe more than 18 months, honestly, because the preparation started long before the official launch.

I'm not going to get into the details of what he saw during that operation.

You don't need to know.

And frankly, I don't want to put those images in your head.

What I will tell you is this.

Evidence review in trafficking cases means watching hundreds of hours, thousands of hours.

Images and videos that were created to exploit children now being cataloged and and analyzed to build cases against the people who created and distributed them.

Every frame is a crime.

Every frame is a child who was hurt.

And someone has to watch.

I watched thousands of hours of material that I can't unsee.

Interviewed kids who'd been through things I can't describe.

Built cases against people who don't deserve to breathe the same air as the rest of us.

For 18 months, Darnell did this work.

He showed up every day.

He was professional, thorough, effective.

His supervisors noted his dedication.

What they didn't note was what it was costing him.

There's a pattern that trauma researchers have documented in officers who work sustained exposure cases.

Trafficking, child crimes, homicides.

The adrenaline of the mission keeps you going.

You're focused on the goal, on the victims, on the bad guys.

You don't have time to fall apart.

Then the case closes.

The mission ends.

And your brain, which has been holding everything at bay, suddenly has nothing else to focus on.

That's when things overflow.

I used to be able to shut it off, just put it away somewhere.

Now I can't.

It's like there's nowhere left to put it.

Operation Broken Silence concluded.

Six weeks before, Darnell sat in that empty squad room staring at a blank report.

14 children rescued, multiple convictions.

A network dismantled by every external measure.

A massive success.

What nobody talks about is what happens to the officers after the mission ends.

See, during a long term operation, adrenaline becomes your fuel.

The mission gives you purpose.

You're focused on the victims, the bad guys, the goal.

There's no time to fall apart because there's too much to do.

Then it ends.

The adrenaline stops.

The mission completes.

And suddenly your brain has nothing else to focus on.

The walls you built to get through the operation don't come down cleanly.

They collapse.

That's what happened to Darnell.

Everyone's patting themselves on the back, and I can't sleep.

I snap at everyone.

I look at my daughter and I see the victims.

I can't turn it off anymore.

If you walk through the special victim squad room in those weeks after the operation, you probably wouldn't have noticed Darnell Price was drowning.

He still showed up, still worked his cases, still sat at his desk and stared at his computer.

From a distance, he looked like a detective doing his job.

But the details told a different story.

He had lost 15 pounds, and Darnell wasn't a big guy to be.

His suits hung differently now.

There was a coffee stain on his collar he never would have let slide before.

The dark circles under his eyes had become a permanent feature.

The officers who worked near him noticed he'd gone quiet.

Darnell used to make coffee, talk in the morning.

Nothing deep, just the normal banter that keeps a squad room human.

Forged traffic complaints about the brass, the connector traffic.

That connector traffic, man.

45 minutes to go.

Eight miles that had stopped.

He ate lunch alone now at his desk were not at all.

And the biggest Tell the one that should have set off alarms for anyone paying attention.

He'd stop talking about his daughter.

Amaya was Darnell's whole world.

Every other weekend and the occasional Wednesday dinner, he used to light up when he mentioned her.

Show pictures on his phone, complain about the frozen soundtrack being permanently stuck in his head.

That stopped, too.

She's 7, and I'm sitting there with her at the zoo, and I can't.

I can't be there.

I'm looking at her, but I'm seeing.

By the time Darnell sat staring at that blank report, he was sleeping three or four hours a night, and only with the help of bourbon.

Two glasses used to be his limit.

Then three, then four.

He told himself it was temporary, just until things settled down.

Things weren't settling down.

Here's what Darnell believed in those weeks that nobody noticed that the walls he'd spent eight years building were still solid, that he was handling it Badly, maybe.

But handling it, he was wrong.

Someone had noticed.

Corey Simmons worked in the cubicle row adjacent to Darnell Price.

Different subunit.

Corey was in child abuse investigations while Darnell was trafficking.

But same division, same building, same world.

They weren't close friends, never had been.

You know how it is in a large department.

You work alongside people for years, nod at them in the hallway, maybe share a case, overlap here and there.

But you don't really know them.

