This episode discusses trauma-informed policing efforts and training in the U.K with a focus on ACES.
Christopher Howarth is a retired Cheshire Police Officer. In the last 2 years of his service he moved into the training department and had responsibility for the interview training in relation to vulnerable and intimidated witnesses which sparked his interest in ACES, trauma and adopting a trauma informed approach to investigations.
Our conversation covers a variety of topics including mental health and wellness of police officers, how to conduct a trauma informed interview of a vulnerable witness and how collaboration is one solution to current criticisms facing police in America.
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>> Myrna McCallum : I'm Myrna McCallum, Metis Cree lawyer and passionate promoter of Trauma informed layering. Welcome back to the Trauma Informed Lawyer Podcast. As you know, I believe that law schools and bar courses are missing a critical competency requirement in their curriculum. Trauma Informed Lawyering. Becoming a Trauma Informed lawyer will, among other things, challenge you to critically reflect on your personal behaviors, beliefs and biases, call on you to positively transform the way you approach advocacy, guide your practice to avoid doing further harm to others, and ask that you commit to remaining open to learn new and old knowledge you didn't know you needed before beginning your career. Your education starts right here, right now. This podcast comes to you from the traditional unceded territories of the Squamish, Tsleil-Waututh and Musqueam people.
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>> Myrna McCallum : Welcome back everyone to the Trauma Informed Lawyer podcast. This week I have an interview for you with Christopher Howarth. He is a retired Cheshire police officer. We talked about trauma informed policing in the UK and the benefits of the police services adopting a trauma informed model. We also talked about vicarious trauma. We talked about ACEs, Adverse Childhood Experiences. You can look it up online. There's a ton of stuff out there that talks about ACEs. And we really just talked about so many things that are, that's so relevant not only to policing, but to lawyers, to judges, to anyone involved in any sort of justice system, including mental health professionals, and the roles that they can and should be playing in helping to redirect people out of the path of the criminal justice system. As we know, there are many, many folks out there, particular black indigenous people of color, who are entrapped within the criminal justice system for behaviors that really stem from mental health issues or other wellness issues as opposed to, them having criminal or offending behaviors that they can't seem to control. Anyway, that's part of the conversation that Chris and I have, so I really hope that you enjoy it.
>> Myrna McCallum : And yeah, and I let my guard down a little bit, so I think you'll hear a little of that today. And and I also think that this episode is a really good setup for the next episode that I'll be releasing, which is part one on vicarious trauma. So, let's start this interview. Let me introduce Chris. He, as I said, is a retired Cheshire police officer. In the last two years of his service, he moved into the training department. He had responsibility for, interview training in relation to vulnerable and intimidated witnesses. This is what sparked his interest in trauma and adopting a trauma informed approach to investigations. At this time, he was also Researching the development of forensic interviewing of children and how the trauma that they suffered affected and influenced their accounts. Since retirement, Chris has become an associate trainer for the College of Police, providing investigation and interview training nationally and internationally. In the uk, he's begun to become more involved in vulnerability and risk training for the College of Police as part of a funded project to assist frontline police officers to identify why and how someone becomes vulnerable, with a view to understanding the risk they are exposed to and, and also to try and do some problem solving to remove those vulnerabilities. It's this work that introduced officers to the concept of ACES and their impacts. From there, Chris began to provide support to Barnardo's children's charity in the uk, providing a trauma informed policing model to Wales. So let's welcome Chris.
>> Myrna McCallum : Chris, thanks for agreeing to this interview today. So why don't we just start with you telling me a little bit about who you are, what you do and what you've done previously to get to this point?
>> Christopher Howarth: Yep, no problem. So I'm a former Cheshire police officer. My whole of the career, was served as either as a constable or a detective. And so I never went up the rank structure at all. Probably the majority of it was as a detective both reactively and proactively. So in the reactive phase, dealing with what you consider some of the more routine types work, the burglaries, the assaults, robberies, those sorts of things. And then I moved into family liaison. So I would be the officer that would be deployed to the family of a homicide victim and be that conduit between the family and the major investigation team. So I do all the victimology, keeping the family updated in relation to the investigation and taking them to all the court appearances, sorting out housing and just helping them throughout the whole of that process really, and then carried out a number of other roles within major investigations as part of like a merger investigation team, handling exhibits, those sorts of things, before getting the opportunity to move into a proactive role looking at serious organised crime across Cheshire in the north west of England. Majority of that was in relation to drug supply, conspiracy to supply drugs, but also conspiracy to commit armed, robbery and those sorts of offences really. So all the proactive work, observations, surveillance and more longer term complex investigations. And then with about two years to go for one reason or another, I didn't leave school with very much and, had the opportunity to go into training, to be involved with the detective training program. And at that time our force, Cheshire was aligned closely with Chester University, so used to deliver on their foundation degrees as part of their policing program. And in order to do that you had to be, either have or be completing a level six qualification. so that was jointly funded by the force and the university. So I managed to get a degree.
