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.
By Josh Burkeen
The night can be quiet in a way that almost feels holy.
You’re driving. Windows cracked. Radio low. Nothing but dark road and stars. And underneath it all, there’s a weight sitting on your chest. It’s there before the call ever comes in. You just don’t talk about it.
Every call adds something to it. A layer. A face. A sound. You tell yourself you’ll wash it off when you get home. Some of it never washes off.
I’ve lost count of how many suicides I’ve worked. I’ve heard the gunshot before I reached the door. I’ve checked pulses I already knew weren’t there. I’ve told husbands, wives, parents their person was gone. Those faces don’t fade.
An 80-year-old man holding his wife of 60 years on the basement floor because she didn’t want him carrying the cost of terminal cancer. An older widow who didn’t want to die alone. A 25-year-old daughter in the front seat of her car while her parents begged me to save her.
I did what I could on that last one, even knowing there wasn’t anything I could do. I cried the whole drive home. Not quiet tears. The kind that hit you in waves. I just needed to hold my own kids.
Then you pull into your driveway. Your wife is there. Your kids are there. The dogs are losing their minds because you’re home. They had a peaceful night. You were in the trenches.
You want to be present. You really do. But your mind is still back on that call. You take off the vest, the belt, and the boots. You stand in the shower longer than you need to, trying to feel normal again.
Sometimes that weight leaks out sideways. Not always through anger. Not always through some dramatic moment. Sometimes it shows up as anxiety, exhaustion, or losing sight of who you are outside the uniform.
For years, I convinced myself I was handling it. Like a lot of officers, I took every difficult call, every tragedy, and every stressful situation and shoved it into a box. I locked it up and went back to work. The box got heavier, but I told myself that was just part of the job. Eventually, I learned that what you put in the box never really goes away.
The truth is, it wasn’t just the calls. I had seen bad wrecks, suicides and more tragedy than most people will ever experience. Those things affected me, but what really began wearing me down was the constant stress that followed me everywhere.
I started dreading work. Lying awake the night before a shift, already carrying stress about the day ahead. Wondering what calls would come, what challenges I’d face, and whether I’d ever feel truly off duty again.
I became withdrawn. Even when I was home, I wasn’t really home. My family got my time, but they weren’t always getting my full attention. My mind was still carrying the weight of the job. For the first time in my career, I found myself losing motivation for a profession I had always loved. Eventually, I stepped away from law enforcement for ten months.
At the time, it was exactly what I needed. The break allowed me to clear my head and focus on something I had neglected for too long: myself and my family. I worked hard, but I also rediscovered what life looked like outside the badge.
What surprised me was that I never stopped missing the profession. I missed helping people. I missed serving a community. I missed being there when someone needed help on their worst day.
When my wife and I decided I would return to law enforcement, we didn’t just look for another department. We looked for a fresh start, and that search eventually brought us more than 1,300 miles away to North Dakota.
The move changed more than my address. For the first time in my career, I had a schedule that allowed me to spend meaningful time with my family. I found a community that genuinely supports its law enforcement officers and a department that treated me like a person, not just a badge number.
Around that same time, I did something I should have done years earlier. I found a therapist.
For years, I thought asking for help was a sign of weakness. I thought strength meant carrying everything myself. I was wrong. Years of bottled-up emotions don’t disappear just because you ignore them. Talking to someone didn’t erase the things I had seen or experienced, but it helped me understand them. It helped me realize that keeping everything locked inside wasn’t strength at all. It was relief. For the first time in years, I wasn’t carrying everything alone.
Then life reminded me of something else.
This year, my father passed away unexpectedly in his sleep from a heart attack at just 62 years old. My dad was one of the hardest-working people I’ve ever known. He was always busy, always working toward something, and his story was far from finished. Losing him changed my perspective.
You can always make more money, work another shift, or chase the next promotion. But you can never make more time. It reminded me why family matters. Why experiences matter. Why being present matters. Tomorrow isn’t promised.
When my father passed away, my department stood behind me in a way I’ll never forget. They sent flowers, made sure I had the time I needed to grieve, and checked on me afterward. What struck me was how much that support meant during one of the hardest periods of my life.
This department was over 20 hours from home, yet they reminded me that I wasn’t carrying the loss alone. That support mattered. Because officers don’t just carry the trauma of the job. We carry life too.
We lose parents. We worry about our children. We struggle in our marriages. We face anxiety, grief, uncertainty, and loss just like everyone else. The difference is that many of us convince ourselves we have to carry it all alone. We don’t.
Now when I respond to mental health calls, I don’t stand at a distance pretending I’m unaffected. When it’s appropriate, I tell people I’ve struggled too. I tell them I’ve needed help too. You can see the shift in their eyes. They stop seeing a uniform and start seeing a person. That’s the bridge.
Mental health isn’t just something the public deals with. It isn’t just something officers deal with. It’s both. On both sides of the badge.
If you’re strong enough to run toward gunfire, you’re strong enough to sit in a counselor’s office. If you’re strong enough to carry other people’s trauma, you’re strong enough to admit you can’t carry it alone forever.
If there’s one thing I want another officer to know, it’s this: Don’t be afraid to seek help.
Talk to someone before the box breaks open. A spouse. A friend. A therapist. Another officer. Just don’t keep stuffing it down and calling it strength.
Your family needs you. Your community needs you. Most importantly, you deserve better than just surviving.
| RELATED: From burnout to resilience: How therapy can help law enforcement officers
About the author
Josh Burkeen is a Master Patrolman with the Killdeer (North Dakota) Police Department with 16+ years of law enforcement experience.
