A cop who helped others in the aftermath of shootings

Ed Jensen confronted death face to face early in his career as a Las Vegas police officer.

It was 1974, and he had just shot and killed a man who tried to rob a downtown gas station. Stunned, he watched the 23-year-old gurgle his last breath.

Then he confronted Southern Nevada's law enforcement culture face to face.

The first supervisor on the scene didn't ask if the young cop was OK.

"Where's your (expletive) hat?" the supervisor barked. Metropolitan Police Department rules said he had to wear it, not leave it in his car.

That night, fellow officers took the 28-year-old to a downtown hotel bar, got him drunk, and dropped him off at home. He went back to work the next day.

In those days, the force was dominated by battle-hardened veterans of World War II and the Korean War. A police shooting was usually greeted with a congratulatory back slap.

Jensen, four years on the job, went along. He acted tough. When his peers asked how he was, he told them he was fine.

That was a lie.

"It emotionally destroyed me," he said.

Jensen realized that what he was going through was not right. What he did about it would not only alter the course of his own life, but the lives of countless other officers as well.

KILLING SOMEONE TAKES A TOLL

Taking a life poses a unique problem for police officers, said Clarke Paris, who lectures police nationwide about depression and suicide prevention. The central mission of law enforcement is to protect life. Killing someone runs counter to that mission.

"You may take that life to protect others, but cops seem to hone in on the fact that they took a life," Paris said. "That's not normal to say, 'I took a life.' Who says that? Murderers, police and military."

Studies have shown that some officers experience memory loss, remorse, spikes in blood pressure and other effects during and after a shooting. Often, effects surface years later.

Jensen's reaction was delayed, and severe.

One night after the shooting, Jensen and his wife were asleep when their bedroom door opened and the man he had killed threw a bomb into the room. Jensen leapt from the bed, grabbed the bomb and tried to throw it out a window. When his wife turned on the lights, he saw their 13-inch TV smashed in a corner of the room.

Another time Jensen kicked his sleeping wife out of bed and threw himself on the floor as he saw the man come through the door, firing a shotgun.

A religious man from rural Minnesota, he struggled to reconcile his actions and the commandment, "Thou shalt not kill."

He talked to his priest about the incident but received little solace.

" 'Well, Eddie, you shouldn't feel that way about killing someone. You're a police officer and you did your job,' " Jensen recalled the priest saying. "And I looked at him and said, 'Father so-and-so, have you ever killed someone?' Dead silence."

A few weeks after the shooting, at the urging of his wife,  Jensen  sought help for stress-related medical problems. Even with treatment, the emotional effects lingered.

"It is devastating," he said. "It takes years off your life."

CREATING A SUPPORT SYSTEM

Jensen's nightmares didn't keep him from police work. In the eight years after his first shooting, he shot at — but missed — two other people. Yet he still carried the weight of killing a man, and he continued to be bothered by the department's insensitivity toward officers following shootings.

"You'd have deputy chiefs, and you'd have captains and lieutenants saying ... all kinds of inappropriate things to the officer — 'Well, you sure killed that son of a bitch,' " Jensen said. "And I'm thinking, 'They just killed somebody.' But you're talking about some guy who sits behind a desk all day and I don't think he's even qualified (to carry a gun) in years, and here's this young officer who just shot and killed somebody and is trying not to cry and just trying to suck it up, and his Adam's apple is tight, and your throat's tight, and you just feel like crap."

He wanted to change things, and he realized that changing the culture was the way to do it. One day he told a friend he wanted to create a post-incident support system. The friend told him that Lt. Jerry Keller, who would go on to become Clark County sheriff, had the same idea.

First, Jensen and Keller had to win over Sheriff John Moran, who in many ways embodied the culture they were up against. A  Marine who fought at Iwo Jima, Moran was "old-school" in every way, Jensen said.

But Moran let them do some research, and the two traveled to other cities to see how their departments handled the issue. They also studied their own department and discovered a startling statistic: Three in five officers involved in a fatal shooting quit within a year. They just couldn't handle it, Jensen said, and they had nowhere to turn for help.

Their work convinced Moran, and the Police Employees Assistance Program, or PEAP, was launched in 1984. Winning over other cops — particularly the top brass — took many more years.

 "This is a waste of time," Jensen recalled senior officers saying. "We don't need this mamby-pamby, sitting by and holding their hand stuff."

The department also made counseling by a psychologist and time off with pay mandatory after a shooting. As a result, post-shooting resignations fell dramatically.

In the early years Keller and Jensen had no real budget. They drove their own cars to crime scenes, and their office was a "very large coat-hanger room."

"We were scroungers, is what we were," he said.

But eventually they received financial support, and PEAP has since expanded to a six-member staff that helps officers cope with other stressful issues. PEAP members act as trusted peers, helping arrange anything from mental health treatment to child care.

"Guys like Ed Jensen saved a lot of careers, teaching officers how to handle these things," said former Las Vegas police homicide Detective Dave Hatch, who experienced three nonfatal shootings of his own and became a nationally recognized expert in the investigation of police shootings.