>> Myrna McCallum : So what is a Level 6 qualification for those of us?
>> Christopher Howarth: That's a degree. So a degree in mine was in organisational development in police services. So what you get at the end of a standard university three year university program, so because we were like mature, we do a work based integrated study one at wibbis degree. So you'd effectively choose your subject matter and then research areas that were of interest to you. I retired in August 2016 and then applied to do some work with the College of Police, in and around crime training. And I set up my own, training consultancy company.
>> Myrna McCallum : Can I just ask Chris? So at what point did trauma informed approaches to policing come like onto your radar?
>> Christopher Howarth: well, I'd started to lead up the Vulnerable and intimidated witness interview program in my last two years whilst I was in training. So we used to train social workers and police to jointly interview and investigate child abuse investigations. And as part of my degree, I'd researched the development of forensic interviewing with children. So that kind of led into understanding a little bit more about the whole issue around trauma and how it affects memory as a start as like a lead into it. And then when I finished in the police and started to do some work with the College of Police, they had a program in 2017 around vulnerability and risk. And I applied to be involved in that piece of work which in turn led to a bit more of an understanding around how people become vulnerable. How do you manage that? Looking at the risk management side of things in around vulnerability and during that early stage we were only just touching on, adverse childhood experiences and the effects of trauma. And then subsequently after that I managed to get involved with, Barnardo's and the Early Action Together team, which was a whole system approach to combating the impact of ACEs, across police Wales. So one thing led to another, led to another and then I just found the whole issue around adversity in childhood trauma so interesting and so relevant really, that I just began to get more and more involved in it really. And then last week I was involved with the College of Police and again doing public protection training to our, direct entry officers. So people who are coming into the police at a senior rank of inspector or superintendent. So I led the public protection element of their phase two training for that as well. So it's, it's kind of just been building. I've moved more and more into vulnerability, adversity and trauma kind of as I've left the police. Really? Yeah. So that's, that's kind of where I came from.
>> Myrna McCallum : That's really interesting. So I have so many questions for you, but I'll take it really slow. Maybe let's begin with talking about ACEs. So for those of us who know, especially police officers, I guess for police officers who don't really know what ACEs are, how would you describe it and what would you say is like a significant piece of information about that, that officers should know that would help them in the course of executing their duties?
>> Christopher Howarth: Well, aces, there's been a number of studies, really, both in America, Canada, but we only recently, really from a UK perspective, if we start to understand the impact of adverse childhood experiences. So there can be a range of incidents, for example, being exposed to domestic violence, being physically or sexually assaulted, parent going into prison, parent dying and, something significant in a child's life. So parents that may be drug or alcohol dependent. So there's a range. And then the studies tend to focus on between 10 and 11 different ACEs to try and understand how many ACEs children are exposed to and then subsequently look at, how their lives panned out, really, if you put it in simple terms, to see what the effect of the aces was and was there some correlation between the adversity in childhood and their subsequent attainment in adulthood? You know, like just how they've got on, but also the impact on their health and mental well being has been a significant factor in relation to that.
>> Myrna McCallum : Why do you think police officers should know about the concept of ACEs and their impacts on individuals?
>> Christopher Howarth: Because it just explains so much of the behaviours that you're facing. It's a change of approach really. We have to move from looking at, stop asking what have you done? And start asking what's happened to you? So is the behaviour indicative of all the trauma that's going on in that person's life? And to change from a kind of a reactive approach to a person in crisis, who's more than likely a very vulnerable person anyway, to a proactive approach in identifying what those issues are, which is causing the behavior. And if we can remove those issues, then you'll remove the vulnerability, you remove the adversity and you'll reduce demand and you reduce the impact on that person's livelihood effectively and well being. So it's a change in approach really, to look past what you're Seeing and try and look for the cause of what you're seeing, if that makes sense.
>> Myrna McCallum : Yeah, it totally does. So would you say that an understanding of aces and in addition to, I guess, trauma informed approaches to policing, would that improve the way police deliver their services and would that also improve the relationship between the public and the police?
