16 • Psychological Effects of Undercover Policing Channels 2022 police departments and agencies should put into practice procedures that encourage successful reintegration. There must be a wide variety of procedures in order to accommodate the personal differences and reactions that individual officers will have. It must be noted first and foremost that one of the most important assets a department can offer an officer throughout reintegration is access to mental health resources. This asset was mentioned in the above solution, so it will be largely passed over here. One important change that should be made in departments and agencies nationwide are the conditions surrounding time off, regardless of whether it is paid or unpaid. Upon returning from an undercover operation, officers will often be battling a slew of emotions and possibly other mental health problems. Presently officer requests for time off due to mental health reasons are more likely to be declined than for a tangible, physical injury (Farkas, 1986). Thus, departments must assess their policies regarding time off and make the necessary amendments in order to allow officers in mental distress to take the necessary time off. To have an officer performing their day-today duties while in mental distress can be a danger to both the officer themselves and the public. While this adjustment may be difficult for many understaffed departments to make, the overall public and officers’ safety must be taken into consideration when determining if it is a worthwhile change. If a department or agency chooses to enact this change, it is important for them to collect data and routinely assess the effectiveness of the applied solution. Of course, not all departments will respond equally to such a change, so it is to be expected that additional adjustments will have to be made along the way. To assess the effectiveness of this solution, the department or agency should use a survey to collect data from the officers. This survey should be anonymous and required by all officers within the department. The data collected should focus primarily on the officer’s reasoning(s) for taking time off, as well as the duration of their leave, and whether the officers personally felt they were more effective on the job following mental health leave or not. The department should also look at statistical data to notice any changes in the public’s perception of police officers, the use of force reports, and any other officer conduct-related data being collected. Such data will allow the department to assess not only if the officers are perceiving the changes to be effective but if the department as a whole is operating more effectively as a result of the adjustment. Discussion The findings of this research demonstrate that there are significant consequences that result from undercover police operations. The two primary consequences shown in this study are psychological effects and reintegration complications. Training programs that lacked sufficient length and content appear to be at least one of the underlying causes as well as the overarching nature of undercover operations (i.e., abandoning one’s life and adopting another). While there is sufficient evidence to prove the existence of
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