Beyond the Ranks: The Hidden Weight Carried by First Responders

Hello everyone. And welcome back to love the North. I'm your host, Michael Richardson, local author. Um, you've heard me talk of my other books before, but my new project now I'm, I'm working on, uh, transcribing my grandfather's experiences from his time in world war II. Um, and that has led me to want to broaden my scope of observation, if you will. Uh, I really want to give back to the veteran community and all the first responders who serve us on a daily basis. So, uh, we've started this segment on love the North called Beyond the ranks, uh, where we are talking to people who have served in either the military or any of the frontline services. Uh, one of the subjects that hits pretty hard in this segment of the population, um, of course is PTSD, um, post-traumatic stress disorder. For those of you who aren't familiar with the term, uh, it can strike anyone, of course, but, uh, of course, anybody that's putting their life on their line to serve, uh, is maybe more susceptible to it than others. Uh, it's a subject that remains questionable in coverage as far as, uh, actual health treatment that's available for it. Um, there's still seems to be a lot of stigma around the subject. Uh, and tonight we're just going to have a conversation. I'm joined by Mr. Ryan Hutton. Uh, he's with the local Sudbury police department. Um, he's been around to see this sort of activity and he's an advocate for mental health in the workplace.

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Um, he represents a couple of different groups, uh, all okay, as you'll see on his shirt and, uh, wounded warriors. Uh, Ryan, thank you very much for being here tonight. Thanks for having me. Um, if you want to give us maybe a quick, uh, or however you're comfortable history of your experience with the, uh, with the police department and things you've seen, um, from what I understand you, you, you, you've never been diagnosed with PTSD yourself. Thank God. Um, but, uh, yeah, let's, let's get into it and hear what you're the expert. So tell me about it. Hardly an expert, uh, just a keen observer and, uh, you know, as you said, I've been around for awhile. Um, so growing up, uh, my father was a police officer for 30 years with the OPP.(...) Uh, he was in, uh, London, Ontario, one of the first members of the true team in 76. Oh, wow. Um, one of the golden riders on the golden helmet. Oh, cool. Uh,(...) seen a lot of things in there. They lost a rider was killed in one of their, um, demonstrations. Jeez. Uh, and just some of his stories leading up to me deciding I wanted to be a police officer, um, you know, uh, very impressionable. He wrote a motorbike. He was a superhero, right? So, you know, it really wouldn't have mattered what happened in my life. I was probably always going to end up a police officer. And in fact, when I graduated, uh, or completed university, I really had no other point, right? I went to university because that was the thing he did, but I was always going to be a police officer.(...) Uh, so I started in, um, so he ended up going up north. He was in, uh, Suluq out then Kenora and Vermillion Bay, then he were hired and driving. Oh, wow. So I would go up every summer and, uh, obviously the sites are a little bit different than London, Ontario. Um, uh, and I'd seen him go through some stuff while I was there. Uh, one moment that I'll never forget was him dumping all the alcohol in the sink. Well, I'm sitting on the couch and it wasn't until years later that he told me he came home from work one day and caught himself drinking two bottles of wine in the dark and realized that wasn't okay. And dump them. Wow. But that was years later. I was a police officer at that point. What do you, what do you told him about that? Still good for him for noticing that some discipline. Yeah. Um, but he would never admit. All right. So back then it was walk it off. You're okay. Just keep going. Push it down. Yep. Suck it up. You don't talk to a doctor. That's weak. You don't talk to your partner. Absolutely. It's also weak. They don't know. Um, and he just went out and partied heart. Um, and he did whatever else you were going to do. He completely, uh, pushed himself into work and did all the things. You know, I would never recommend that anybody with a one-year-old is trying out for a brand new SWAT team. Um, but those are decisions made. They were for a lot of different reasons, right? Right.

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Creating a, uh, that cloud in his head, too busy, doing too many things to, to be able to think about what's actually going on up here. Right. Keep himself distracted. Well, his first call ever, I remember him telling me was, uh, a, uh, it's graphic, but it was a motor vehicle collision on the 401,(...) uh, and the driver was decapitated. And he called his corporal and his corporal said, you got this. And it was at that point after I got hired that I realized he's probably had PTSD or something going on from day one on his own, right? Absolutely. 30 years is a long time. Right. Um, so I got hired in Toronto in 2001. I worked there for seven years and you just didn't, you know, you didn't say anything to anybody took about five years down there where you had been through enough stuff and proving yourself where you could stand up and say, this call didn't go right, or I think, you know, we should have done this. Uh, and, but you had to earn that. Um,(...) when I came to Sudbury, it was like starting over again for a lot of different reasons, mainly because we were behind up here in all the things.