>> Christopher Howarth: Yeah, definitely. I think a police service that puts its vulnerable at the front of what they do will get the cooperation and the buy in from the rest of the community. If the police are seen to be looking after the most vulnerable, well then everything else I seem to think seems to fall into place. And ultimately if the police want to do what the police are supposed to be doing, investigating crime, then we need to free up the time that we are spending, which we've kind of all just morphed into that really. We've morphed onto taking this responsibility for a lot of society's issues really. We're the one stop emergency service and it's about maybe pushing back a little bit and making those services that probably have got the skills and have got the training to take on that responsibility and then hopefully the demand on the police will reduce. If we get the right, the early intervention in when we start seeing adversity, or whatever what is we're seeing, then it's going to free up the police ultimately to do what the police should be doing. You know, the police aren't mental health experts. You know, we've got an understanding but we're not outreach workers. The people who should be out in the community at those times of crisis are the people with the right skills, so the mental health teams. So it's about a systems change to identify those opportunities for early intervention really and having the systems in place behind to get that intervention in place.
>> Myrna McCallum : Can you give me a few examples Chris, on how this kind of approach or this training would benefit police officers?
>> Christopher Howarth: Well, we had part of the training last week. An example that was given, there was a young lady in her, mid to late teens had started to become aware to the local beat officer in North Wales, just starting to be seen a lot more around the town centre of an evening time behaviour, starting to escalate to the point that eventually she was arrested for being drunk and disorderly. And instead of looking for a quick sanction in relation to her, what the officer did was just start to understand her as an individual and start to look behind that and build a bit of competence, show some empathy for a start. You know, I can see that you're in trouble and Then that empathy that you showed resulted in that young lady disclosing that she'd come from a very, toxic background. A lot of domestic violence, mental health, alcohol and drug abuse. So those toxic three kind of coming together. And the stable person in her life was a grandmother on the mother's side who died a couple of months previous. So she had no kind of safe place to go to. So because she was having all the issues with coming to terms with her grandmother's sudden passing, and also the issues due to the adversity in her home life, the result of that was the behavior she was displaying on the street. So once that was told to the officer, then it was a case of putting her in touch with the relevant services in North Wales to sort out the grief counselling, to sort out some issues around mental health, to get her ready to leave the house. Because she was at that age where she's probably looking to. And the safest place probably was for her to go and get her own accommodation. So sorting out some supported accommodation for a kind of transition, and also making sure that she didn't drop into the criminal justice system. Because, you know, once children, especially children with some adversity in the past, enter the criminal justice systems, their outcomes are so unbelievably poor that we need to be doing everything we can, really, to delay that and give them as many chances as possible, you know, as long as we understand what the backstory is and the adversity they've kind of been through.
>> Myrna McCallum : So it sounds to me, Chris, like part of the benefits of this approach is that, for one, officers will learn empathy. They will also learn how to inquire with someone to explore whether there are other factors at play that they need to take into consideration before they decide what action they're going to take. So in the example that you provided by way of having a conversation and recognizing this young woman as a whole person who has some complex issues going on, as opposed to a criminal offender or an individual executing a criminal offense, then the officer is able to discern that she's got some unmet needs, some complex issues, and really in need of support that doesn't really require some kind of action on the part of the police that result in bringing her into a criminal justice system.
>> Christopher Howarth: Yeah, yeah. Especially where you've got someone who's come, who's had no offending history, then all of a sudden there's a sharp escalation. Well, something would have happened to initiate that escalation. So, you know, taking the picture as a Whole just to take that time and let them know that you're not going to be going anywhere, you know, and you're there to support them and actually to let them know that there is help there available to them. And that whilst it might seem alien to some police officers, some just do that naturally and they want to be freed up to be able to do that. But the systems weren't in place to let them do it. But that's beginning to change now.
>> Myrna McCallum : So knowing what you know now, do you wish you had this training, this information and this knowledge when you first started your career in police
>> Christopher Howarth: 100%, yeah. I look back and think of not even that long ago, how we've maybe exploited vulnerability to some extent, certainly in proactive policing, where there's been opportunities to maybe to take vulnerable people out of situations and we haven't, because we've maybe looked at the. The evidential side of things, the evidential importance of taking the case further. Yeah. So I think with hindsight, you know, we definitely could have had a different approach to protecting people. I mean, we have a significant issue now, you know, across the uk, with county lines, it's called county lines drugs operations. So drugs, gangs, drug supply networks from the metropolitan areas are moving out into the county areas and the people that are moving the drugs and dealing the drugs on behalf of the metropolitan kind of drug teams are vulnerable young people and they've been targeted because they are exactly that. High adversity in the childhood, isolated from a, supplied, stable background, no stable person in their life, and they'd be exploited for criminal purposes. And, we're seeing more of a recognition of that. And those children being afforded a defence under the Modern Slavery act, so that they don't get involved in the criminal process, they're dealt with as a victim of exploitation as opposed to a perpetrator of supplying, you know, class A drugs.