You don't know what keeps them up at night or what they go home to.

Corey and Darnell had that kind of relationship.

Professional respect, occasional small talk.

Nothing deeper.

But Corey had noticed something most people hadn't.

The weight loss, the short temper, the way he stares at his computer like he's a thousand miles away.

And he stopped talking about his daughter.

He used to talk about her constantly.

Why did Corey notice when others didn't?

To answer that, you need to know Corey's story.

Corey Simmons grew up in a house where violence was the background noise.

His father drank, his father hit, not Corey.

Usually he was too small to be much of a target, but his mother caught the worst of it.

Night after night, year after year.

Cory was 11 when his mother finally left.

Packed up while his father was at work, grabbed Corey from school, and drove to her sister's house three counties away.

That drive is seared into Corey's memory, not because it was traumatic.

It was actually the most hopeful moment of his childhood, because his mother had finally chosen to leave, had finally decided that whatever came next was better than what they were living through.

My dad was.

He was violent not to Me, usually.

My mom caught most of it.

We got out when I was 11.

I don't talk about it much, but that's why I do this job.

Protect kids who can't protect themselves.

That's why Corey worked child abuse cases.

He understood in a way that can't be taught, what it feels like to be a kid who can't protect themselves, who watches suffering and can't make it stop, who waits for someone to notice and do something.

That experience also gave Corey a particular skill.

He could read suffering in people who were trying to hide it.

His mother had spent years pretending everything was fine.

Covering bruises, making excuses, smiling through pain that should have been visible from space.

Corey learned to see through that mask, to read the signs that people try to conceal.

The micro expressions, the body language, the absences that speak louder than words.

He'd been reading those signs in Darnell Price for weeks now.

Corey wasn't watching Darnell because he was nosy or because he thought he had some special insight.

He was watching because something felt off.

The same something that used to feel off in his childhood home before the worst nights.

And unlike back then, Corey wasn't 11 anymore.

He wasn't powerless.

He could do something.

The question was what?

Three weeks before that night in the squad room, Corey called a case that hit him hard.

Harder than usual.

Four year old girl, severe physical abuse.

Father was the perpetrator.

The child survived, if you can call it that.

Multiple broken bones, some of which had healed and been rebroken.

Evidence of prolonged abuse going back years.

She was in foster care now, with permanent disabilities that would follow her for the rest of her life.

Corey did what he always did.

He worked the case thorough, professional, documented everything.

Built a case that would put the father away for a long time.

I went home that night and cried in my wife's arms for an hour.

And I called peer support the next morning.

That's what I've learned to do.

That sentence might not sound remarkable, but if you've been in law enforcement for any length of time, you know how rare it is cried.

Called peer support.

Those are two things.

Most officers are taught by culture, if not by training.

Never to do, or at least never to admit to Cory did both because Corey had learned something that Darnell hadn't.

I want to pause here, though, and talk about something.

Two different ways.

Officers can handle the weight of this job.

Some officers build walls.

They look tough and effective, never show weakness, handle their business without leaning on anyone.

This looks like strength, feels like strength, and for a while it works.

But it's not actually strength.

It's avoidance dressed up in a uniform or survival strategy that works until it doesn't.

And when it fails, it fails hard.

Because the officer who's built their identity on never needing help has no infrastructure for asking for it.

Other officers build something different.

Not walls, bridges.

They reach out instead of holding in.

Admit that this work affects them, because it does.

And pretending otherwise is a lie.

These officers don't go through hard cases without being impacted.

They go through them with support systems in place, with people they can talk to, with habits and practices that help them process instead of just contain.

Corey had built bridges consciously over years.

His wife, Tanya, was a big part of that.

She worked as a school counselor, spent her days with kids who were dealing with trauma, family dysfunction, the whole spectrum of childhood challenges.

She understood what it meant to carry other people's pain.

She also understood that you can't carry it alone.

My wife Tanya, she's always telling me, you can't pour from an empty cup.

I used to think that was some counselor bullshit.

Took me a while to figure out she was right.

Tanya taught Corey something he'd never learned growing up.

That being vulnerable isn't weakness.

That needing people isn't failure.

