# “The Pain Behind the Badge”



## kwflatbed (Dec 29, 2004)

*"The Pain Behind the Badge": Powerful new documentary explores officers' trips to the edge-and back.

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Part 1 of a 2-part series 
From _Force Science News_

A few hours earlier, Sgt. Clarke Paris, a veteran of 22 years on the Las Vegas Metro Police, had finished a shift on which he'd responded to 5 suicide calls, the victims ranging from a 70-year-old man to a 13-year-old boy. 
Now he was lazily floating with his wife in their backyard pool, but the desert sun could not bake out of his soul an unsettling sense that "my suitcase was finally packed with more than it could hold." 
He started to tell his wife that the job was getting to him, but he couldn't get a full sentence out before "I broke down bawling like a baby." 
As he alternated between sobs and stuttered words, vivid career moments flashed back to him: the 4-month-old baby starved to death by its parents&#8230;the "little girl with the sweetest smile" whose stepfather had smashed her face so hard with his fist that he shattered her eye socket&#8230;the 2 Midwestern college girls who'd been tied up and sodomized at knife point, terrified, weeping and helpless&#8230;the drunk driver who ran over him when he worked motors&#8230;. 
When his wife was finally able to understand that an accumulation of typical cop stressors was sledge-hammering the man she perceived as "strong and brave and everything you think of in a police officer," she asked if he wanted to quit the force. 
No, he insisted, he loved the job. What he wanted-the idea suddenly hit him "out of nowhere"-was to film a documentary that would illustrate the emotional price cops pay for their ringside seat at the human circus. 
His wife was incredulous. Make a documentary? Paris by his own admission can't work his VCR! 
Yet 15 months later, this determined sergeant is today the proud parent of a powerful film that in 104 compelling minutes shows how law enforcement officers can be pushed to the brink of despair by the things they experience and yet, with proper help, can be brought back to emotional wholeness that renews their zest for life and for their profession.

Full Article: http://www.policeone.com/writers/co...explores-officers-trips-to-the-edge-and-back/

Read Part 2 Here


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