>> Myrna McCallum : So I've heard you say a few times now, Chris, you've mentioned the word vulnerability. Do you believe there's, a benefit for police services to partner with or to collaborate with mental health services or mental health workers or crisis services services to ensure that those who are identified as having, like, high vulnerability factors or high risk factors could immediately be diverted through that stream?
>> Christopher Howarth: There's lots of initiatives actually, that happen across the uk. Some forces will have mental health, assessment nurses in the control rooms. So when the first corps comes in, it will be assessed and if there is issues around that are identified by the call handlers or call takers, the call is immediately passed straight through to the mental health nurse that's on duty. There is also mental health triage teams that go out with officers during the day and during the night. So that where there is, I mean, policing is quite a blunt tool in relation to mental health. Certainly in the uk, there's very few options open to a police officer. You know, one of the main ones is that the person will be detained under the Mental Health act if they believe there is a mental health crisis actually occurring and that person needs protecting for their own safety. But that whole process takes hours and hours and hours. And once you detain someone under the Mental Health act, you're likely to be off effective duty for 8, 9, 10 hours whilst you're waiting for the assessment process to go ahead. And the officers will tell you, because, I've had conversations with them that they know as soon as they detain them under section 136, that they're not going to have met the threshold to be detained because there isn't the places, there isn't the secure accommodation and they're likely to just be released to attend a subsequent appointment, where a more effective approach is to have some mental health triage available at the time, so be taken either straight to a place where there is that opportunity to get that triage and that support in place or to actually take, a mental health professional to the person where they are at, their home address and get those because they've got the right skills, they know what they're talking about. Police, ultimately, we have an understanding, but we're nowhere near experts. And I think a lot of frontline officers find it very frustrating that they're expected to be that mental health expert, mental health nurse, when realistically all we can do is, is either detain them or, you know, arrest them. So having those options to get that early help so that they can be diverted into the mental health support system is really advantageous because the right place for them is probably still where they are getting the support from the community, family, whatever it might be, but the additional support, early appointments with the various mental health support that's out there.
>> Myrna McCallum : How are leaders in policing in the UK receiving trauma informed policing training and information like, are they recognizing the value that it brings to their organization and if so, how are they making space for this approach to policing?
>> Christopher Howarth: The National Police Chief of Council, who are the group of chief officers kind of in conjunction with the College of Police who set the standards for policing and they've developed the Vulnerability Action Plan, which runs from 2018 through to 2021. And that's got seven key themes around early intervention and prevention, protecting support in safeguarding and managing risk, effective information and intelligence management, effective investigation and outcomes, leadership, learning and development and also communication. So there's the seven key themes that are built into the action plan and then each force has to align their objectives with that action plan and make sure that the strategy is kind of adhered to. And then in relation to the College of Police, they have to embed that within the national training program for officers, when they first join as part of their qualification framework. So it's long term. It's also part of the Police envision for 2025 that we work to reduce vulnerability or work to reduce the risk in a multi agency manner, really, and jointly fund projects to look at, early intervention with reduced to reducing long term costs. Far better to put the intervention in early and let things escalate and maybe two or three people end up in prison. And the ridiculous cost of that, as opposed to putting something in, it's just switching it around. And that's the big step, is to put the intervention in early.
>> Myrna McCallum : So there's definitely this commitment, clearly, and action taking place. As you go into the College of Police and you train officers, what feedback are you receiving from all officers, whether they're longtime police or they're new recruits? When you train them on aces and gas, vulnerability with them and the value of trauma informed policing or trauma informed approaches to policing, what are they saying to you?
>> Christopher Howarth: The impact of traumas that's been around for quite a long time in policing. There's a psychotherapist in, the UK called Zoe Lodrick. She's done a lot of work to raise awareness around the impact of trauma and how victims may represent when they've gone through a traumatic incident and how that's going to affect them subsequently. But that training historically has only been provided to specialist units, you know, maybe child abuse investigators, serious sexual assault investigators, where, you know, in my view it's the majority of trauma is seen by frontline officers. So they need to be aware of what that trauma is and how it manifests itself and how it will change someone's behaviour, how it will change their decision making. And when we've done the training, both for the college and for Bernardo's with the ACE training for Police Wales, they really like the fact that they can put a name to what they've seen. So they've seen it lots of times because that's what they're being confronted with on a daily basis, understanding actually what's happening and then, you know, understanding how you might change your communication to get someone who's been through a traumatic situation and may well still be suffering the trauma, to ground them back in the here and now. So giving them some tools to be able to do that. Everyone's found that very beneficial. And actually, you know, it's about enabling decision making. And certainly with frontline officers, they'll make decisions as long as you let them make decisions. but if you want to let them make decisions around early intervention, those early intervention options have got to be there for them to be able to refer the person into the evidence base for the change of approach to a, trauma informed approach, as opposed to the approach that had been, you know, used before. Is there research in America, research in Canada, research in England and now this substantial study in Wales. In south Wales, over 2,000 people as part of that study. The evidence base is there to effectively force policing to adopt a new model, because if we don't, we're just continuing to, you know, subject people to that lifelong adversity.