That the strongest thing you can do sometimes is admit you're not okay.

When Corey joined the department, he made a decision.

He wasn't going to become his father.

Isolated, angry, dealing with his demons through violence and alcohol.

And he wasn't going to handle this job alone.

So he built his infrastructure.

He used peer support when he needed it.

He talked to Tanya about the hard cases.

Not the details, but the weight.

He maintained friendships outside the job.

He kept going to church most Sundays, even when he didn't feel like it, because the community mattered.

Tanya and I go to church most Sundays.

Not always.

This job doesn't make that easy.

But when I'm there, it helps.

Reminds me there's something bigger than the next call.

That infrastructure is why Corey could catch a case like the four year old abuse victim, go home, fall apart in his wife's arms, call peer support the next morning, and show up to work functional.

Not healed.

Not over it, but functional.

Moving through it instead of just containing it.

And that same infrastructure is why Corey recognized what was happening to Darnell.

Because Corey knew what it looked like when someone was trying to handle things alone.

When the walls were crumbling and the person inside them couldn't see it.

He'd grown up watching that.

He wasn't going to watch it again without doing something about it.

So what do you do when you recognize a colleague is drowning?

This is where most of us get stuck, because our instincts are all wrong.

The instinct is to confront, to corner the person and demand to know what's going on.

The instinct is to fix, to offer advice.

Have you tried talking to someone?

You should really think about taking some time off.

The instinct is to solve the problem because that's what we're trained to do.

Problems exist to be solved.

We're action oriented people sitting with discomfort feels like failure.

Corey knew all this.

He felt the same instincts, but he also knew something else, something his wife had taught him and something his own experience had confirmed.

Sometimes people don't need you to fix anything.

They just need you to be there.

I'm not trying to fix him or counsel him or give him advice.

I'm just showing up, bringing him coffee without asking, sitting near him at lunch even when he doesn't talk, mentioning my own struggles so he knows he's not alone.

That's what Corey decided to do.

Not confront, not fix, just show up.

This is the listen phase of peer support in action, and I want to be clear about what it is and what it isn't.

The listen phase isn't about talking.

It's about being present, available, engaged, without an agenda.

It's not waiting for your turn to give advice.

It's not mentally rehearsing what you're going to say to solve their problem.

It's genuinely being there with no expectation of how the conversation should go.

For officers trained to act, trained to solve, trained to fix, this is one of the hardest skills to develop.

Everything in you wants to do something, make it better, speed up the process.

But sometimes the most helpful thing you can do is resist that urge to sit in the discomfort with someone instead of trying to make it go away.

Corey understood this, and he started practicing it with Darnell.

It started small.

Coffee.

One morning, about three weeks after the operation ended, Corey walked by Darnell's desk on his way back from the break room.

He was carrying two cups.

He set one on Darnell's desk without saying a word, just a nod, then kept walking.

Darnell looked at the cup for a long moment.

Didn't say thank you, didn't acknowledge it at all, really, but he drank it.

The next day, Corey did it again.

And the day after that.

By the end of the week, it was a routine.

Corey brought Darnell coffee, Darnell drank it.

Neither of them talked about it.

Then Corey started sitting near Darnell at lunch.

Not with him exactly, just near one table over in the break room.

Close enough that conversation would be possible if Darnell wanted it.

Darnell didn't want it.

He sat in silence, eating whatever he was eating, staring at his phone or at nothing.

Corey didn't push.

He just sat there, present, available, not expecting anything.

Most days, he didn't say a word.

I'd eat my lunch, he'd eat his.

Or not eat some days, and then we both go back to work.

I wasn't looking for a deep conversation, just letting him know he wasn't as alone as he thought.

This went on for weeks.

Coffee every morning, lunch.

Proximity most days, small nods in the hallway.

From the outside, it probably looked like nothing.

Two colleagues who happened to be in the same places at the same time, unremarkable.

But Corey was doing something important.

He was establishing a pattern, a rhythm, a consistency that Darnell could count on even if he couldn't acknowledge it.

Here's what the science says, though.

No cop would say it this way.

When you're amped up, stressed out, running on, no sleep, having someone calm nearby can actually settle you down.