Creating PEAP was cathartic for Jensen, who calls it his best work in 30 years of law enforcement.

He went on to work in hospice care and is now a pastor at a Boulder City church. He said he doubts he would have taken those turns in life had he not taken a life.

"I don't know if I feel like I'm repaying having taken a life, but I have companioned many, many people over my seven years in hospice as they actually, physically died, and then (was) with them as they took their last breath," he said. "I know that if I hadn't been involved in my shootings, I would not be the person I am today."

Trending topics:

• Lawrence Mower
• Deadly Force
• Las Vegas
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• Ed Jensen
• police culture
• nightmares
• insensitivity
• Jerry Keller
• John Moran

Comments

Note: Comments made by reporters and editors of the Las Vegas Review-Journal are presented with a yellow background.

1. No More Pizza Dec. 1, 2011 | 2:59 a.m. Report Abuse

   @ reason... You should never call anyone a RINO... whether it's true or not. That is just hurtful. That's even worst that using the D word... "Democrat"

2. No More Pizza Nov. 30, 2011 | 10:08 p.m. Report Abuse

   @ RealityKingpin... Woah, BGHS really struck a nerve on you. LoL. You both have good points... but I'm leaning a lot more towards your ideology.

3. SummerlinCC Nov. 30, 2011 | 8:19 p.m. Report Abuse

   Great story. I recall investigating an Army officer who berated a soldier for having a broken vehicle mirror after he returned from a convoy mission that got hit by insurgents. Technically, no laws or regs were broken, but I went out of my way to try to make sure that officer would never make field grade. These type of stories are proof that common sense isn't always so common.

4. RealityKingpin Nov. 30, 2011 | 8:13 p.m. Report Abuse

   BGHS- you pompous self righteous POS. Do you think that the only time the deparment looks to reduce shootings is because you suggest it. Or this paper for that matter. The department is constantly looking to improve. It is SOP on a daily basis. But you wouldnt know this because you are a big barry white looking mofo. The problem with a POS like you is you just wanna act high and mighty, meanwhile you refuse to hold these suspectts accountable for ANYTHING they do. There is something wrong when people spend all of their time looking to attack the police. You sit back and attack a handful of incidents each year, none of which you knwo anything about because you arent there. Yet the police respond to around 3000 calls a day 365. And 99% of those are resolved with shooting. You comment on those?? I didnt think so. scumbag.

5. irishfighter Nov. 30, 2011 | 6:47 p.m. Report Abuse

   ahh, The good old days, when after a shooting your squad would take you to the "The Debriefing Room" fire up a cigar, buy you an endless amount cocktails until you hallucinated, where you saw guys ride horses up the stairs and into the bar. Then a cute dispatcher or two would take you home, put a trash can next to your bed , and tuck you in like a snug bug in a rug. Now you have to get in touch with your feelings, Whats up with that?

6. Tahoe.DI Nov. 30, 2011 | 7:32 a.m. Report Abuse

   Help for officers who are/were involved in deadly shootings has been, was, slow in coming. Specially in the early '70's---cops were/are supposed to be tough but that only works in the movies. Diseases of Adaptation have been know for decades and what Jensen went through is nothing new....he is correct in that some "brass" will sit behind a desk and point fingers, yet a lot of that brass has NEVER been involved in "real police work". (The supervisor who arrived at the scene of Jensen's shooting had the gall to shout, "where is your hat"....? ! That same mentality existed for a long time and is still evident. Some supervisors should have never been promoted---and then there are those who have been promoted beyond "The Peter Principal")! Departments owe Jensen a lot because of his fight to help create the PEAP program----long time in coming.

7. bghs1986 Nov. 30, 2011 | 7:14 a.m. Report Abuse

   How can anyone read that tragic story, and still call those of us who are urging Metro to do something to reduce the number of officers who will be tormented the way these Jensen was, cop haters. There is no downside to making concerted efforts to reduce the number of officer who will be affected by a FOIS. Perhaps we will kill few less unarmed people, but is that really a bad thng?

8. reason111 Nov. 30, 2011 | 4:26 a.m. Report Abuse

   No More Pizza, you are a Republican in name only. Tea Party here, and if you were REALLY against progressive attitudes and honoring our constitution, you'd see how the constitution spells out how NOT to allow the police to be above the law... but, as I said in my other posts, "No More Pizza has lost all credibility with me. I will now view his posts as sad. He's the kind that could see his own child raping someone and say "I refuse to believe my lying eyes...it was consensual even if she is bloodied and screaming." ........Even if he still wanted to err on the side of police and give them the benefit of doubt, he can't even have a discussion of 'Well, it's apparent policies do need changed but the cops are still good overall."....... he is flatly in denial that there is a problem, which makes his posts inconsequential and doesn't add to an honest forum debate."

9. No More Pizza Nov. 30, 2011 | 3:02 a.m. Report Abuse

   The Journalism should of been used investigating the Firemen or Democrats.... Metro is #1. WAY TO GO!