>> Myrna McCallum : What is that study called?
>> Christopher Howarth: Well, it's done through Public Health Wales. So researcher from the university, John Moore's University in Liverpool, did three particular studies around adversity about the prevalence of ACEs and their association with health harming behaviours in the Welsh adult population and then the impacts of ACEs on chronic ill health and premature mortality and the impact of ACEs on mental health well being in Welsh adults. And those were the three kind of papers that underpinned the change of approach. So in Wales, but Wales, in Wales they also have a piece of legislation which is called the Future well Being of Future Generations Act. So that enables, in fact it puts an obligation on, the police to work with partners to improve subsequent well being. And that's been a significant part of the driver in the change of approach across Wales.
>> Myrna McCallum : That's fantastic. So earlier I asked you about how bringing a trauma informed approach to policing would help frontline officers who are on the street every day interacting with people who are at varying levels of risk and having varying levels of complexities and problems. You mentioned interviewing strategies. What would you say to police officers who conduct on a regular basis, interviews of child victims, victims of domestic violence, you know, any other folks that are deemed typically vulnerable individuals? What would you say to them about the value of bringing a trauma informed approach to an interview? And what are some ways that they can mitigate against doing further harm to the person they're interviewing?
>> Christopher Howarth: Well, firstly is to establish what your national best practice is, what the national guidelines are. For some time now, across the uk, we've had Achieving Best Evidence in Criminal Proceedings, which was brought out in 2011, and that's based upon, or provides guidance, I should say, in how to interview vulnerable and intimidating witnesses, both children and adults. And it's slightly changed, a slightly different approach from the peace interview model that UK policing is adapting. But the key things to take away from it is to take time. Building rapport with your victim or with your witness is to let them know that you are going to keep them safe. Because if you think about it, somebody who's in a very vulnerable position, who may be being exploited sexually by a family member, they will do, especially a child, will do a very, very quick risk assessment on the officer as to whether they can trust them to keep them safe. And if they don't trust the officer to keep them safe, they simply won't disclose anything to them because it's safer for them to continue to be abused, if that makes sense, than to risk the harm that might be being threatened through the grooming process on a sibling or mother or whatever it might be. So let them know about what you're going to do to keep them safe and then take the time that when they do feel happy, that they want to tell you what's happened to them, that you do that once so that we don't re. Traumatise the victim, we don't go over and over and over again. You've planned effectively enough, that when you do ask that question, you're happy that the victim is going to tell you what they want to tell you. They understand the interview process, they understand how you're going to ask questions. So that at that point, when you say, just in as much detail as you can, just tell me what's happened, you get what you want to hear because they're ready to tell you. You can only do that by getting to know them, building that rapport and, planning effectively and asking the right questions, that helps.
>> Myrna McCallum : Your first primary objective should be to create a feeling of safety for the person that you're interviewing. You need to take time to build rapport with them before you get into asking them questions. And when you do ask the questions, be very transparent about what you're asking, why you're asking, so that you only have to ask one time.
>> Christopher Howarth: Yeah, yeah. And then we'll use words like tell, explain, describe. So you've got to be very careful about how easy it is to kind of Pollute or change an account from a child, you know, and all the interviews with children will be recorded in the uk, visually recorded as well. And the officers have had the training, usually very, very good at, using that tell, explained, describe and then using the language that the child has used, maybe, you know, and getting them to explain things a lot more detail. But even before the interview starts, you'd have gone through a whole list of what the ground rules were for the interview about detail, about having breaks. There's lots of, there's like a checklist effectively you go through to enable that they know what you're going to do and how you're going to be asking questions before you even ask the question. Kind of, on the back of that, you know, the judicial system needs to be set up so that, that evidence can be tested as early as possible. So cross examination in advance of any potential court hearing so that the, you know, the victim, the child witness can start to have some treatment in relation to the trauma side of things. You know, we don't want to be delaying testimony for 6, 8, 10 months because all that's going to do is re. Traumatize the victim.
