Overcoming the Darkness: Shining Light on Mental Illness, Trauma, and Suicide in Law Enforcement

by Eric Weaver

How do you survive working in law enforcement without killing yourself? Those in uniform keep our world safe and often pay a high price for fulfilling their duty mentally and emotionally. Sgt. Eric Weaver (Ret.) can attest to this as he lives with mental illness and struggled with the issue of suicide on numerous occasions, including multiple hospitalizations, while serving as a police sergeant. Now he is a nationally recognized expert, speaker, instructor, and advocate on law enforcement mental health issues, including Officer Wellness and Crisis Intervention Team training. In Overcoming the Darkness, he gives a raw accounting of his own experiences coupled with knowledge and pragmatic advice gained from 20 years of instructing literally thousands in law enforcement about mental illness, cumulative stress, trauma, substance use, PTSD, and suicide.With cries of defunding police, the attacking of our profession, and so many other factors in our society, we often forget or put aside our emotional well-being. It is our sincere desire that this book is one of those resources that provides a practical approach to understanding the value and importance of our emotional wellness.

231 pages, Paperback

Published October 15, 2020

Reviews

[Spicy T AKA Mr. Tea · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read Weaver`s book in a few days. It`s very accessible. The book is part autobiography, part self-help, and part resource guide. It is clearly written for law enforcement but throughout he discusses how mental illness can affect everyone and that the reader is not alone. I was hoping to read about a training he created called the Emotionally Disturbed Person Response Team (EDPRT) training but he never does. He alludes to it but never explicitly discusses it except to say that his personal experiences helped shaped it and that it works. He does not cite any program evaluations.

Sgt. Weaver, retired from the Rochester Police Department (RPD), has a warm and inviting writing voice. It draws you in and makes you feel like if only all police departments were staffed by Sgt. Weavers, then policing wouldn’t be a problem. Except that for most of his career in law enforcement, Weaver was mean, brash, arrogant, and lacked self-esteem. His way to boost it was by wearing a badge and forcing people to recognize his authority. This took a terrible toll on his mental health where he’d be hospitalized multiple times. I am thankful that the officer finally got help, God, and became a thoughtful and reflective person.

There were some interesting insights that caught my attention. He discusses the “toughness” required to be an RPD officer and the toxic culture he worked in for decades. The department was also one of silence; officers didn’t talk about their problems or break the blue wall of silence with the public. In this way, the book feels a bit like a mea culpa because Weaver discusses the toxicity of the department in relation to his mental health. He chalks being a good or bad cop up to perspective. It all depends on where you sit, not the law, not policy, not equality before the law. If he arrests you at the drug house, he’s bad. If you live next to the drug house, he’s good. And to be clear, those were the options: arrest or not.

This perspective was fueled by his indoctrination into the police department. There were no history lessons for the new guys, rather, do the procedures and be tough. No knowledge of the racial animus by police toward the Black community. No discussion of the rebellion of July 1964. No concept of the kinds of struggles people were going through on a daily basis, only the worst of humanity. No understanding of how people got into these terrible situations. Combine that with the reality that you see all of these horrible things but never see the outcome of the case and your 22-year-old brain would also be spinning.

Jump ahead to the end of his career and here he’s come to terms with his mental health and wants to help others in the department. The chief and deputy chief support his training program and he is able to share it with all of the members of the department. After discussing its formation and some poignant moments from the training, the rest of the book becomes a resource guide and self-help manual. Not literally as he is still commenting on things and providing personal stories but a bulk of it is identifying symptoms, some of the outcomes associated with not acting to get help, and a constant refrain that the officer reading the book is not alone and ought to get help. He concludes on a hopeful note about getting healthy. Then, after he retired and a new administration took office, his whole EDPRT training model was dismantled.

I have no doubt about his conviction or his experiences. I think the book suffered because it tried to do too much. Be an autobiography or be a guide to setting up EDPRT trainings. Both are worthy but together they become jumbled.

[Terri Rogers · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent! Real life experiences and perspectives! Praying this helps to make positive changes in how mental illness is perceived and dealt with in all walks of life! Provided me a much better understanding of walking in law enforcement shoes!