Some things you carry, even when no one sees them.
I was a freshman. He was a senior. I’ll spare you the details. I never reported it. I was afraid I would get in trouble. He was popular, and I feared the backlash. I’ve spent many nights wondering if he did the same thing to others. The last time I looked him up on social media, he was married with two young sons. I wondered if his wife knew about his past — and if his boys would grow up to do the same things.
As painful as it has been to carry, it made me a better cop.
I understood sexual assault victims’ discomfort when trying to tell someone what happened. I knew why they might hesitate and the importance of listening well. I was deliberate about the questions I asked and how I asked them. I remembered what it was like to recall bits and pieces at different times because my mind tried to shut out what it couldn’t handle. My experience shaped how I responded to others’ pain.
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The problem we don’t train for
Officers must qualify with their firearms every year, but there’s no equivalent standard for the emotional skills needed to do this job well.
Empathy becomes harder when we’re understaffed, overworked and emotionally numb from years of tragedy. We’re good at control, command and containment — but we’re not always trained to sit with someone’s pain without rushing past it.
We hear a call for service and think about clearing it quickly. But for the victim — or survivor — it may be the defining trauma of their life. The way we respond can either help the healing begin or make the damage worse. We get to leave; they have to live with it. If we handle our response poorly, our badge becomes part of their trauma. That’s not just bad policing. That’s a betrayal of what the badge should stand for.
When empathy is missing
I’ve heard officers ask, “Why are you just saying something now? If that really happened, why didn’t you tell somebody sooner?” I’ve heard detectives dispatched to sexual violence calls ask the dispatcher when it happened — with a tone so annoyed you could hear their eyes roll over the radio.
I remember one night — a terrible accident in the middle of a busy intersection. Both cars flipped. Car parts, glass, people, chaos everywhere. I sat with a young female driver on the ground. She had visible scars from cutting on her thighs and forearms. When the medics arrived to take her to the hospital, she pleaded with me not to leave her alone with men. My captain told me to clear the call — others were holding. “She’ll be fine,” he said.
I guess he’d never had a man bigger than him force himself on him — never experienced that kind of trauma — to understand what it leaves behind. He couldn’t see that leaving her alone and vulnerable, especially after she begged us not to, begged the female officer not to walk out and leave her there, was going to taint how she viewed cops for the rest of her life.
But she wasn’t asking for company. She was begging not to be retraumatized. And when we walked away, we didn’t just make a bad decision. We betrayed her trust.
People don’t dial 911 when they’re having a great day. When we arrive, we are stepping into a chapter of their life they will never forget.
Making empathy tactical
Empathy isn’t soft. It’s a skill that improves outcomes.
Some of the most “tactically sound” officers I’ve worked with were also the ones survivors trusted most. Why? Because they showed calm, care and control — not detachment, sarcasm or dismissiveness.
If we want a profession that’s both trusted and trustworthy, we have to treat empathy as a tactical advantage — and train like it matters.
Here’s how to make empathy tactical:
- Begin sexual assault calls with open-ended, nonjudgmental questions and tone
- Model calm and care, especially with trauma survivors
- Recognize emotional exhaustion in peers — and say something
- Encourage FTOs and supervisors to reward empathy in action
- Build emotional intelligence into briefings, evals and training — not just for liability but for trust
Empathy is consciously choosing to respond with care instead of contempt or indifference. When we help people feel safe, they’re more likely to open up — and that’s when we get the information we need to make good cases.
Culture doesn’t shift on its own
Culture doesn’t change because of memos or mission statements. It changes because people decide to do things differently.
We promote based on test scores and metrics but rarely give second thought to emotional intelligence. And I didn’t learn empathy from a training video. I learned it because I knew what it felt like to be afraid and unheard. That experience didn’t make me weak — it made me slower to judge and quicker to listen. It reminded me that trust is something we build in moments, not mandates.
You don’t have to have lived through trauma to lead with empathy. But you do have to be willing to listen — to care enough to pause before rushing the process, to see the person behind the pain. Ask yourself, “If that were me — or someone I loved — how would I want to be treated?”
If you lead, train or supervise, make empathy part of the standard — not the exception. Praise it. Practice it. Teach it. That’s how we change the culture.
Be the kind of person you would have needed on your worst day. Applaud the officer who stays a little longer with someone in crisis. Speak up when sarcasm crosses the line. Model the kind of calm that makes people feel safe. Build it into how you train, how you evaluate and how you show up.
If we want a profession that’s both competent and compassionate, we need leadership that can clear a building and calm a survivor. The kind of leadership that understands commanding a scene isn’t just about control — it’s about ensuring safety, which brings comfort to victims. That’s not soft — it’s solid. That’s trust-building. That’s what policing should be.
This job isn’t just about tactics and traffic stops. It’s about people. And how we treat people — especially at their lowest — says everything about who we are.
Empathy is a choice. And it’s one we have the chance to make every day.
About the author
Alexis Dutton evaluated communications in support of anti-terrorism efforts during Operation Enduring Freedom and holds an M.A. in National Security Studies. She later transitioned into law enforcement, working with multi-agency task forces on human trafficking and narcotics investigations. In addition to her role as Chief Expansion Officer for A Different Breed Training, she serves as a career development coach and adjunct instructor for the Northeast Alabama Law Enforcement Academy. Her work focuses on research-based best practices in recruitment, retention and leadership development.