>> Myrna McCallum : Right. And I think some folks forget that that delay can also create trauma for individuals who are seeking some kind of resolution or protection. Okay, so let's talk about vicarious trauma for a few minutes. Or some people call it secondary trauma, some people call it compassion for. But you know, you and I, I'm sure, can both agree that when you're doing a lot of work that exposes you to the traumas of other people or exposes you to graphic evidence, graphic information after time that could potentially wear you down and impact you and impact your mental health in a very significant way. Is this a conversation that is being held amongst the police services or police training programs in the uk?
>> Christopher Howarth: Yes, there is a lot of conversation around that. different roles get different level of support. For example, the vulnerability and risk training that, I did on behalf of the college, I did a lot of that with British Transport Police. And they have a significant issue with people committing suicide on the railway lines. And so the attending officer will go and effectively have to deal with someone having thrown themselves in front of a train so that the trauma that they're gonna have to see and deal with, you know, once you've seen it, you don't unsee things. That's the phrase that sticks with me. And they have, you know, significant processes in place to be able to identify that trauma. And a lot of forces have A something called trim, which is trauma recognition management or something like that, which enables people to maybe recognise a change in behaviour or a change in how someone's just speaking or maybe come a little bit withdrawn to enable them to have that early conversation and then just think about, right, is there something that, you know, maybe you'll benefit from some additional support? Yes. So it is conversations that are happening regularly. Some of the more traumatic roles, child abuse investigation teams, they get mandatory counselling sessions. I used to have them as a family liaison officer. After each deployment, you would get a phone call just to make sure everything was alright. It probably doesn't go as far as it needs to, but, you know, we are significantly further on than where we were, you know, a few short years ago. You know, some forces are more proactive than others, but it is something that is kind of well recognised now. But police officers being police officers, we usually wait until it's too late and we don't disclose that, you know, that the pain that was going through internally early enough and then it creates an issue subsequently later on. But, yeah, there's a lot of processes in place now, through anonymous phone calls to support agencies and things now. So we are better. We're not saying that we're perfect, but certainly better than we used to be, you know, four or five years ago.
>> Myrna McCallum : Certainly the folks that you work with are those conversations happening to educate them on the. The broad spectrum of, indicators or symptoms that they might experience as a result of too much exposure to graphic information.
>> Christopher Howarth: Yeah, and it's about healthy, you know, coping strategies. So have conversations around that, you know, and how do we do that? And, you know, and what's the difference between a healthy strategy and at what point does it become an unhealthy strategy? I certainly know an example where, you know, exercise was used as the unhealthy coping strategy. So much so that, you know, when that combined with going through a promotion process. So this particular person didn't want to go through the promotion process at the point where she wanted to get some help for, a, you know, mental health, because it showed an area of weakness and therefore, well, if I do it now, I'm not going to get through the promotion. And then things built up, built up, relationship starts to be affected, relationship breaks down, which results again, another layer of kind of trauma on top, you know, and then she explained, before she knew where she was, stood on a beach, walking out towards the sea. Fortunately, some officers got there in time and prevented something tragic happening. But, yeah, it's far more open now to talk about what the indicators are and to seek that help, but it's about making that first step. Same with any kind of trauma process. You can be as proactive as you want, but ultimately, if the person won't accept that there's been an issue, despite everything externally that people are seeing, changing attitude and whatever, then ultimately, you know, policing isn't great at recognizing that and supporting people through it. There is still a perception of weakness to some extent. If you go off with stress or something like that, people don't want that, whether it's right or wrong. They don't want that on their kind of record slip that they've gone off with that. They see it as a big, hindrance in relation to, you know, getting access to maybe some, you know, more challenging role or going through the promotion process. but yeah, so it's a challenge. It's a challenge to change the cultural kind of leftovers we're getting from maybe a time when if you did go off with stress, you know, there's no way you're going to get onto the cid. There's no way you're going to get promoted because you've shown that deceived weakness in the past, made leaps and bounds in the UK in relation to it. But as, I say it's not perfect yet. But it's difficult to make those changes quickly in such an organization like the police that is so kind of built on traditional views and what have you.
>> Myrna McCallum : I'm sure you've been paying attention to the media, the news. I don't know what's going on in the uk, but definitely here in Canada and in the United States, there is a lot of conflict going on right now between police services and the public. To the extent that there are a lot of voices calling for government and leaders to defund the police, there's a lot of voices really calling out the systemic racism that exists within a lot of policing forces and policing services. As you listen to these news stories and hear these perspectives and given what you know now about trauma informed policing, what do you think about what's happening and how maybe a trauma informed training program for these officers might actually improve the relationships that they have with the public?
