Why Police Early Intervention Systems Are Critical For Officer Wellness

Learn how early intervention software helps agencies monitor officer wellness, prevent burnout, and reduce liability with proactive intervention tracking.

February 11, 2025

Article highlights

More than almost any other industry, law enforcement officers are repeatedly exposed to traumatic events and stress. These incidents have a cumulative effect over time, often manifesting as burnout, anxiety, depression, PTSD, and even suicide.

When you add increased workloads and understaffing to the equation, it’s no surprise that a growing number of officers struggle with mental health and wellness. According to a 2024 study, police officers experience PTSD and depression at more than double the rate of the general population.

There are many things police chiefs and captains can do to educate officers, provide resources, and eradicate stigmas around mental health. One of the most practical strategies is looking for the behavioral signs of burnout and stress:

  • Increased anger or irritability
  • Trouble sleeping
  • Relational problems
  • Increased sick time
  • Substance abuse
  • Inability to maintain a train of thought
  • Lifestyle changes or erratic work habits

As a law enforcement leader, it’s impossible to know every officer equally well. Despite your best intentions, you can’t be everywhere at once. Even if you could be, the symptoms of burnout and stress can be difficult to spot, and even more difficult to document or prove.

In other words, you can’t fully rely on yourself or the supervisors in your agency to identify officers at risk of burnout. There’s too much human error involved in such an unstructured system. And even though education and diligence are important, you also don’t want to create a culture that makes officers feel targeted for mental health issues.

Fortunately, there’s a solution that doesn’t involve you being omnipresent or overbearing. Police early intervention systems (EIS) – especially those that focus on wellness – can track officer behavior over time and with precision. By quantifying stress and burnout, it can notify you when officers are at risk – before things escalate.

The risks of ignoring the signs of burnout

Although the signs of burnout and stress are clear, many officers are uneducated on the topic and unaware of available resources. Many fail to address their mental health proactively due to unfortunate stigmas. But ignoring burnout and stress doesn’t just impact an individual officer – it creates risk for your entire agency and community.

Attrition

Police departments often have high attrition rates, and burnout is one of leading factors. According to a 2023 public safety survey (75% law enforcement), 80% of agencies are facing staffing shortages and 23% of respondents cited burnout as the primary reason.

These statistics highlight a pattern of high turnover and burnout. Remaining officers end up working harder and longer to compensate for staffing shortages. Over time they also burn out and leave your agency, which forces other officers to work even more hours.

Attrition also impacts your agency’s budget and ability to serve. It costs tens of thousands of dollars to train a recruit. In Florida, depending on the city, it can cost $100,000 to $240,000 to train an officer. And it may take 2–3 years before that officer is fully trained, which can impact the quality of your policing in the meantime.

Liability

Burnout and stress increase liability for officers and your agency. In mental health, the window of tolerance refers to an optimal range of emotional arousal where a person can function effectively, think clearly, and manage stress.

When people operate outside the window of tolerance (i.e. when they can’t regulate their emotions), they enter a state of hyper arousal – also called fight or flight. This can be common in law enforcement, especially, where officers regularly face high-stress incidents and have to work through anxiety/exhaustion.

In fight or flight, officers are more likely to make mistakes, choose poorly, or even neglect policies because they’re not operating from their pre-frontal cortex – the rational, decision-making part of the brain. The decisions made in these states of physical, emotional, and mental exhaustion can lead to lawsuits, fines, and damage to your agency's reputation.

Tracking burnout

Tracking officer well-being manually is not only difficult, it can also be damaging to your wellness program. Neither you nor your command staff can be everywhere at once. By the time it's obvious enough to document that an officer is burnt out, it may be too late to reverse.

Tracking the symptoms of burnout is all about consistency. If it’s not consistent, problems can begin to escalate unnoticed. A police early warning system with a focus on wellness can automate the process for you, while mitigating attrition and liability.

How modern early intervention software works

Police early intervention systems help you recognize officer stressors and high-impact events before they become bigger problems. This allows you to build a stronger, more resilient agency.

Solutions like PowerVitals go beyond the traditional EIS. It quantifies cumulative stress data from multiple sources like CAD notes, action reports, and internal affairs cases. It uses advanced AI to process this information and calculate the level of trauma exposure for an officer. PowerVitals calls this auto-calculation a Pulse Score.

When officers show signs of increased stress or trauma, supervisors are notified so they can provide support earlier than traditional systems. They also have access to customizable assistance plans and a user-friendly admin dashboard, where they can view officer alerts and Pulse Score changes at any time.

With these robust tools, you can go above and beyond software to empower your supervisors and officers. Don’t just take our word for it – research demonstrates how impactful early intervention systems can be.

The proven impact of early intervention on law enforcement agencies

Although there are different types of EI systems, research indicates that structured programs can reduce officer burnout, improve morale, and decrease citizen complaints.

As of 2020, approximately 18% of law enforcement agencies nationwide used an EIS, including Minneapolis and New Orleans. An early assessment of these two cities’ EI technology and interventions showed a 67% and 62% decrease in citizen complaints, respectively.

The DOJ considers EIS to be evidence-based technology, or technology that has been tested and shown to effectively solve a problem. It even recommends early intervention systems as a tool to prioritize psychological health and wellness in law enforcement, especially after a critical incident has occurred.

In 2017, the John F. Finn Institute for Public Safety launched a study on Police Early Intervention Systems, supported by the National Institute of Justice. Across three separate agencies, certain actions and indicators decreased after intervention:

  • Citizen Complaints
  • Use of Force
  • ECD Use
  • Pointing of Firearm
  • Internal Investigations

While it's clear that use of force, ECDs, and firearms are necessary in some situations, if an incident can be de-escalated, it should be. This is where early intervention technology can be used to inform better training and mitigate crisis situations in addition to reducing burnout.

The ultimate goal of EIS technology like PowerVitals is to support officers and empower supervisors. With the right solution, your agency can increase officer retention, mitigate liability, and better serve the community.

How to get started

Agencies often have no reliable way of identifying when an officer is struggling, so the stress and burnout go unaddressed and affect their performance, health, and safety. Early intervention programs provide the needed tools to support officers, lower attrition rates, and improve morale.

While managing risk and liability is critical in law enforcement, some EISs are built to see every officer as a risk. Instead of identifying when an officer needs more training or support, those systems ignore the human element of policing and try to predict when an officer will have a negative incident. PowerVitals is different. It puts officer wellness at the forefront of early intervention – calculating the trauma and cumulative stress officers have experienced and helping supervisors proactively support their teams with the right tools.

PowerVitals is a robust early intervention software that enables supervisors to support officers earlier than traditional alerts. It tracks and measures weighted indicators, calculates Pulse Scores for every officer, and empowers supervisors to support officers with alerts, template check-ins, and assistance plans.

Schedule a no-obligation consultation today to learn how you can turn agency data into actionable insights for an elevated, more resilient force.

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