At the beginning while I was attending the CF2F instructor’s course (From Corrections Fatigue to Fulfillment) I was a skeptic and did not believe CF2F would ever succeed with our staff. Though I believed the material was pure at the core and hit the mark as to what we go through in this environment, I did not think there was any way in the world our officers would ever be open to participating, as we are a hardcore group in general.
That being said, as my training partner and I discussed how we were going to present the material, we truly saw the value in the material and wanted to succeed. Though I can’t lie, I did not see it going over well. Well, we were quickly proven wrong.
Within the three days following teaching our first class, we had 6 officers between us in our office sharing with us their stories and asking for references for various services and help. We were amazed and at a loss as to how receptive our officers were to the topic. As the year went on, that became a regular occurrence. I honestly can’t give an exact number of the staff that came into our office sharing their stories or asking for guidance or numbers as to how many staff we helped. However, I can say without question that we have officers with us today and families still have husbands and fathers as a direct result of what the team at Desert Waters has done.
Here are two stories that stick out the most to me.
Story 1
One night around 23:30 I was woken up to my personal phone ringing. It was an officer who had worked for me when I was a Lieutenant on a facility, and he had just been through CF2F a couple of weeks earlier. He was sobbing to the point that I could barely understand him. He told me his wife had left him that night and taken his kids, and didn’t see a reason to continue. In his rambling the officer went on and recalled an event that had occurred while he worked for me. As many of our incidents are in a maximum security prison, this one was a violent incident that resulted in some of our officers being hurt. He told me that as he responded to the incident what he saw caused him to freeze up, and as a result he believed his partner was hurt because he hesitated. He went on to say that he never told anyone, and that incident had been haunting him since that night, causing him to withdraw from his friends and partners and ultimately his family.
He repeatedly asked for my forgiveness for letting me down when it mattered most. During the conversation he told me the only reason he called me was he thought about the CF2F class and what we talked about and knew he needed help, and wanted to know if he could have the references to the helplines we provided during the training. Ultimately before the night was over we were able to get a Peer Support team out to him and help him through the night. We got him connected with our Employee Assistance Program and a counselor. I am happy to say that today he has come out the other side and is doing great. He was able to restore his family and has gotten the help he needs to cope with the hard-nosed reality this environment throws at us.
The next story is not my experience but one from another instructor we had. I do not know who the officer was. We shared our experiences, but not the specific details, so that we would not jeopardize our staff.
Story 2
One night one of our new instructors who had just begun teaching CF2F received a call at home. It was from an officer that had just gone through the class the instructor had taught. The officer was clearly drunk and agitated. The officer asked the instructor if he believed the stuff he was teaching in the CF2F class, and the instructor replied that he did and that is why he taught the course. The officer went on to tell the instructor that his rubber brand broke (an illustration used during CF2F), and he couldn’t do this anymore. The officer went on to tell the instructor the only reason he called him was because he had gone through the class and the instructor was his last hope. During the call, the officer ended up hanging up on the instructor. The instructor made several attempts to contact him with no success. The instructor knew the officer didn’t live too far from him, and decided to go over to the officer’s house. When he arrived, the officer was sitting in the garage with a mostly empty bottle of whiskey and a loaded gun on the table next to him. The instructor asked him what he was doing with the gun. To no surprise, the officer responded, “I was planning on using it tonight.” Thankfully in the end the instructor was able to get peer support out there and get the officer the help he needed. The last update I had was the officer was doing good and has since retired, to my understanding.
