Justin Miller [00:00:00]:
Can I get the current number for eap? I have an employee here who might need some services. Their response was, yeah, we don't have EAP anymore due to budget cuts. And I'm like, okay, well, so at that point, in this agency, we didn't have a peer support team. And it was just. There was nothing. There was no. I had nothing to do for that employee. And I kind of felt like a loss other than what I knew from my psych time.
Justin Miller [00:00:28]:
Right. And so I just kind of counseled them myself. But I knew at that time that we had to be better.
Welcome back to the podcast. I'm Jennifer.
And I'm Ashlee. And we do have. I'm just going to say it because it's like a running joke. Now, a very special guest today, and this person has turned into one of my very favorite humans quickly. So I'm honored to have him on, and I'm going to let him introduce himself because we got a lot of good content today.
Justin Miller [00:00:53]:
Hello. I am Chief Deputy Justin Miller from the Kenosha Sheriff's Office, Kenosha County, Wisconsin. I've been in law enforcement since 2002, and prior to that, I was in the Navy as a psychiatric technician, which is.
I know Jennifer's face. It's like, wait, what?
Yeah, yeah, this is a podcast. But if you guys saw my face, I did not know that was on your resume. My goodness.
Yeah, it's really hard because he knows all the ins and outs, too. Like, he's.
Justin Miller [00:01:19]:
He's with it, the old ins and outs now.
I was about to make a bad joke. Okay, well, we're excited that you're here today, and I appreciate your time, and I appreciate you sharing that you're a chief deputy, and I think that's kind of what we want to talk a little bit today in terms of your title and what it means to be leadership in law enforcement. And I just kind of want to ask, when did you recognize that investing in mental wellness for the officers you would serve should be a priority or prioritized?
Justin Miller [00:01:49]:
Yeah. So I touched a little bit on some of my background, but, yeah, psych tech in the Navy from 95 to 2000. I think about my time when I work back in the field. It kind of opened my eyes to the world of mental health. And full moons. Full moons are a real thing.
Justin Miller [00:02:06]:
Inpatient psych world. That's a real thing. But I worked in the inpatient unit at Great Lakes, and I think about the medications that we administered as Navy Corpsman basically did the work of nurses. Right? We. We actually gave the shots and administered medications, did the surgeries, things like that. Right. But I remember, like, watching the. Those.
Justin Miller [00:02:27]:
Those side effects of those medications, you know, the catatonic shuffle, the tardive dyskinesia, you know, things you would see in, like, those old movies, but then you would see it in real life and it was like, surreal, Right? You know, my mom's uncle was in an inpatient unit when I was growing up, so I can still remember the smell of. Of the psych unit when you would walk in. And it smelled the same way when I was in the Navy. And then when I got out and I went to Arizona State University, I worked as a psych tech in the Maricopa County Hospital, which was totally different than my time in the Navy because basically, like the little room that you're sitting in, I did a lot of coloring activities with the patients and fed them. Right. We didn't. We couldn't administer medication. So in my time with the sheriff's office, I would say that, you know, I experienced a couple major personal life events in my first seven years as a deputy.
Justin Miller [00:03:22]:
One of them being I had a significant other who committed suicide. And then my. I lost my mom in 2009, and she was like my best friend. So there is no help offered or even compassion given within this organization. Right. And you know, another event I recall is I was at my uncle's funeral and I got a call from the department and the supervisor on the other end of the phone was ordering me in for duty, like, immediately. Right. And I was like, at my uncle's funeral, and he's in.
Justin Miller [00:03:56]:
His response was, and I quote this, well, uncles are not covered by funeral leave, so you have to come in. And I remember going to my family and like, hey, I gotta leave, because I just got ordered into work. And they were, like, dumbfounded and just like, I couldn't even participate in the funeral for my uncle.
Justin Miller [00:04:20]:
So that was. So I fast forward, you know, to my second assignment as a sergeant. You know, I get promoted, and again, I get promoted. I think, okay, I'm going to have a voice in this game. Right? And not necessarily that mental health was on my top priority list, but even in the military, you always want to be promoted because you want to be better than the people that. And I use this in a loose term, led you, or I should say manage you, because there's a difference between leaders and managers, right? Yeah, I can teach anyone to manage somebody, but to actually lead them is, I think, is a calling, but I won't go into that right now.
I think that's a good point, though.
Justin Miller [00:05:00]:
So I was assigned to the conveyance unit, and one of my employees had some, let's just say, major mental health issues that they were dealing with. And on one of our filing cabinets, I remember there was this magnet for eap, right? And I just remember seeing that magnet. Never heard anything, talked about eap, Nothing, you know, So I gave the employee that information, sent them on their way. Well, they returned, like, 15 minutes later and said, yeah, the county isn't covered by that anymore. And I'm like, what? And they're like, yeah, they said that we're not covered, that this. This is an old number or something. So I called my hr, and I was like, excuse me, can I get the current number for eap? I have an employee here who might need some services. Their response was, yeah, we don't have EAP anymore due to budget cuts.
Justin Miller [00:05:53]:
And I'm like, okay, well, so at that point, in this agency, we didn't have a peer support team, and it was just. There was nothing. There was no. I had nothing to do for that employee. And I kind of felt like a loss other than what I knew from my psych time, right? And so I just kind of counseled them myself. But I knew at that time that we had to be better, right? However, being a sergeant and that old. In that old culture of the department that I work in, I had no voice, you know, again. So I'm like, all right, well, I got to be promoted lieutenant to have a voice.
