Counselor to Those Who Serve and Protect

Long before anyone used the expression 24/7 to describe every hour of every day, Audrey Honig was on call--24 hours a day, seven days a week.

The emergency calls she might receive, as chief psychologist and director of the employee support services bureau of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, could involve a suicide threat, a deputy shot in the line of duty or a psychotic gunman endangering the lives of hostages.

The crises that Honig faces regularly are every bit as perilous and sensitive as they would be on a fictional TV show about a police psychologist: talking a suicidal cop off a ledge, coaching detectives on the psychological subtleties of interviewing a suspect, profiling a rapist or convincing an officer that his drug addiction can’t be ignored.

Her job could be seen as maddeningly unpredictable, except for its certain capacity to deliver stressful situations. So it’s the perfect position for a workaholic who likes a lot of stimulation, which is how the 42-year old clinical psychologist describes herself.

In nearly 15 years with the Sheriff’s Department, she’s seen a lot, but she’s never seen the kind of police shrinks portrayed in those television dramas.

“Every police psychologist I have ever seen on a TV show is sleeping with her clients,” she complained. In her office in a nondescript mid-Wilshire office building, where she sees any of the 14,000 Sheriff’s Department employees who take advantage of the free psychological counseling offered, she explained how television’s version veers from reality.

“On TV, police psychologists are very emotional, ditzy and seductive, and always seem to be sleeping with the cops. It drives me crazy! We don’t sleep with the police, so I wish they’d stop showing that. They show officers who are forced to come in, sit and sulk or storm out of the office. No one ever storms out of our offices. I’ve never had a client walk out of a counseling session. Oh, and one more thing. We never sit around stroking our chins, staring up at the ceiling, trying to channel the spirit of a murderer.”

It’s understandable that television would emphasize the intense aspects of a job like Honig’s. Hypnotizing a witness to try to uncover information that could be used to solve a homicide can be exciting. Yet she also handles more mundane tasks: meetings with department committees, frustrating counseling sessions with the families of deputies, trying to design weight-management programs that employees might actually stick to.

In addition to supervising 12 professional psychologists, Honig runs a peer-support counseling program, and coordinates all health education efforts of the Sheriff’s Department. With a $2-million operating budget, she considers it her responsibility to predict the next potential problem area, and design a class or training program to address it.

For example, when sexual harassment in coed work environments became a source of trouble (and lawsuits), Honig organized classes to educate those within the department. When domestic violence within law enforcement emerged from behind closed doors, she initiated training programs aimed at identifying and curbing it.

Heading Off a Range of Problems

The psychological services department also has tried to head off problems that stem from racism, homophobia, sexism and deputy cliques that have been criticized as gang-like.

“In the department, we pull from the human race, so whatever you have in society, we have within the department,” she said. “Racism is an issue that society hasn’t grappled with, so we have it in the department as well. The same is true for homophobia, although there’s been a definite increase in same-sex couples coming for counseling. What I pride myself and this unit on is our ability to always be looking ahead, to have our hand on the pulse of the department so we can anticipate what the issues will be.

“If there’s racial tension at a particular unit or sexual harassment at another, we’ll spot it and set up some training sessions to educate the people in that unit. Or, when we notice our people are getting a little fat out there, we’ll put on some seminars about cholesterol control and strokes. We’ll try to design materials to address whatever issue might cause problems. Alcohol abuse is a concern, so we put together a training video on that because we didn’t want deputies carrying their guns when they were drinking.”

A tipsy schoolteacher and a drunken cop pose very different threats to the community. Honig said, “If law enforcement personnel are under stress, and they screw up, the effect that can have on the public is serious. They feel that pressure.”

One of the worst police scenarios happened in New York last year, when five officers fired on and killed an unarmed man they thought was reaching for a weapon. The Sheriff’s Department has had its share of excessive force charges, and no police officer wants his actions to become the next national scandal.

“People who go into law enforcement tend to be idealistic and perfectionist, so they’re already kind of keyed up and they’re already feeling pressure because they’re responsible people,” Honig said. “We select the people who are going to go down that dark alley even when they do feel fear. That’s the difference between them and the rest of us. They’re going to push down that fear and have that extra sense of responsibility.”

But denying fear has its price, from sleeplessness and irritability to depression. The philosophy of Honig’s department is that if an employee is going through a divorce, if a parent died, if his child is sick and he’s preoccupied, he isn’t going to be effective. So no distinction is made between job-induced stress and personal problems. Counseling is available for either.