Not through advice, just through presence.

Your brain picks up on their calm and starts to match it.

It's biology, not touchy Philly stuff.

What Corey was doing with Darnell was offering that steady presence.

In the midst of Darnell's chaos, here was someone consistent, not trying to change anything, just being there.

And slowly, so slowly, neither of them noticed at first, something started to shift.

About two weeks into this routine, Corey made a choice that changed everything.

He decided to share his own struggle.

This is something that makes a lot of people uncomfortable.

We're taught, especially in law enforcement, not to show weakness, not to admit that the job is getting to us.

Vulnerability is dangerous.

It can be used against you.

But Corey understood something most officers miss.

That vulnerability is also credibility.

If you approach someone who's struggling and you seem like you've got it all together, they're going to dismiss you.

They'll think this person doesn't understand.

They've never been where I am.

They can't help me.

But if you approach them and you're honest about your own struggles, suddenly you're not an outsider looking in.

You're a fellow traveler on the same road.

That call three weeks ago messed me up, too.

Still working through it.

That's what Corey said one day at lunch, sitting at the adjacent table, not making a big deal of it.

He didn't wait for a response.

He didn't expect one.

He just put it out there.

And then he kept eating his sandwich.

Here's what Corey didn't say.

He didn't say, so if you ever need to talk because that puts pressure on the other person to respond.

He didn't say I know exactly what you're going through, because he didn't, and claiming to would have been false and dismissive.

He didn't say, you should try peer support like I did, because advice at that moment would have felt like judgment.

He just shared his own reality, briefly, honestly, and then let it sit there.

I didn't know what to say.

Some guy I barely know tells me he's messed up over a case and what am I supposed to do with that?

I didn't say anything, just nodded.

But it was different.

No, I wasn't the only one.

That's the power of appropriate self disclosure.

Not making it about you, not seeking your own support from the person you're trying to help, but naming your own humanity in a way that gives them permission to name theirs.

I messed up too.

It's one of the most powerful things you could say to someone who's struggling in silence, not because it fixes anything, but because it cracks the illusion that they're the only one.

Corey kept showing up.

Coffee every morning, lunch most days, occasional mentions of his own processing, never too much, never making it about himself, just enough to normalize the reality that this work affects everyone.

And Darnell, despite every instinct telling him to push away, to isolate further, to rebuild his walls, Darnell started to notice that someone was there.

I want to be careful here, because breakthrough is a word that can create false expectations.

When we hear breakthrough in the context of mental health, we picture dramatic moments, tearful confessions, emotional damn bursts, the clouds parting and the sun coming through.

That's not what happened with Darnell.

Real breakthroughs, the kind that actually matter, are usually quieter than that, smaller.

They look like nothing from the outside.

One sentence, one honest moment, one crack in a wall that's been solid for years.

It was a Thursday, late shift.

The squad room was emptying out, people heading home after a long day.

Darnell was at his desk, staring at his computer.

Same posture he'd been in for weeks, same blank expression.

Corey walked by on his way out, paused Darnell's desk.

Hey, he said.

You good?

It was the same question.

Everyone asks the question that usually gets a reflexive yeah, fine, and then everyone moves on.

Darnell opened his mouth to give that reflexive answer, and then he didn't.

She's seven and I'm sitting there with her and I can't.

I can't be there not like this.

That was it.

One sentence, barely more than a whisper.

But do you understand what it cost Darnell to say that?

Eight years of building walls.

Eight years of I'm fine and don't worry about it.

And handling his business alone.

Eight years of believing that showing struggle meant failure.

And in one moment, he cracked the wall.

Not for long, not wide.

Just a crack.

Just a sentence.

But it was honest.

And here's where Corey did something most people get wrong.

He didn't rush to fill the silence.

He didn't immediately offer advice.

He didn't say, have you thought about talking to someone?

Or, man, you should really take some time off.

He didn't try to fix it.

Yeah, I hear you, man.

Three words.

Yeah, I hear you.

That's the listen phase, right there.

In three words.

Not, let me tell you what to do.

Not here's how to solve your problem.

Not I know exactly how you feel.

Just I hear you.

