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Vicarious Trauma

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Vicarious Trauma
There is significant stress associated with the use of deadly force - having to kill another human being (Volpe & Anderson, 1998). No officer is ever emotionally ready to kill another human being. Many officers say that the first thing that came to mind after they fired the fatal bullet was "Thou shall not kill." All of these stressors make police work different from other professions. Of course, the on-going, day-to-day exposure to murders, assaults, rapes, child abuse, domestic violence and "man's inhumanity to man" intensifies this stress-related burden. Vicarious Trauma is a diagnostic term used to depict the cluster of symptoms many police officers suffer as a direct result of the job of policing. In diagnosing trauma-related disorders
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