Police Lieutenant Turns Counselor

The criminal suspect stopped at the top of the stairs. He was armed and considered dangerous.

“Police, put your hands in the air!” shouted Bernardsville, N.J., patrolman William Ussery, MA’84 (M).

Like a jagged lightning-stroke, a single thought flashed through his mind: “I’m gonna have to shoot him!”

The suspect — a drunken vagrant with a double-barreled shotgun hanging from one shoulder — put his right hand in the air, but his left hand remained hidden. Heart pounding, Ussery waited to see what would happen.

Like a jagged lightning-stroke, a single thought flashed through his mind: “I’m gonna have to shoot him!”

But it didn’t happen. Instead, Ussery’s partner — patrolman George Botsko — moments later stepped through an open doorway and leveled his own shotgun at the assailant’s head.

“George saved me, all right,” the 67-year-old Ussery recalls. “As soon as he arrived, he spoke to the gunman in a language he was sure to understand … the international language of ‘jacking a round’ into the chamber … and when the guy on the stairs heard it, he dropped his weapon and his pint of beer!”

The crisis was over.

But the story of the 1974 “takedown” in the lobby of a local pub doesn’t end there. Although the youthful policeman didn’t know it at the time, he’d been deeply affected by the showdown. “Other than a jolt of fear, I hadn’t really experienced any emotional response,” he remembers.

“But then one morning a few days later, I was sitting in Frank’s Barber Shop, and he asked me how things were going. I said: ‘Frank, the damnedest thing happened’ — and all at once, I started to shake and cry. I couldn’t believe it. I just sat there weeping in the chair.”

Nearly a decade later, while studying psychology at FDU, Ussery would learn that he’d been struggling with a psychological syndrome known as “critical incident stress” (CIS) — an emotional disorder that frequently attacks first responders to emergencies.

Ussery would also learn that if CIS isn’t properly managed, it can leave police officers, firefighters and emergency medical technicians (EMTs) with potentially disabling symptoms … including panic attacks, clinical depression, violent rage, addiction to alcohol or narcotics and even suicide.

After surviving his own attack of CIS, the retired lieutenant (Ussery left the force in 1992) went on to become the clinical director of the only state-funded program of psychological assessment and support for stressed-out first responders in the nation.

That unique program — in which five full-time staffers and 30 volunteers have so far helped hundreds of September 11 and Hurricane Katrina first responders, while also serving police and firefighters throughout New Jersey — is called Cop-2-Cop. The program is jointly operated by the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, Piscataway, and the department of psychology at FDU’s College at Florham.

Launched in 2000, the program has by now taken 19,000 calls and assisted more than 3,500 police officers and firefighters in the Garden State by providing those involved in critical incidents (such as police shootings, violent crimes, suicides and lethal accidents) with clinical assessment evaluations aimed at diagnosing CIS. He estimates that the program has helped to prevent at least 60 suicides.

Ussery estimates that the program has helped to prevent at least 60 suicides.

After performing an assessment, the Cop-2-Cop intervention team arranges for professional counseling, if required, along with peer support and specially designed “critical incident stress management sessions” in which troubled first responders learn how to cope with the symptoms of CIS.

“I spent 23 years as a cop,” explains Ussery, who earned his MA in applied social and community psychology part-time at FDU’s College at Florham, “and I learned a great deal on the street about the destructive impact that stress can have on the lives of first responders. But Ussery also says the knowledge he gained at FDU from psychology professors such as Judith Waters (with whom he co-authored an article on the Cop-2-Cop program for the journal Brief Treatment and Crisis Intervention) has proved “extremely helpful” in his role helping police officers and firemen better manage the stress generated by critical incidents.

“There’s no doubt,” says Ussery today, “that the rates for alcoholism, drug abuse and divorce are higher for cops than for most other occupations, and many people are surprised when I tell them that the average American policeman is three times more likely to die from suicide than from injuries in the line of duty.”

Adds Ussery, who still lives in Bernardsville with his wife of 47 years, Carol, a registered nurse, “We went in and helped hundreds of first responders at ground zero after 9/11, along with many of the cops who developed CIS in New Orleans after Katrina. In case after case, we saw how delayed stress from these critical incidents was having a highly destructive impact on the lives of the first responders.”

Only a few months ago, Ussery’s high-voltage career took yet another remarkable turn — when he left the successful Cop-2-Cop program to become the community relations representative for Summit Oaks Hospital, a private psychiatric and chemical dependence center in Summit, N.J. “In many ways, this new job is a natural outgrowth of my work for Cop-2-Cop,” he says, while explaining that he’ll now be responsible for putting together presentations at schools and civic organizations on mental health and addiction issues, along with managing the hospital’s media relations department.

“Summit Oaks is a full-service adult psychiatric facility,” he adds, “but we also have a unit devoted exclusively to adolescents and children, and another for patients who are struggling with addiction to pain medications. At this stage of my career, I can’t think of anything I’d rather be doing than this kind of work.”

So how does Bill Ussery, himself, wind down from the stress of his hectic new job in psychiatric hospital care?

“It’s simple,” the former Bernardsville patrolman will tell you with a delighted chuckle. “Golf! I’m a hacker, but I love every minute I spend on the course. I enjoy the sport because it’s outdoors and it’s totally absorbing.

“When you’re lining up a really difficult putt, you don’t have time to worry about your problems at work!”

— T.N.

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For a print copy of FDU Magazine, featuring this and other stories, contact Rebecca Maxon, editor,
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