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Policing in Natural Disasters: Stress, Resilience, and the Challenges of Emergency Management

Policing in Natural Disasters: Stress, Resilience, and the Challenges of Emergency Management, by Terri M. Adams and Leigh R. Anderson, is an account of how law-enforcement officers coped with disasters in three contexts: Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans in 2005, the tornado outbreak in Alabama in 2011, and the earthquake and tsunami in Santiago and Constitución, Chile, in 2010. Policing in Natural Disasters will be useful for practitioners, law enforcement officials, and students of the profession, as each chapter is followed by key take-aways and discussion questions. The impetus for writing the book, compellingly, was that the scholarly community knows less about the law-enforcement side of disasters and their aftermaths. Through three separate case studies, the authors are able to tease out contextual factors that resulted in commonalities and differences in the ways officers responded, coped, were resilient, or engaged in maladaptive behaviors. While it is undeniably the case that law-enforcement officers are the subject of much scrutiny, criticism, and negative attention due to misconduct, use of force, and oftentimes a lack of cultural sensitivity, Policing in Natural Disasters offers a harrowing view of the hard work that the people who work in this profession must endure. In the introduction to the book, the authors ask a series of practical questions that then guide each of the book’s chapters: ‘‘how do disasters challenge . . . protocol; what are the organizational expectations; how does police culture affect the actions and reactions of law-enforcement officers during disasters; what are the adaptive and maladaptive responses that law-enforcement officers exhibit during a disaster; how does stress affect [them]; what are some the key challenges . . . how does the disaster experience affect their professional and personal lives; what factors aid [them] in reconstructing their lives; what are the similarities and differences . . . in different cultural contexts; what can . . . agencies do to train officers to be more resilient?’’ (p. 7). One of the unique contributions the authors offer is describing the hardships law-enforcement officers face in disasters that ‘‘fills the gap in the literature by providing a comprehensive analysis of the major challenges law-enforcement officers face in such times’’ (p. 4). Another contribution is the examination of how people who are both professionally and personally affected by a disaster are able to effectively do their jobs. Adams and Anderson use qualitative interviews, quantitative surveys, and focus groups to build answers to their research questions. The authors argue that ‘‘the common thread that weaves throughout the data reported in this book is the humanity of the people who put themselves in harm’s way to protect others and the enduring aftereffects of the disaster on their lives’’ (p. 6). Indeed, the challenges that law-enforcement officials face have been given little attention in sociology in favor of more critical accounts of disasters and their aftermaths. In Chapter One, Adams and Anderson paint a vivid picture of the disasters and the organizational structure of law enforcement in all three contexts. Importantly, they note that the New Orleans Police Department (NOPD) was infamous for police misconduct and corruption prior to Hurricane Katrina. Chapter Two engages the stressors faced by police, such as their confrontation with complete and total destruction, worries about their own safety, and isolation. These stressors can lead to job abandonment, misconduct, role strain, and role conflict. Chapter Three explicitly investigates role conflict