“The vast majority of concerns are personal,” Honig said. “It’s more likely to be, ‘My marriage is in trouble,’ than ‘I’m despondent because my partner was killed in the line of duty.’ It doesn’t matter if it’s personal stress or job stress, we need these folks focused on the job at hand. Or else they could be dangerous. If you’re out there with a gun, and you’re supposed to be protecting society and your mind isn’t on your work, you are dangerous.”

Barry Perrou, commander of the hostage negotiation unit, frequently calls Honig for assistance, both during and after a crisis.

“It’s been marvelous to see, from when she arrived at the department 15 years ago, how she advanced not only the Sheriff’s Department’s psychological services, but she’s also been one of the cornerstones for police psychology across the nation,” he said. “She’s always been on the cutting-edge of new programs. When something’s been successful here, she’s shared it with departments in other parts of the country. She’s had to overcome being a female in a predominantly male-oriented profession, and she’s done that with grace, charm, great efficiency and professionalism.”

The first challenge Honig had to meet in the Sheriff’s Department was trying to remove the stigma associated with seeking psychological help.

“Dr. Honig has overcome tremendous barriers and resistance that existed in law enforcement to shrinks,” said Under Sheriff Bill Stonich. “The value of psychological services has spread through word of mouth. People who’ve been helped have let their colleagues know about the support they’ve gotten. Then other people are willing to seek help themselves. She has tremendous caring for the people of this department and the communities we serve. That’s made her part of the Sheriff’s Department family.”

Changing Views Toward Therapy

In the macho culture of a law enforcement agency, stiff upper lips often go with the uniform, and needing therapy is viewed as a sign of weakness. Acknowledging that attitude, personnel can receive counseling from Honig’s professional staff, or talk to a colleague who’s been trained in peer counseling.

In 1999, police psychologists provided 3,085 individual and/or couples counseling sessions to department members and their families. Two hundred peer counselors met with 2,499 people in the same year. Sometimes, counseling will begin with a peer therapist, who’ll recommend a professional.

“Peer counselors are appealing because they’ve often gone through the situations they’re counseling about,” Honig said. “We recognized the need for two tracks: Not everyone’s going to want to see a professional.”

Mistrust of the system is rampant, as is fear of professional repercussions.

“We try to stress that there are no ramifications to going to counseling,” Honig said. “No matter how much we tell people that the sessions are confidential, often they’re not going to trust us. Some will feel more comfortable with a peer who they know has gone through what they’re going through, and come out the other side.”

One way that Honig can gauge how attitudes toward counseling have changed is by seeing the response to the debriefing sessions deputies involved in shootings must attend.

“It used to be that I’d get a phone call, the gist of which was, ‘Do I have to come in?’

“ ‘Yes, you have to come in,’ I’d say.

“ ‘Where does it say so?’ ”

And I’d quote the manual. Or a supervisor would call and try to weasel the officer out of coming in. The current policy is quite broad, yet people don’t try to buck it or question it.”

Fear, confusion and guilt are common reactions to a shooting. Honig’s goal is to reassure deputies that their reactions are normal.

“It’s important to communicate that what they’re feeling and the anxiety their spouse is feeling is normal,” she said. “What they experience is questioning themselves. They often obsess about what happened, feel guilt, have flashbacks. Sometimes they’ll have physiological symptoms, such as time distortions. If they know that the process of the investigation is customary, then they don’t get paranoid and feel that they, personally, are being persecuted. They learn that if they’re anxious when they go back in the field, that’s OK, because others have felt that way too. And it will pass.”

Honig grew up in North Hollywood, the fourth of five children. She knew when she was in high school that she wanted to be a psychologist. She majored in psychology at UCLA, earning her PhD from the California School of Professional Psychology at 24. At first, she thought she’d work with teenagers, but an internship with the LAPD showed her the opportunities in law enforcement. She liked that the work was varied and fast-paced.

“I have an opportunity to help an underserved population of people who spend most of their time helping others and may not be inclined to seek help themselves,” she said. “People think that cops are all the same, and they’re not. I have met more different types of people in law enforcement than I ever thought I would. There’s a huge variety, from pencil-necked geeks to Marine-type macho men. There’s an enormous variety of styles, personalities, looks. Most of them are very caring people.”

Working 50- to 60-hour weeks, Honig must remember to take the advice she gives others on avoiding burnout. Divorced nine years ago, she’s in a relationship that she says is extremely supportive, and she spends as much time as she can with her 13-year-old daughter, an avid roller hockey player.

“I try to play as hard as I work, to keep as balanced as I can. I’m pretty wired, and I throw myself into anything I do. I take vacations when I can.”

Jamaica is a favorite destination. It’s one of the few places where the phone can’t ring, summoning Honig to handle a crisis.

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Mimi Avins is at mimi.avins@latimes.com.