Acknowledgement without judgment, presence without agenda, witness without trying to change anything.

Corey stood there for another moment.

Not awkwardly, not expectantly, just there.

Then he said, I'll see you tomorrow, man.

And he left.

I sat there for another hour, staring at nothing.

Couldn't tell you what I was thinking.

Just sat there.

Felt different, though.

Not good different.

Just different.

That's what showing up does.

That's what being present does.

It doesn't solve the problem.

It doesn't make the pain go away.

It doesn't undo the trauma or fill the container or magically restore someone to who they were before.

But it cracks the isolation.

It introduces the radical possibility that you don't have to carry this alone.

And sometimes that's the beginning of everything.

And I want to be clear about what didn't happen next.

Darnell didn't go home that night and call a therapist.

He didn't wake up the next morning a changed man.

He didn't have some dramatic breakdown where all his walls came tumbling down and he finally got the help he needed.

Recovery doesn't work like that.

Not for anyone, and especially not for someone who spent eight years building the fortress Darnell had built.

What happened was smaller, quieter, easier to miss if you weren't paying attention.

The next morning, when Corey brought the coffee, he Darnell said thanks out loud, making eye contact.

First time in weeks.

At lunch, Darnell said, at Corey's table instead of the one nearby.

They didn't talk much, but they sat together.

A few days later, Corey mentioned that he had a appointment with peer support that afternoon.

Nothing dramatic, just mentioned it in passing.

The way you might mention a dentist appointment.

Still doing that?

Darnell asked.

Yeah, corey said.

It helps.

Darnell nodded, didn't say anything else, but he asked.

I wasn't pushing, wasn't asking if he wanted me to set up a meeting for him or anything like that.

I just kept showing up, kept being honest about my own stuff.

Kept leaving the door open.

That's the thing about the listen phase.

It's not a one time intervention.

It's an ongoing practice.

You show up day after day, not expecting anything, not trying to accelerate the process, just being present.

And over time, sometimes weeks, sometimes months, trust builds.

The wall cracks a little more.

The person starts to believe that maybe they're not alone.

A week after that first honest sentence, Corey and Darnell were finishing lunch.

Squad room was mostly empty, people coming and going, nobody paying attention.

Corey asks casually, you doing anything Sunday morning?

Darnell shrugged.

Probably not.

Don't have Amaya this weekend.

There's a group of us that runs in Piedmont Park.

Nothing serious, just a few guys from the department, couple of firefighters.

We do like three miles, then get breakfast after Waffle House.

Usually scattered, smothered, covered.

He paused.

You used to run, right?

I almost said no automatically.

That's what I would have said a month ago.

No, I'm good.

But something stopped me.

Maybe it was the way he wasn't pushing.

Maybe I was just tired of being alone.

I don't know.

Darnell went to the run.

He couldn't finish the three miles.

He'd let his fitness slip too far in recent months.

But he finished two.

And then he sat at a diner table with four guys he barely knew, eating pancake and half listening to them complain about their departments.

It wasn't therapy.

It wasn't some profound moment of healing.

But it was connection.

It was showing up somewhere other than work and home.

It was letting other human beings see him, even if he wasn't ready to be fully honest with him.

I'm not asking you to go to therapy.

I'm asking you to grab a coffee, to take a walk, to show up to a morning run.

Small stuff.

Stuff that doesn't feel like getting help because that phrase is loaded for most of us.

Just human stuff.

That's the lift phase in its earliest form.

We'll talk about it more in the next episode.

But the transition from listen to lift isn't a hard line.

It's gradual.

It starts with small suggestions, low stakes invitations.

Things that don't feel like interventions because they're not.

They're just human connection.

Corey didn't tell Darnell to call a therapist.

He didn't sign him up for EAP or slide a pamphlet under his door.

He invited him to a run and then to breakfast and then, over time, to other small things that slowly rebuilt Darnell's capacity to connect with other people instead of pushing them away where they are now.

I talked to both Darnell and Corey about a month after that first honest conversation in the squad room.

Darnell is still struggling.

I want to be clear about that.

He hasn't had some miraculous recovery.

He's still not sleeping great.