>> Christopher Howarth: I think just having a general understanding of adversity, especially childhood adversity and what the research shows, and if you combine the childhood adversity with the kind of social adversity and, you know, social environment adversity that a lot of people with high adversity, you know, Significant numbers of aces in their life have also got significant challenges socially, environmentally, socially, when I mean that. And maybe if we understood more about the actual challenges and the actual outcomes that those people in those communities are facing, then, you know, we might develop, or we would develop a more empathetic approach to them and actually involve those communities and those harsh to reach groups in the solution actually and get that conversation. It's got to be conversation based. You know, we certainly shouldn't be trying to arrest or, you know, legislate our, way out of this. You know, you've got to involve the communities that are most effective because they're the ones that are most effective. without their involvement, you'll never get any engagement. So we've got to listen to those that are most affected and take on board their views because that's only right, because they're the ones that have been impacted the greatest by whatever issue it is that's, that's facing them, whether socially or, you know, obviously it's a bit more serious obviously over in America at the moment. But you know, I think that just understanding a little bit more about what has happened in the past with a view to changing subsequent attitudes in the future I think is the way to go.
>> Myrna McCallum : Yeah, absolutely. I agree with you around the piece, the collaborative approach piece that you know, individuals who are affected by injustice, they have the answers, they have the solutions. They just need to be engaged by the powers that be, to explore what those solutions are and how it's going to work. This conversation has had me thinking about recent conversation I had with Dr. Gabor Mate. One of the things that he said to me, ah, I don't know that if this, I can't recall if this made the cut during our recorded episode. But he said, you know, it's really important to recognize and understand and acknowledge that the children who are having these adverse experiences like. So let's talk for a moment about children who experience sexual exploitation. He said there's a direct connection between that adverse childhood experience for that trauma and the child that grows up to become the adult who becomes a drug addict or a homeless person or the one who's breaking into your house because they need to feed their addiction and that we need to recognize that connection so the child who's victimized becomes the adult offender and that we have to change the way we look at these offenders and see the adverse childhood experience within them in order to actually bring a more compassionate, empathetic and trauma informed approach to how our justice system deals with them, including our like policing services. Right, so, so what you're saying to me is really echoing some of the words that he had also shared. And so I guess by way of maybe a final question for you, Chris. What would you like to see police services become in terms of their relationship to the public and even their relationship to each other and how they represent, their responsibilities as protectors?
>> Christopher Howarth: Well, ultimately policing is, you know, in the UK we have, it's by the public, you know, the police. The public, the public are the police. So there's that two way thing which is a slightly different policing model than other countries know that. But I suppose it's about this isn't just a policing responsibility, it's got to be a whole system approach. So if there is specific issues with a particular group of people, you know, I use the analogy, three times. Why? So why is there extensive drug use in a particular group of people? Well, it's because they're marginalized. Well, why they're marginalized? Well, because of this. And if you ask that three times, you're probably not far off getting to the root cause of what the problem might be. You've got to be very honest with yourself in relation to that if you are going to go to a kind of a root cause analysis and process to it. But it's got to be a whole system approach. The police can't fix it on their own. We've got to work in partnership and take kind of joint responsibility. But we've also got to first and foremost probably is admit to what we've done in the past might have been the wrong approach. Because if we don't, you know, apologise for things that have happened wrong in the past, we'll never move on from the past because the stumbling block is already there. So reflecting on the previous behaviors maybe and then looking at, ah, building for the future because we can't change the past. The policing mistakes that have happened in the past, don't expect people to forget about them but work collaboratively to kind of establish a new model of policing, a new model of cooperation to understand what the challenges are on both sides in relation to it. But also policing is lumped, as I said, earlier. You know, there'll be issues around housing, there'll be issues around Social Security, there'll be issues around alcohol abuse and access to alcohol. So there's, it's a multi layered approach and policing simply isn't set up to deal with all of those issues. It's got to be a Multi system, a multi, you know, cross societal approach to kind of reduce these adversities that we see in the harder to reach groups and alienated groups that unfortunately exist.
>> Myrna McCallum : Yeah, thank you. I totally agree. Totally. I totally agree with you. I think, I think it really has to be a collaborative effort from a lot of different stakeholders because you're right, the police, just like lawyers, we're not trained to be mental health experts. We're not trained to identify vulnerability necessarily and work with that. I definitely think that there is a lot of benefit in really engaging in partnership because together we're stronger. Right. And together we're more effective. And so anyway, I just want to say thanks, Chris, for giving me your time and sharing your experiences with me.
>> Christopher Howarth: The, interview with Gabor Mate was good as well. I enjoyed that one. I've got his book now, so.
>> Myrna McCallum : Oh, do you? It was great. I couldn't fit everything we talked about into that particular episode, but someone had said to me that for the stuff that doesn't make it into the original episode, I should do a compilation of, all of these really good bits and pieces. And there was a lot of good bits and pieces that, Gabor and I talked about that didn't make it into the episode. And so I may do that at a later date.
