The Additional Stressors of Volunteering: Policing

• In Event: Posters I

Abstract

Volunteer police officers hold a unique position in the law enforcement and general community. While they often appear the same and incur the same physical risks as their paid counterparts, the very nature of being voluntary and part-time makes it different from career policing. Police work is intrinsically stressful, causing officers and departments to create fictive kinship networks to help address these stressors (the Thin Blue Line imagery, charitable brotherhoods, even formal organizations for the spouses of law enforcement officers etc.). Volunteer police officers have the same stressors, but because of their position as volunteers, often have additional stressors, and have these without the support inherent in the full-time paid police community.

Authors

• Benjamin Dobrin, Virginia Wesleyan College

• Adam Dobrin, Florida Atlantic University

• Ross Wolf, University of Central Florida