He's still processing years of exposure to things no one should have to see.

He's still figuring out who he is after the container overflowed.

But he's not alone anymore.

He's been going to the Sunday runs.

Not every week, but most.

He's talking to Corey.

More actual conversations, not just nods in the hallway.

He called the peer support line once, hung up before anyone answered, then called back the next day and actually talked to someone.

Baby steps.

But stents.

I don't know if I'm going to be okay.

I don't know if I can keep doing this job, but I'm going to try something.

Corey keeps talking about peer support.

Maybe I'll actually go.

His relationship with Amaia is still complicated.

He's still not where he wants to be as a father.

But the last time he had her for the weekend, he.

He took her to the zoo, sat on a bench and watched her look at the elephants.

He said it was the first time in months he felt present with her.

Not thinking about work, not seeing victims, just watching his daughter be 7 years old.

She held my hand the whole time.

Even though she says she's getting too old for that.

But she held my hand.

Corey is still processing his own case.

The four year old.

He's got an appointment scheduled with the therapist.

Tanya finally convinced him it was time for more than peer support.

But he's not waiting until he's fixed to show up for Darnell.

That's the thing he wants other officers to understand.

You don't have to be perfect.

Hell, I'm not.

I'm still working through my own stuff.

But you can show up anyway.

That's kind of.

So let's bring this back to what you can use.

What did Corey actually do in this story?

He noticed he paid attention to a colleague who was changing, losing weight, going quiet, withdrawing.

That's the appreciate phase we talked about last episode.

Then he showed up without an agenda, without a plan to fix anything.

Just coffee, lunch, proximity Small gestures that said, I see you without saying anything at all.

He shared his own struggle not to make it about himself, just to normalize the reality that this work affects everyone.

To give Darnell permission to not be okay.

And when Darnell finally said something honest, Corey didn't launch into advice mode.

He just acknowledged it.

Yeah, I hear you.

That's the listen phase.

It's not complicated, but it's not easy either, because everything in our training tells us to act, to solve, to fix.

We're not comfortable with discomfort.

We want to make things better, and just sitting there feels like failure.

But sometimes the most courageous thing you can do is resist that urge to sit in the discomfort with someone, to just be there, present, available, not trying to change anything.

Sometimes that's what saves someone.

So if you're in a place like Darnell was isolated and overwhelmed, I want you to hear something.

You're not as invisible as you think.

Someone has probably noticed.

Someone is probably waiting for a sign that you're open to connection.

And if you can let them in, even just a crack, even just one honest sentence, it might be the start of something.

You don't have to figure everything out.

You don't have to have a plan.

You just have to let someone stand next to you.

And if you're like Corey, watching a colleague struggle, not sure what to do, here's your permission.

You don't need answers.

You don't need solutions.

You just need to show up, bring them coffee, sit near them at lunch, mention that you're struggling, too.

Keep showing up and wait.

Next episode, we continue the listen phase with a different kind of story.

Kevin Brennan spent 12 years on the job before the slow erosion started.

Not one bad call, not a critical incident, just a daily grind wearing him down until he couldn't remember why he had become a cop in the first place.

His training partner, Elena saw what was happening, and she didn't stage an intervention or corner him with we need to talk.

She just asked if he wanted to grab a coffee after shift.

That's it.

That's the whole thing.

That episode is called Coffee and Truth, and it's about what happens when someone creates space for honesty without forcing it.

Until then, take care of yourselves.

Take care of each other.

I'm Michael Simpkins, and this is Police Speak.

If this conversation landed, take the next step.

Step.

Go to the show notes and complete the five minute PR6 assessment.

You'll see your current resilience baseline across six domains.

Where you're strong, where you're vulnerable, it's the same tool we use in RFA certification.

Want to be on the podcast?

We're looking for officers who've managed accumulated exposure and figured out what actually works, not clean recovery stories.

We need the setbacks, the plateaus, the tools that failed and the ones that stuck.

Hit the link in the show notes, fill out the form, we keep it confidential and work with you on how your story gets told.

You can also join the Police Beat Community officers having these conversations every day, not just when the podcast drops links in the show notes.

Thanks for listening.

See you next week.