Editor’s note: This essay is part of “Stories from the Street,” a Police1 series featuring first-person reflections from officers across the country. These essays are about the lived experiences and moments that changed how officers think, lead and serve. If you have a story to share, we’d love to hear from you. Submit your story here.
If you’re a police officer, you know the question before it’s even asked. It shows up at parties, family gatherings, chance conversations — always the same one. “What’s the worst call you’ve seen?”
It usually comes casually, almost innocently, as if they’re expecting a dramatic story full of lights, sirens and adrenaline — something fit for a TV show with the “Bad Boys” theme playing in the background. What they don’t realize is how fast that question can rip open a lifetime of scenes we’ve tucked away so deeply we’re no longer sure where the compartments end and where we begin.
So we do what we’ve been conditioned to do. We smile, shrug and reach for a harmless story: a foot pursuit, a chaotic crash, a close call. Something exciting enough to satisfy curiosity but sanitized enough to protect the audience from the truth. Because we know the truth would land like a heavyweight punch.
Recently, someone asked me that question again, and this time, for reasons I still can’t fully explain, I didn’t give the rehearsed response. I didn’t offer the PG-13 version or the story with the soft landing. I told the truth.
I chose one call. It wasn’t the worst or the most gruesome. Just one that still stays with me — one that surfaces on nights when sleep is shallow and quiet feels too loud. I described it plainly, without theatrics. When you’ve lived it, you don’t need embellishment.
As I spoke, I watched their expression shift from confusion to disbelief and eventually to the unmistakable sadness that comes when someone realizes — really realizes — what this job asks of the people who do it.
By the time I finished, they were fighting back tears. I stood there stoically, not because the story didn’t affect me, but because after years in this uniform you learn how to disconnect emotion from delivery. It’s a survival skill, but it comes at a cost.
This interaction highlights something we all know but rarely confront: the enormous weight officers carry over a lifetime of service.
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The burden beneath the badge
Officers don’t hide the truth because we’re secretive. We hide it because we’ve spent years learning to protect the people around us — the public, our families, even each other — from a reality that feels too dark to share.
We file trauma away like case reports: organized, labeled and stacked neatly out of view. We answer questions with stories that entertain instead of stories that expose. We become experts at giving people only what we believe they can handle. And in doing so, we convince the world, and sometimes ourselves, that we’re unaffected. But the reality is different.
Every officer I know carries a mental catalog of things they’ve seen, heard, touched, smelled, held and survived. Things they never intended to witness when they first pinned on the badge, often as nothing more than a 20 something kid. Things they’d never wish on another human being.
“We file trauma away like case reports: organized, labeled and stacked neatly out of view.”
The reaction that stayed with me
Watching this person react to my story made me pause. The sadness on their face and the disbelief in their voice forced me to confront how normalized trauma has become in this profession.
What shook them barely registers on my internal scale anymore. That should concern all of us.
I walked away from the conversation feeling two things at once: validation, because moments like that confirm the urgency of officer wellness; and worry, because if just one experience hits that hard, what does that say about the hundreds we carry?
Wellness has improved, but we are nowhere close to done
I’m a strong advocate for officer wellness and peer support. I believe in it. I’ve seen it work. I’ve watched officers pull one another back from the edge simply by having someone who understands.
We’ve come a long way in the past decade. Stigma is lower. Support systems are stronger. Training is better. More officers are willing to talk. But we still have a culture built on silence.
For every officer who reaches out, there are dozens who swallow it down. For every department with supportive leadership, there are others still stuck in the “suck it up” era. For every policy, program or EAP referral, there’s still an officer who feels safer saying “I’m fine” than admitting “I’m not.”
Despite progress, the emotional distance between what we experience and what we allow ourselves to feel remains enormous. If a single, non-graphic retelling made someone else tear up while I remained composed, that’s not strength. That’s conditioning. And conditioning without support eventually becomes damage.
The question behind the question
When the public asks, “What’s the worst call you’ve seen?” they’re really asking something else: What does this job do to you? Who are you behind that uniform? What does it cost to serve?
They don’t truly want the details. But they do want, and deserve, to understand the weight of the responsibility that isn’t seen. And officers deserve something too. Permission to stop pretending the weight doesn’t exist.
Why I finally told the truth
Maybe I answered honestly because I’m later in my career. Maybe because I’ve seen peers struggle silently until silence became its own form of injury. Maybe because I’ve watched this profession lose too many good people — not to violence, but to the private battles they never felt allowed to voice. Or maybe I just reached a point where the truth felt like the only responsible answer.
If the person in front of me reacted to my truth with such sadness, maybe that sadness is the reality check the public needs — not the graphic details, but the understanding that this career reshapes you in ways you don’t fully grasp until the day you step away and the silence closes in behind you.
“When the public asks, “What’s the worst call you’ve seen?” they’re really asking: What does this job do to you? Who are you behind that uniform? What does it cost to serve?”
What I want officers and readers to take away
If you’re an officer reading this, I hope you hear this clearly. You don’t have to minimize your own story. You don’t have to pretend trauma slides off you. And you don’t have to keep protecting everyone else from the truth at the cost of carrying it alone.
