WQED Weekly
Police Counseling Program
Clip | 5m 52sVideo has Closed Captions
This segment explores a police counseling program.
This segment of WQED Weekly features a story about a police counseling program in Allegheny County. Police Counselor Dorothy ‘Dot’ Hawkins talks about the kinds of calls she responds to and the support she can offer to people. This segment also includes an interview with a family who received counseling services from Dorothy to talk about how she was able to support them.
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WQED Weekly is a local public television program presented by WQED
WQED Weekly
Police Counseling Program
Clip | 5m 52sVideo has Closed Captions
This segment of WQED Weekly features a story about a police counseling program in Allegheny County. Police Counselor Dorothy ‘Dot’ Hawkins talks about the kinds of calls she responds to and the support she can offer to people. This segment also includes an interview with a family who received counseling services from Dorothy to talk about how she was able to support them.
Problems playing video? | Closed Captioning Feedback
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There are five new faces hanging around nine of the police departments in the Steel Valley.
They are part of a new police counseling program that is saving time and money for the departments.
And at the same time, solving problems for people that otherwise would go unsolved.
We have a domestic problem, an 815 Handyman St from the station.
Pick up Dot, please.
Dorothy Hawkins is a police counselor who often works out of this station in Duquesne.
Ron, is there anything you can tell me about this family?
Dot, I know these people, and, they're a little temperamental.
We handle problems between spouses, children, extended families, children versus community, husband versus community wife or anything, really that, affects the family cohesiveness or the family life.
You know, we term that as domestic disputes.
When arriving at a scene and entering a home, the officer is accompanied by someone from the counseling program who is trained more or less to put the people at ease and to show them that we are there not as an authority figure and trying to force our will upon them.
But we are there to try to help them solve a problem that they have.
One family that turned to the police counselors for help is the LaPacos.
Well, my daughter had, didn't want to come back home to live with us, and we didn't know what else to do, so we got a hold of, Dorothy Hawkins.
They had no idea where I was out.
They didn't, you know, I had no intention of coming home.
I hadn't contacted them to give them any kind of clues to where I was or anything like that.
Well, during that time, Dot had come to the home and explained what had happened.
And this wasn't uncommon, that a lot of teenagers were were doing this type of thing.
Not putting the blame on the parents, telling us, what to expect, how to cope with it.
The police were wonderful.
But, they naturally they just don't have the time to spend with, you know, as much time as they'd like to spend with an individual or a family or whatever, but, it's not the same as police.
I mean, police are police, and.. - It was just knowing that we had someone to talk to.
Like I say, our world fell apart.
And, just having someone to counsel to talk to that understood what was happening.
The family... Eventually, Dorothy and police officers from Duquesne found Patty in Canada.
They went there, brought her home, and then began some intensive counseling that's still going on.
I mean, you know, through her and me, on her trying to explain to my parents about a teenager and the things that I experienced, you know, that most teenagers don't.
And then her explaining to me my parents positions, I think we're both beginning to understand each other quite a bit better.
What would you have done if you hadn't have had a counselor to help you during this problem?
To answer that seriously at this, at the time, I would say we would probably both, be in either a hospital or under some breakdown, some type of psychiatric care, because we just couldn't understand what had happened.
- Mainly why it happened.
- And why.
It was a big thing, why.
- I don't think I'd be here.
Really dont.
I don't think I'd be here.
I'd probably be, well, give me your choice of Canada or juvenile court.
Take it or leave it.
Or I probably would have left again without an understanding of why I did it myself.
Besides helping individual families, the police counseling program is beginning to make important fundamental changes that affect the whole community.
We have, freedom of much of their time spent in domestic disputes.
Also, and informally, this is while riding in the cars.
We have done a lot of crisis training to police officers, and I think a lot of them are now becoming very adept at handling crisis situations.
It's opened up my eyes to a lot of things that I couldn't see before, you know, as being old style policeman or the way things were when I started.
I guess the standpoint as you work with older men, you learn it their way.
And I wasn't ready for change.
And after they got here, I have changed within a year and looking ahead for a different standpoint.
I believe they are.
I believe that, it has opened their eyes, to the fact that, hey, I'm dealing here with a human being, someone that has the same feelings that I do.
It's not just a case that I settle, write down on paper, and it's finished with.
This is a man that has feelings.
The problems.
None for me to day.
But it stays with him for the whole week.
Or the whole month.
Or the whole year.
You think you're a better cop now?
A lot better since the program.
It's opened my eyes and a lot of the other guys here where that animosity at first about the program and now everybody appreciates it, and we look forward to having it.
And now without it, it'd be a drastic change for everybody, see, because we don't really know how much we needed the program until it started.
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