‘We have to build trust with our agency': JSO forms new Health & Wellness Section
The Jacksonville Sheriff's Office says a newly formed Health & Wellness section will provide support to the overall physical, mental, and emotional health of members of JSO.
It includes things like peer support, counseling services, the critical incident stress management team, K9 and military spouse support, along with chaplain services.
The newly formed section will be headed by Commander Randi Glossman, who recently served as the commander of Patrol District 3.
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'We have to build trust with our agency,' says Glossman.
'One of the things, unfortunately, within law enforcement is the stigma that it is not okay to say that I'm not okay, and we have to fix that,' says Glossman. 'We have to show our employees that it's okay to come forward and say, I need help, whether it's I'm having feelings of either suicide. Or I need help getting through, getting over a call I've been to, or I'm having problems at home with my spouse or my boyfriend or my girlfriend, I'm having problems with my children. I mean, we're human.'
Glossman spoke highly of previous beneficial trainings for JSO that deal with mental health topics like the POWER program .
'We wanna have a healthy agency because we are better serving our community when we're healthier. We see things better, we make better decisions,' says Glossman.
Recently, JSO has had two separate officer-involved shootings.
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On Sunday, an officer shot and killed a man after a chaotic encounter between police stemming from a domestic disturbance on Normandy Blvd.
On Friday, an officer shot and killed a man who police say attacked two people with butcher knives on Jillian Drive near Ricker Road.
'We have tons of resources available, not only through our agency, with peer support, we have critical incidents stress management teams, we have a an officer-involved shooting team that goes out anytime those those incidents happen and they help our officers through these processes and in addition to that we have resources outside of our agency that do the same or similar things,' says Glossman.
Funding-wise, like any other JSO funding entity, the section will have to go through the city council, and the sheriff would have to ask for this to be included in JSO's budget.
'Next year, I am hopeful that we will have a robust budget that we ask city council for because we do want to initiate a lot of programs that will help our officers, because, like we just mentioned, when we're healthy, the city will be healthy,' says Glossman.
JSO says there will also be other forms of employee assistance designed to proactively help JSO employees and their family's wellbeing.
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