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Um,(...) I ended up in our drug unit very quick. Um, it was very dynamic, uh, always, but it was back to that. We don't talk about anything. You know, we just deal with it. We would debrief, but you know, we party often in part.

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Um,(...) I would tell stories to my then wife about what happened in the day. And ultimately I think those stories are ended up in a relationship. Really? Um, I just don't think she can handle it. And I don't think I should have been telling them to her. Right. Well, so we have two kids and these stories I'm telling her, you know, exciting to me, but you know, what other outlet do you have though, at that point? It was exciting. It was new. And you're like, Oh, I'm sharing this with my partner. Right. Right. She was a dispatcher at the time. So I'm like, she can handle this. Uh, in reality, she's seeing either being widowed. Or our two kids, you know, not having a dad. Right. And I wasn't seeing that and she didn't communicate it with me. And I wasn't seeing the signs.

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Um, as a result, uh, I did my time there when we split, I had to go back to the world just cause I couldn't be a single dad and do drug work and they ended up in our crime unit doing child abuse and child sex assault work. Um, is that where the catharsis hit? Yeah. Yeah. Um, the, there was a bit of hypervigilance with, uh, working in the drug work. I had done some UC work. I had done some undercover plays. Um, and I started to not be able to go to the mall.

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If I was with my kids,(...) um, I would be worried all the time and somebody would recognize them and I always had a plan on how I was going to deal with it. If somebody approached and said something and I always knew it was going to be dynamic and I wasn't until I, uh, started talking to Dr. Glosman about it because it, it continued after I left the drug unit. And, uh, he said, well, why are you putting yourself through that? Why are you bringing your kids? Why are you having that plan? What are you worried about?

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And he said, trust that your training will, um, serve you well and you'll be able to react to the new team. Um, you don't have to, every time you go into a mall, have this, you know, uh,(...) movie scenario set up where all these things are going to happen and you definitely don't need to be telling your kids, if somebody ever comes up to us, run that way, don't look back because you're not going to like what you see. And it was at that point that I realized, okay,(...) this is not, this is not normal. And this is not okay. No. Um,(...) so talking with him, uh, really served me well and I was able to like bring all that down and you know, for a while I just didn't go, you know, uh, COVID made it kind of easy and online shopping, as long as you know, your size, you don't have to go anywhere. I can't stand going to the mall either, but not for the same reason. Um,(...) so the crime unit thing, um,(...) took me about three years. To realize what was happening. Uh, and I became very vigilant and hypervigilant in a different way where I felt that I had to warn everybody in my circle and extended circle of the risks that were in there and it started to, uh, affect how many people wanted to be around us. Yeah. I can imagine. I was only going to be bringing forward negative stuff.(...) Um,(...) and I didn't think it was an issue. I thought I was doing like a public service. That was your reality at the time. Right. Yeah. And I didn't want, essentially I didn't want their kids to file to come across my desk and feel responsibility for it. Yeah. Um, and if I told them that absolved me because now if something happens, you know, I did everything I could, right? I told you what you need to do. But in reality, you know, 180,000 people with Sudbury, a few with rose color glasses on and a few that, you know, are just, you know,(...) able to be secure and feel okay.(...) Um, I just had to let that go.

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How did you end up letting go of something like that? Um,(...) so our, our service has a 10 year system where, uh, you can always stay so long anyway, so my time was eight years. Uh, I probably should have left at six.

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I would have stayed till 10 because you start to get, um, judges and lawyers saying you did really good on this file. You're one of the best child interviewers we've seen keep up the good work. And now you start to feel like you're making a difference. You're making a difference.(...) You get a little bit of that. Nobody can do it better than you can, which is a scary mentality to get into. Um, you see some of the other work that made you don't think is up to par. And then you start to have that, well, I guess I need to keep the imaging myself to make sure that I'm serving these kids who can't speak for themselves. Jesus. And during all of this, what kind of resources were available to you for help? Were the, were there programs in place at the time?

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Every organization has EAP. Okay. Um, so that's your employee and employee assistance program. Yeah.(...) Um,(...) recognizing that you need the help is harder sometimes, uh,(...) acknowledging it and doing something about it is another step that's even harder. Uh, it kind of, um,(...) you know, compare it to, you know, someone's guide, you know,(...) uh, pain in their, in their head or, you know, they're feeling the lump somewhere and they know it's probably cancer. But if they don't go to the doctor and tell the doctor, it doesn't say that's cancer, they don't have cancer. That's right. If I can just manage what's happening, um, and deal with it on my own. Um, and I don't go talk to somebody that I don't have anything late, right? Finding the people that you're okay to talk to and, and, you know, looking back, I did a number of times, but not up front and Hey, I'm really struggling. Uh, I need some help here. Um, it was just, you know, hoping that they would see the signs. Right.

