In the early spring, as the coronavirus was establishing its deadly grip, but before the nation ignited in rage at the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police, more than a dozen El Paso County law enforcement officers sat in a classroom-style assembly, eyes closed, breathing deeply.

Colorado Springs police Sgt. Jason Newton stood at the front of the room. He asked the attendees to keep their eyes closed and think about their job in law enforcement. Half the class was made up of Colorado Springs Police Department officers. Others included Sheriff’s Office deputies. Some were 911 dispatchers.

Sgt. Jason Newton poses for a portrait in his office at the Colorado Police Department in Colorado Springs in Thursday, April, 2020. Sgt. Newton works in the community relations unit and since the pandemic, he is now connecting with the community in a virtual way.

Chancey Bush, The Gazette

“What has this job taken from you?” Newton asked the group.

A deputy sitting up front replied: “Empathy.”

Others chimed in.

“The ability to let go.”

“Sleep.”

“Time.”

“Naivety,” a young officer said. He remembered being unable to walk through a crowd with his pregnant wife without suspecting the worst.

Even the officers and deputies who remained silent seemed to have something they wanted to say.

Newton was teaching them the meditative practice of mindfulness — “moment-to-moment, nonjudgmental awareness of one’s thoughts, feelings and experiences.”

In a research paper Newton wrote last year for Northwestern University, he noted that the local police department had seen a dramatic improvement in the quality and quantity of its officers’ work after a Culture of Fitness program was implemented in 2014. But, he wrote, there was no such program for addressing “’cognitive fitness or mindfulness’ training for its officers.”

‘This can change lives’

Researchers have found that “mindfulness-based attention training”can help people make fewer cognitive errors and react less impulsively to stimulation. The U.S. military has recently begun implementing the practice into some of its training for soldiers.

In a paper from the journal Progress in Brain Research, researchers found troops who underwent a monthlong training that included a daily regimen with breathing and focus techniques were better able to pick out key information under chaotic circumstances.

“As this capacity is developed, a person becomes more skilled at remaining steady amid moments that might otherwise trigger an emotional overreaction, and compromise their focus,” wrote the lead author of the paper, Amishi Jha, of the University of Miami.

Mindfulness techniques activate the parasympathetic nervous system, said Sean Murphy, director of psychotherapy clinic, the Sage Institute in New Mexico. He helps teach people how to be fully present, letting go of judgment or reactiveness.

The parasympathetic nervous system can also release the “fight or flight” hormone, cortisol, that heightens adrenaline and blurs clear thinking, Murphy said. Research has also shown that practicing mindfulness through techniques like deep breathing and meditation can lower blood pressure, improve sleep and decrease stress levels, he said.

Murphy pointed to a 2013 study published by the National Institutes of Health that found the average life expectancy of a police officer was 57, largely due to the stress of their occupation.

Finding tools to help  

In 2014, Newton started trying to bring the idea of mindfulness training into the Colorado Springs Police Department. It was met with resistance at first, he recalled. Some people thought the practice was too “hippie,” he said, and wanted to stick to the status quo of “sucking it up.”

“They weren’t seeing past the words ‘mindfulness, mediation, yoga,’” Newton said. “It was hard because I know this can change lives.”

He began casually pitching the idea to other cops on the street, talking to them one on one about the benefits of training in mindfulness. It didn’t take long for several lieutenants to gain interest in the concept, and two years later Newton was approved to teach a course at the department’s Crisis Intervention Training.

At first, a few people showed up to the class “just to poke holes in it,” Newton remembered.

“One of the guys came up to me after class and said ‘I just came to the class to see what all this nonsense was about, but I just want to let you know I found it very useful and very powerful,’” Newton said. “It’s like I’ve said in my class: This may not be for you. Maybe not everybody’s going to do a 20-minute meditation. But if you can find any tools that can help you, then I’ve succeeded.”

The training has been successful enough that other law enforcement agencies have approached Newton for help with implementing their own training. He hopes the practice will become normalized enough to become a regular training regimen.

“Historically, in law enforcement, we do really well training our cops to take care of other people’s problems. We do a really poor job training our cops to take care of themselves. The mentality across law enforcement is starting to change.”

‘Unconscious Bias’

Three months after his March class, Newton was faced with some of the most deep-seated anger the country has felt toward law enforcement.

The death of Floyd, a black man killed by a white Minneapolis police officer, spurred ongoing protests around the world against police brutality and racism. In Colorado Springs, protesters marched through the streets holding signs that read “defund the police” and “hands up; don’t shoot.”

They chanted the name of De’Von Bailey, a black man shot and killed by Colorado Springs police last year. He fled from officers while being questioned about an alleged armed robbery. A grand jury declined to file charges against the officers in November, concluding they were legally justified in their use of deadly force because they believed he was armed and reaching for a weapon. 

