Editor's note: This account reaches the Department through Officer Glick's collection of September 11 stories. It was written by Dr. Richard L. Levenson, Jr., Psy.D., a clinical psychologist who also carries the title Police Surgeon. The words run below exactly as written. Dr. Levenson spent fourteen months at Ground Zero with POPPA, the Police Organization Providing Peer Assistance, running Critical Incident Stress Management groups for police officers. The watch is a Rolex Submariner with date, from 1991, and it has not been worn since.
I spent 14 months at Ground Zero in 2001 and 2002. I am a clinical psychologist and now include the title Police Surgeon as through my work at Ground Zero I made many connections, was introduced to many Police Officers, and gained a reputation as an empathetic, compassionate, yet direct and energetic psychologist in my approach to working with “tough guys.” I wasn’t alone – I worked with POPPA (Police Organization Providing Peer Assistance) – an organization run by retired NYPD Officers and who supervised Peer Support Officers who were trained to talk to other cops under terrific stress and identify those who needed to speak with a trained clinician. I would estimate that on a regular basis, I worked with close to 40 NYPD Peer Support Officers, although there were many others coming in less often. On this 25th Anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center, I am still in touch with the vast majority of these cops, and we plan a get-together this September 11th as we have periodically in prior years.
In 1996, I was the first to bring to POPPA’s clinical and administrative staff the technique of Critical Incident Stress Management (CISM). Basically a 7-stage model of dealing with the stress and emotional strain that first responders experience, CISM is now used internationally by various police, fire, EMT, aviation, and other first responders in a wide variety of situations, including bank robberies, civilian crime scene onlookers (and officers), and just about any other traumatic situation a person experiences that is outside the realm of normal, everyday, human experience and causes significant psychological disruptions in their daily lives, their attachment to others, mastery of typical occupational and social tasks, and their own, now disrupted view of the world. In short, while not considered therapy it is a “therapeutic technique” which is applied to stave off Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and other psychological illnesses by using a group format with 7 different parts which ask participants to discuss the experience, thoughts, feelings, and provides support for those who need help with clarifying their experience of the trauma and intervenes to mitigate the effects from disabling the person. Should individuals need further psychological intervention, they are referred to private mental health practitioners who take their insurance and understands their experience – and communicate that they are responding reasonably given the wholly unreasonable experience in which they were required to work.
My specific role was to participate in CISM groups as the mental health clinician and, more specifically, to state to first responders’ ways of living in order that the stress from their work did not derail their lives. I spoke about proper sleeping, eating, exercise, talking to peers about their experiences, and to keep unhealthy methods of coping to a minimum, such as drinking alcohol more than usual and smoking, too. I reminded them again and again that their feelings about what they saw and did could be successfully coped with by talking to either a peer, a friend, or their spouse if that was appropriate. I reminded them that these normal feelings to this abnormal situation could best be dealt with these ways. Day after day we had CISM groups; some officers who were more severely affected were seen individually by me and later participated in group formats. In some cases, we required more severely affected first responders to consult with our POPPA psychiatrist for medication; many of these officers asked for and received referrals to private therapists as well. The NYPD and other peer support officers ran the groups and were truly remarkable in their dedication to helping their colleagues. I also frequently walked Ground Zero with a peer support officer in order to tell them about the services POPPA had to offer at our office on Maiden Lane.
Every day I picked up my necessary but limited equipment: A POPPA jacket that also read “Peer Support,” a cellphone, and a constant on my wrist was my Rolex Submariner with date, for its ruggedness, superlative time-keeping, and dependence in a place where the air was foul with yellow and white smoke coming from the pile, dust piled up on everyone and everything, and none of us were immune from what we saw, heard, or breathed in.
I met wonderful peer support officers who came from Oklahoma, Juneau, Alaska, North Carolina, Arizona, upstate New York, the country of Bermuda, to mention a few. I am still friends and in touch with many of these people, most of whom are police officers now, 25 years later, we are still vitally important to each other. We served together.
How did we get through doing this work? Well, we were incredibly supportive to each other, checked in on and up with each other daily. If you really know police officers, they have the absolute best sense of humor – approaching gallows humor, these moments had us laughing in the face of the trauma around us and kept us distracted from it just long enough to cause a reset in our moods so that we could go back and do the work.
Our POPPA group, it is estimated, “debriefed and provided CISM services to over 5,000 police officer-first responders, and others who experienced, either in the neighborhood or on site, the trauma experience of “being there.” Some of these groups included judges from the nearby Supreme and Civil Courts, volunteers who were helping out on site – in short, anyone who was overcome with psychological stress as a result of being there.
Some of us were given time away from our regular jobs to be there, while others were assigned to be there. In my instance, I became an “adrenaline junkie,” and had great difficulty leaving the site or the office where we did our CISM groups. Finally, I was ordered to take a week off and stay away which was difficult at first but gratifying later.
At that time, cellphones had just come into practical use. As a watch lover, I wore my Rolex Submariner from 1991. I cannot wear that watch today; it contains all the memories of looking at it to record the time and date I spoke anonymously to an officer on Ground Zero or took part in a CISM group at the office. I still have my IDs from POPPA and the Mayor’s Office of Emergency Management allowing authorized access to Ground Zero and they are framed and above my desk as I write this.
As the years have passed, the experience has stayed with me but no longer in a debilitating way, although when I drive passed a building demolition site, I still have a visual memory of Ground Zero; perhaps that will never go away. In every respect, this was my service to my country and my city; I took it seriously and to this day I can say it was an absolutely terrible time yet I was fortunate enough to meet some of the best people I’ve ever had the honor and privilege of knowing, let alone working with.
Dr. Richard L. Levenson, Jr., Psy.D., CTTS, FAAETS