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If I may, my wife, uh, had an incident. Uh, a few years back, uh, she was assaulted at work. Uh, she was diagnosed with PTSD, uh, couldn't leave the house for eight months. And then it was, you know, cave, let's make it to the patio today. Let's make it down the stairs, you know, for over a year, trying to do that. Uh, at first I didn't believe it. Um, because the first couple of days after the incident, she was fine. And then something happened and triggered her. And we went down this path. To try and get help at the time. Um, cause they play those let's talk commercials on the radio all the time. So you phone that number only to find out that it's a two and a half to three year waiting list before you can have that conversation.

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I'm hoping that first responders are a little bit more advanced than that. Uh, one of the warriors Canada are really good. They have resiliency programs. They have, um, you know,(...) weekends, they have, uh, programs for kids of parents that are dealing with stuff. There is a bit of a weight, I think they have service dogs. There's a weight. Um, but there's an outlet, right? Um, the hard part, uh, is always admitting it. Right. And then what's going to happen next? Like, where am I going to go? Has it come to pass that it's now swung the opposite way that everybody has PTSD? Is it, is it one of those situations yet? Is it heading in that direction?

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I think because I mean, there's the potential in that line of work. I, I, I wouldn't, well, the stack was something crazy. Like the average person sees one traumatic incident potentially in a lifetime, maybe three, um, that could cause PTSD and a first responder sees three a day sometimes.(...) And it's just compounded over the years of work. Wow. So to say that everybody has PTSD, like even after all that, I don't, um, uh, or I haven't been diagnosed with it. I I've been told I have a cumulative stress disorder in relation to the things I've seen and done. Right. Um, but I think like the interview side of it is vicarious, strong as what they refer to it as. And there's a whole different thing with that. Right. Um,(...) to be able to continue to do it and know that what happened to them isn't their fault, right, or it's not your fault and you're just doing what you can. To help to help. Yeah. Right. Um, which was huge. Right. But the kind of the site to it is that we kind of briefly talked about it before the interview is everybody's different. Yeah. Everybody has different makeups. Our brains are all different. There's no tests and no training, no anything that any organization that I know of does to see how you're going to handle a traumatic situation and what the aftermath is, because it could be a week later, it could not be until you see that same thing again. Absolutely. So the proactive side of it would be, okay, we're going to put people through a program, but can you imagine now you own everybody that's going through that. And if somebody ends up with PTSD at a pre screening to be, you know, even decided whether or not they're going to be a police officer, and now they're seeing, I have PTSD from this video screen that you had, uh, that you showed me this, you know, horrific car accident. And now either not going to be a candidate and now you have to paper them to go off. Right. Good point. So the, the, my hope is, and with all the stuff I do in the raising awareness of mental health and mental health and policing and with first responders in the military is we just need to teach people to get ahead of it and how to create a resist, a resiliency plan. Right. Cause it's different for everybody. Absolutely. But if you're waiting,(...) you know, if you, I'll give you an example, like most organizations have a baseline test, right? You get hired, you may see a doctor after the police college, and then that's it. Now you're going to go 29 and a half years without anybody talking to you and you being forced to talk to anybody. So my recent push was that anybody that's going to a crime unit is they have a baseline test going in, right? Anybody that's going into those units, whether it's domestic violence or child abuse,(...) or, you know, it could be dealing with a homicide or an aggravated assault. Like, uh, your wife suffered, you know, they're going to have a different opinion(...) on a case that comes forward to them. So your wife becomes a police officer and you know, her first time going to an aggravated assault may trigger triggers, right? But if she has a resiliency plan in place on how to do that, and maybe she's not gone for, you know, a year, maybe she's gone for two weeks, maybe she just needs to be off, but you know, the PTSD, uh,(...) diagnosis and what we've all learned from that through the military is that's where it came from, but when a member comes back from tour, they go to the base and they don't do anything until they're ready. Right. They might not even do basic stuff around the base, but every police officer has to go back. Like, obviously if you're involved in a shooting, you're off for a little bit. You got to talk to a doctor and you have to get cleared. But if you've gone to a car accident and it's a fatality and the next day you got to come to work, you don't get that time to decompress. And when manpower is the way it is across the board, you know, your sergeants and your staffs are saying, so you don't have, we're minimum complimented, we need you to sit and you just push it down. Suck it out. So what we have to do through, you know, all okay. And through one of the warriors and through all the advocacy groups is just say, it's okay to not be okay. You know, we are all in this together, but you have to admit to it and you have to be willing to go from the get-go and start talking to someone on a regular basis. Cause that's the only way it's going to change. Well, I'd really like to jump into that. And I know we barely scratched the surface on these organizations. So what I'd like to do is I'd like to get you back for another segment, if you're okay with that.(...) And, uh, yeah, thank you so much for joining me tonight and, uh,