And if you’re a civilian, understand that when you ask an officer about “the worst thing they’ve seen,” you’re touching a deep well of experiences most people will never fully comprehend. Curiosity is fine. Compassion matters even more. Just recognize the weight behind whatever answer you’re given — or not given.
And for all of us, we cannot keep treating silence as strength. We’ve lived the consequences of that lie for too long.
That brief conversation reminded me of something I hope every officer remembers: We may deliver the story without emotion, but the burden hasn’t left us. It just hasn’t been given a place to land.
Until we create space for honesty, healing and real support, we will continue asking officers to carry more than any human should. And they will continue to do it quietly.
How do you handle it when someone asks you about your “worst” call? Share below.
Police1 readers respond
- An excellent overview and insight. After 42 years of policing (never liked the “law enforcement” moniker) I, like my contemporaries, have seen enough for a life time! Our current crop of officers likely have better access to after action round-tables. The more we have an opportunity to express our personal wounds/trauma, the better.
- My response is usually “Which one?” The one that still gives me nightmares, or the one that involved an incredible amount of unnecessary stupidity? Then I will just share a bad car accident scene or something ... one of hundreds! Worst part, in a group session, a therapist ask me if I had ever seen a dead body? I just laughed! I guess that was weird to her.
- I turn the question into education. I tell them my worst call is called trauma. The worst, the hardest thing is trauma. Trauma that was no doubt someone’s worst day on earth. And maybe I made it better or maybe I just didn’t make it worst. But I won’t share it, because it’s not running and gunning cop TV drama; it’s real life that is painful and messed up and hard.
- This is a well-written and necessary article. Thank you! I never quite know how to answer because I don’t want to share some of those calls.
- I have been retired for many years. We were a generation of tough men. I don’t think I have ever shared my worst memory with anyone and don’t suspect I will. I have been retired so long, most have no knowledge of the things I have seen and worked on. That is more than OK. Most people, including the current generation of law enforcement don’t need an old man remembering any of the many bad things that we encountered and worked on.
- After almost 30 years in law enforcement, I, like the author, tend to edit out the worst parts, and don’t tell them the stories that would make them cry. Maybe we all should. Maybe that’s how we get some understanding of what we deal with and more compassion from the citizens who think the cops are the bad guys. I know most citizens are not like that, but the ones who are, maybe they take a second look at who they are unfairly judging.
- 911 dispatcher here. We get this question all the time. Personally, I tend to deflect the question depending on the spirit in which it is asked. I have had some really dumb/rude people say things like, “Oh, I bet you hear some pretty crazy things!” or the what’s your worst call question. If they are being willfully insincere, I sometimes tell them about taking calls for dead babies or even listening to someone literally being murdered over the phone and other than sending help, there isn’t anything I can do but listen and pray. After traumatic calls officers, EMS and everyone on scene gets debriefed, except us. We also need to do a better job of remembering that before officers/EMS, arrive we have the burden of worrying for their safety, making sure they have everything they need and the absolute helplessness of not being able to physically do anything. We feel very responsible and protective of our responders. We never get to know how most calls turn out, no resolution and can only hope we did everything we needed to do for them. We get left hanging most of the time. Just like police/EMS and the like, there is a culture of suck it up, silence and self destructive behavior. Many of my co-workers self medicate, have horrible interpersonal relationships with their families and spouses and the rate of divorce, heart disease and the like is very high with us as well. None of us in this field do the job for the money, clearly. We do it because we want to help people and because we are willing to put ourselves inbetween harm and those we protect because someone has to. Not everyone can, and for those who do, support is everything. I am glad that the stigma or support and getting help is starting to lessen but there is so much more that can be done. With the onset of younger generations coming into the field we also need to remember that we (Gen X here) were raised differently and newer generations have some expectation of emotional validation and support. Will it be good for the field? Only time will tell, but after 25+ years in law enforcement/dispatching all I can say is change is the only constant and it will be interesting to see where the field heads in the future.
- I usually go to one of the “bad” accidents I’ve responded to. One in particular is an MVA involving a small child, not in the car seat and thrown to the floor by the driver’s pedals, and the mother, no seatbelt, ejected. So they get their bad story, but I get to express the need for seatbelts and car seats.
- I have always been one to not tell people stories just to tell them. I have been through some close calls not related to law enforcement and I have been on one call so far in my young law enforcement career that affected me worse than I thought. I am 38 and have been through some stuff. People do not get the pleasure of me rehashing what I have been through. I do see a therapist because I believe in mental health and am a supporter of mental health. Its OK for me to say to them “Thank you for asking, but I am not going to talk about it.” For some people talking about it over and over again makes it worse and in some cases they re-live it every time they have to tell the story, short version or not. I learned awhile ago that carrying these loads is not good for overall health and life balance. I like to disclose these things behind closed doors in a safe environment and work on them there. It takes work and dedication to learn how to move past and cope with these events. They will never go away. Thank you for this article.
- When someone asks me about my “worst” call, I explain that certain experiences are my burden to carry, and I choose not to revisit them in detail. Sharing those moments can create unnecessary vicarious trauma, which doesn’t help either of us. Instead, I focus on what I learned from the experience and how it strengthened my approach to the work. It’s a respectful way to acknowledge the question while maintaining healthy boundaries for everyone involved.