>> Christopher Howarth: I was going to throw in his definition of addiction, but I didn't. I thought, I won't bother. So making, making sense and bringing calm. It was, you know, it was really poignant in the, in the introduction.
>> Myrna McCallum : So absolutely. I mean, he is so, so brilliant. Like we did this exercise, which of course I did not upload and no way am I to. But we did an exercise in compassionate inquiry where he was asking me like, tell me about a time when you were disappointed in yourself. And it got really personal. But it really got me thinking about his approach to how we ask questions. And he also said it's really important to, when we're asking people questions about like criminal behavior, that we also acknowledge that who they are today may not be who they were when they engaged in this criminal behavior. So it's not looking at someone and saying to them, why would you do this? And being really judgmental and being really accusatory and attaching their identity to their behavior, but asking other questions like what was happening for you when you did this? Or who were you when you engaged in that behavior? And I mean, I think that question is quite powerful because it acknowledges that we're all capable of redemption and transformation and personal evolution.
>> Myrna McCallum : Right.
>> Myrna McCallum : Because can you imagine if we were all held, out to be the person we were when we did something when we were 12 years old or when we did something at 22. When you, when you keep someone kind of frozen in a certain state, in a certain time, it's unjust. It doesn't allow for transformation and redemption.
>> Christopher Howarth: There's a lot of projects going on here. There's a really good one that's dealing with domestic violence perpetrators and high risk domestic violence perpetrators with numerous victims, you know, and the cost to the economy to them is astronomical. And it's called the DRIVE project and that's an intensive project that costs a lot up front. But the process that they go through, it's about recognizing, you know, working with the perpetrator closely and recognizing what are those triggers and why do you think that, and going back to that and then recognizing that, you know, one of the contacts, he says if you can, you know, if you can name it, you can shame it. So understanding why do I start all of a sudden go from 0 to 100 and what is it that triggers that thing? And then recognizing the triggers and changing the behaviors. You know, it's not an easy process and it's not a quick process, but, you know, there is a lot of work to being done to kind of minimise that or to recognise that.
>> Myrna McCallum : I should say, I think, if I could just say, you know, as I think about some of the problems within the criminal justice system and some of the critical feedback that I've received, I think the one thing that really undermines, us bringing a trauma informed approach to our processes is time. Everyone wants to move through things really quickly. And unfortunately, when you're addressing trauma or you're addressing a traumatized person, it requires more time. You need to allow people more space to reflect, to do some work, to get some assistance. But if you're constantly living by the clock, then how can you fully employ a trauma informed approach? If your idea of employing a trauma informed approach means we got to get this done in one day or one hour or within two weeks, because now I got to move on to the next thing, right? So I think we as police, we as lawyers, we as judges, those of us who are all players within criminal justice systems really need to examine and reflect on our relationship to time and where we can create some, flexibility to accommodate trauma.
>> Christopher Howarth: A lot of the time investigations, they rely so much on victim testimony. We take a lot of cases to court now in the uk, domestic violence cases without any victim testimony, just using the evidence, that's around there. And I think sometimes investigations don't look at just how much evidence they've got anecdotally and, at the time. So the officers that attend in, you know, they are a valuable source of information, yet sometimes they don't maximise their evidential impact and we put the onus on the victim providing the information. Whereas if we looked a little bit more holistically around, you know, how are the children behaving? Are they showing signs of trauma? You know, what else can I include in my statement, which is going to give support and evidence to what's happening and give the context to what's happening to enable us to take it forward without making the victim build the case for us. You know, we should build the case for the victim.
>> Myrna McCallum : Yeah, I like that. I think that's a good place to leave this interview because it's all about us accommodating the other as opposed to expecting them to fit into our square box. Right.
>> Christopher Howarth: Adversity is not destiny. As was said on one video.
>> Myrna McCallum : I like that. Adversity is not destiny. Okay, that's a good one, Chris. And I'm going to, I think I might call this episode that Adversity is not destiny. Thank you so much for making time to talk to me. I really appreciate it.
>> Myrna McCallum : When I come back, we're going to talk about vicarious trauma. It's a heavy subject, so I'm going to do my best to make it as light as possible. Wish me luck. But it's a critical conversation that we need to have as lawyers, judges, police officers, frontline workers, anyone who is working with folks, who are in need of legal support. So looking forward to having you back here. If you have any questions for me, you can find me on Instagram, the Trauma informed lawyer or LinkedIn, and of course, Twitter @legaltrauma Take care, everyone. Until next, time.