Justin Miller [00:06:27]:
Well, again, find out that that's not the case. So when I was promoted to captain in 2016, again, I finally. Finally would be able to be heard because I got to sit at the table. So some other incidents that took place in our agency over the years that I just, you know, I'll never forget is just a couple officer involved shooting calls. One in particular, I. I was coming out from third shift, and we were. I was asked to bring out the less lethal beanbag gun, right? So I'm like, okay. And I was a.
Justin Miller [00:06:59]:
I was a hostage negotiator back in my day, right? And they were at a barricaded. Guy was just in his car. Barricaded, but had a long gun, and the SWAT team was out there. So I was asked to bring out this less lethal. So I bring it out, and I remember my boss was negotiating at the back of a squad car, and so I Run up to the back of the squad car with this gun, and I'm like, hey, where is the guy? And he, like, points and he's like, literally 10ft in front of us. And so I'm. As soon as I get there, you know, I hear, you know, I see the SWAT team. I see, you know, everyone's kind of around, and I.
Justin Miller [00:07:40]:
He's trying to communicate with him, and I see this guy's long gun come out of his window, and then just shots just rained out, right? And I was like, oh. I'm like, what just happened? Right? So I remember having to go. I. I got assigned to go with. I mean, the guy was killed. I got assigned to go with a body to the. To the hospital. And then once I cleared the hospital, they had me bring the mobile command, our mobile command center for interviews and things like that.
Justin Miller [00:08:10]:
And I remember the union requesting time for the officers to, you know, leave. You know, kind of what the protocols are now, right? You don't have to talk right away. There's a, you know, a level of decompression, all those things. Demanded. Actually ordered them to all stay on scene. And they were interviewed one by one in this command post, right? So then I think, okay, no one would. I know now, right. I didn't know any better back then, but no one would.
Justin Miller [00:08:39]:
I know now. I'm like, oh, my God, that was a horrible decision. Yeah, the. The trauma that they just experienced. I mean, you know, I went to the ER with this body, and I'm like, I just remember. I can still see, like the guy looked like Swiss cheese, you know, I mean, it was. It was like almost like stuff I've seen in the military from, you know, combat versus, you know, I'm. Wait, I'm out on the street.
Justin Miller [00:09:04]:
And I was probably only a couple years on at that point, you know, and so I think about that, and then I remember that those officers that were involved were told to come back to work in 48 hours and go back onto their shifts and got zero critical incident stress debriefs, zero opportunity to have counseling sessions where we didn't have eap because this is well before the budget. Bad magnet, right?
Justin Miller [00:09:32]:
There was, you know, a handful of different officer involved shootings that happened over my time up until my, you know, actually when I was first assigned the second shift as a lieutenant, one of my first months on, we had an officer involved shooting, and I actually bought my shift food, right. I brought it to. To kind of our safe zone, if you will, Right. And I bought Them food out of my petty cash. And I got my butt chewed for weeks, right? Because I wasn't supposed to buy food out of my petty cash. It's not authorized. And so. And, you know, fast forward.
Justin Miller [00:10:11]:
I just buy it out of my own money now. But whatever, you know, it's so I just remember that was the culture, though. The culture was you don't. I felt like you don't take care of your people. You just make sure that you're operationally ready. And. And, you know, then those officers again got, you know, thrown back into the road in 72 hours and told, you know, rub some dirt on it. You know, get back out there.
I think the most powerful thing about that, though, in our position, right, Is like, what you're saying still happens. Those negative things still happen at a lot of departments. Like, we still hear that today, right? And so I think that can be the challenge. And the frustration is like. And it's amazing that you're on here being open and talking about that, especially in your position, because, like, for us as clinicians, right, like, we hear. We still hear of all those negative things of people being like, oh, well, suck it up and get back out there. Oh, well. And it's like, how are we still in this position? And so it's important for us.
I do want to ask you, what is your department's current strategy for supporting the mental wellness of your officers after having that culture shift? What are you trying to implement?
Justin Miller [00:11:14]:
Yeah, so I would say that it's my personal, number one priority in the twilight of my career, something that I've been pretty passionate about for years, you know, been trying to change that culture. I've been told my ideas were too grandiose, out of touch with reality, you know, but over the last eight years, I've witnessed agencies all over the United States implementing the very things that I would talk about, right? Those cutting edge, you know, mental health days, mental wellness rooms. I mean, in West Virginia, they have a. I think it's called the Hero Center. It's like a mental health center. Like, right? Like, they have a gym, a room with. Next floor has all those massage chairs, and the next floor is just a meditation room. But those things I've always, like, I'm like, okay, why can't we work out on duty, right? Or whatever.
Justin Miller [00:12:03]:
It doesn't have to be workout, whatever you want to do for an hour, nap, siesta, whenever, you know, meditate. What? Like, why does it, you know, why does your, you know, 10, 7, or your lunch have to Be eating food. Right. Why can't we just do whatever we want during that time? So I think our strategy is to provide a psychologically safe workplace. And again, I've been reading this book, the fearless organization that just talks about creating a psychologically safe workplace that you can feel supported. Our employees have a voice, right. Making sure that everybody has a voice at all levels, have any and all resources that are available and at their fingertips. Right.
Justin Miller [00:12:47]:
We've actually partnered with this amazing provider that shares some of those same visions as I do. So I think we're getting there.
I've heard about that provider.
Justin Miller [00:12:56]:
Yeah. I mean, other than being a Bears fan, she's, I'm not a Packer fan, so it doesn't matter.
No, we actually get along very well because of that.
Justin Miller [00:13:06]:
Right, Right. But currently we have an app called Cortico which is, you know, and kind of a one stop shop for wellness, if you will. There's different programs in there. There's one touch provider like, you know, we can p