On the third day of the protests, Newton and several other officers knelt with protesters in front of Colorado Springs City Hall. He credited his training in mindfulness for going outside to sit and listen to protesters, “to hear their message.”

Not all demonstrators were satisfied with how the department handled protests. Some called for the termination of police Chief Vince Niski; others said they saw officers’ efforts to speak with them as “publicity stunts.”

It’s easy to become bitter and jaded on the police force, Newton said. It’s much harder to fight through it and seek the help you need, and to see each person as a human life instead of whatever bias you have.

“The class doesn’t only benefit (officers), it benefits our community too,” he said. “When a cop can truly be present it does change the narrative.”

Utilizing mindfulness as a tool for law enforcement “is definitely a piece of the puzzle” in addressing police brutality, Newton said.

Things that can’t be unseen

As with many officers, Newton is no stranger to traumatic events. He often gives examples to the class of what his job in law enforcement has exposed him to — it helps the attendees know they’re not alone, he said.

“I will never get rid of the images in my head, but I’m able to better cope with them,” Newton said. “Those feelings are very powerful. They’re good to recognize because you’ve acknowledged it, you’ve allowed it to process a little bit and you’re not going to take it out on somebody later.”

The things he can’t, and won’t, forget: The sight of bright red blood splattered on walls, the smell of burning flesh, the sound broken bones make when a body is wrenched from a crushed car. The nature of the job makes these things tragically common.

“You don’t forget moments like that,” he said. “They stick with you. I don’t think cops coming into this profession realize that we’re the ones who do those death notifications. I’ve been punched, kicked, screamed to, cried at. … Those are some of the moments that are some of the hardest because you just don’t have any control.”

It takes his training in mindfulness to not take all that home to his family every day, he said. Bottling up stress is bound to come out somehow and sometime, he said.

“In those moments, if you have that (feeling of anxiety), it’s okay,” he said. “That’s a normal human reaction. Allow your mind to slow, then acknowledge it, and try to let it go. Sometimes you can, sometimes you can’t.”

Without awareness of the impacts of such trauma, events can accumulate and manifest in dangerous ways, Newton said. About one in four law enforcement officers struggle with alcoholism, researchers have found. Law enforcement officers and firefighters are more likely to take their own life than be killed on the job, a 2017 study from the Ruderman Family Foundation reported.

Other institutions that use mindfulness-based training have said they hope it will work two-fold: Teaching law enforcement to take care of themselves and empowering them to better care for their community.

“At times we’re not going to like each other,” Newton said of the relationship between officers and the community. It can become “an us versus them mentality. We’re not going to see eye to eye. But if you’re not taking care of yourself first, you really can’t take care of the problems in our community. If we don’t take care of that relationship, if we’re not each listening, that relationship will fall apart and crumble.”

‘It’s unconscious bias’

Being in the “optimal mind state” of being relaxed but with heightened awareness could help officers learn how to “respond rather than react,” Murphy with the Sage Institute agreed.

“If you’re poised for reaction, you’re poised for fight or flight,” he said. “It’s understandable and it’s natural, but the optimal state of mind they want to be in is open, receptive, relaxed but entirely alert. Not knee-jerk reactive but entirely responsive.”

Newton and Murphy share a common motto in their respective courses: “Don’t believe everything you think.”

“You start to realize you can have some distance on your thoughts,” Murphy said. “You can have a thought come through your head and you don’t have to buy it. Your brain spits out thoughts the way your stomach spits out stomach acid. Our thoughts are not consistent but it’s very easy, especially in a heightened situation, to be taken in by them.”

Some of those stomach-acid thoughts are the preconceived notions each person has about others, Murphy says.

“The universal experience is that someone looks at you funny. We think they don’t like us.

“It’s unconscious bias often,” Murphy said. “That’s something our society’s dealing with now, is recognizing things we’re partly unaware of.”

With enough practice, anyone who uses mindfulness techniques on a consistent basis can improve their awareness, attention and focus, researchers say.

Being mentally and emotionally bombarded with normal daily stressors — family, finances, health, to-do lists — is enough to distract someone from being their best at work. Add onto that specific stressors associated with law enforcement and it can be deadly not just for officers but for the community, Newton says.

“If I come to work with all that and I have to go deal with your emergency, I’m not really in the right mindset,” Newton said. “I could make a life-changing mistake.”

He hopes that with continued top-level support, the department can continue to grow from learning mindfulness-based techniques.

“As long as there’s an ear and someone’s listening, I’ll be there teaching it and practicing it.”

Colorado Springs Police officers kneeling with protest leaders at City Hall on June 1, 2020. 

Terry Terrones