By Rob Ryser
The News-Times
NEWTOWN, Conn. — While hundreds of police officers, firefighters and emergency workers from the region were affected by the 2012 shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School, those closest to the horror were the town’s first responders.
Now that landmarks of the worst crime scene in Connecticut history has been cleared from Sandy Hook’s landscape, and construction of a new school is underway, local police officers, firefighters and emergency medical technicians are taking stock of the trauma on that December day, when 20 first-graders and six educators were killed by a young gunman.
The town’s network of charities has invited HEART 9/11 -- a volunteer group of police officers, firefighters and union workers who responded to the World Trade Center attacks -- to work with Newtown’s first responders on a year-long program to treat symptoms of crime-scene trauma.
“Almost three years after the brutal tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School, many in our community are still struggling to heal,” said Nicole Hockley, the mother of a slain first-grader and the managing director of Sandy Hook Promise, a charity that is providing some of the funding for the program.
“We have an opportunity to help some of these people -- men and women who must get up every day and protect the Newtown community while still dealing with their own grief and need for healing,” Hockley said in a prepared statement. “We want our emergency responders to know how much we all care about them.”
Trauma treatment has traditionally been taboo among first responders, in part because showing emotion can be considered unprofessional and because of concerns that therapists can’t understand the stress first responders endure on traumatic emergency calls.
The problem is compounded in Newtown because first responders took a pledge not to discuss that terrible day with outsiders, in deference to grieving families.
But the public-safety culture is changing as experts better understand post-traumatic stress, and as more leaders document successes of peer-driven counseling and support programs.
The experience of one first-responder helping another is at the core of HEART 9/11 -- a group founded in 2007 by William Keegan, a lieutenant in the Special Operations Division of the Port Authority Police Department, who was the night operations commander of the World Trade Center rescue-and-recovery teams in 2001.
“We are not outsiders,” Keegan said about HEART 9/11’s work with Newtown’s first responders. “We have nothing to do with the town and we have no one we have to report to -- we are here for these men and women.”
The independent and confidential nature of HEART 9/11’s work is part of why it works, Keegan said. The other aspect of the HEART 9/11 formula is volunteers know how to listen.
“We sit in on roll calls, we go on ride-alongs, and we hang out with them -- talking and laughing,” Keegan said. “Eventually, the conversation might get around to stuff.”
Still, obstacles to recovery remain. The stigma that asking for help is a sign of weakness keeps some first responders from connecting sleep and intimacy problems with trauma.
A handful of Newtown police officers left the force and several others faced disciplinary hearings after the Sandy Hook shootings. A local police union attorney with knowledge of the cases called it a result of stress.
Newtown police Officer Thomas Bean recently won his fight with the town to pay his long-term disability benefit for the post-traumatic stress he suffered doing interior security, moments after the school shootings.
Bean, who said he was unable to pick up a gun after the shootings, will receive 50 percent of his salary until his retirement, which totals $380,000 over 11 years.
The town’s Recovery and Resiliency Team asked HEART 9/11 to work with first responders after leveraging funds from local charities, including $47,000 from Sandy Hook Promise.
“One of the best things about this program is it’s peer-to-peer, said James Belden, Sandy Hook Promise’s operations and finance director. “The best thing we can do is be discreet and allow them to do what they have to do.”
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(c)2015 The News-Times (Danbury, Conn.)
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