In the CHP "back in the day" when my Dad was still an active patrol officer, the stressed out cops would just become alcoholic, ruin their marriages, and then either blow their own brains out or, if they were lucky, get forced out with a stress retirement. Even good cops go nuts sometimes and it's unfortunate as hell when they don't have a safe (and more private) outlet for their stress.
I'm not a shrink, but my Dad somehow managed to pick a verbal fight with his supervisors every couple of years and I suspect this was his way of dealing with his on the job stress. It would usually be over something stupid and they'd never have anything to pin on my Dad, but he'd be able to transfer a year or two of stress up to either his Sgt or Lt, depending on who he disliked more. Like one time about 15 years ago right after a CHP officer went nuts and killed a lady (Cara Knott) during a traffic stop, my Dad gave a speeding ticket to a local hispanic leader. The guy kept asking my Dad if he knew who he was, and the guy's passenger started saying stuff like he was scared, please don't kill us, etc etc., but my Dad wrote the ticket by the book anyhow. Of course they filed a complaint because a traffic officer shouldn't dare to give a ticket to Southern California's most powerful hispanic leader, but my Dad's reports were correctly written, the stop was thoroughly documented, there were other witnesses, etc. so my Dad told them to shove the complaint up their butts. I think the giggle fit he threw in front of the Lt. when he found that the complaint had gone all the way up to the CHP comissioner through the state senate added 3 years to his life and contributed to the Lt asking for an early transfer from that office
It's not that he went around baiting civilians, but any cop is going to get an occasional complaint and when those complaints are completely unsubstantiated, my Dad just found some entertainment value out of showing how stupid the complaints were and enjoying watching how so many people had to waste all that time dealing with really inane issues. The CHP has a powerful employee protection system (Union?) and they have a great amount of support for troopers who may be getting unfair treatment from their bosses, so they never could figure out a way to "get" my Dad when he refused to be intimidated.
He had other ways of getting back at those who caused him stress... One quarter he busted his butt and wrote a whole crapload of tickets. He came within a dozen or so of the office record. Unfortunately, California had just passed the state seatbelt law and although my Dad was writing people for not wearing their seatbelts, he'd usually put that violation down near the bottom of the list of violations. Well, the computer only tracked the first 2 or 3 for statistical purposes so although he made this amazing enforcement effort, the statistics showed he had almost zero enforcement of this new high-profile law, so instead of praise for working so hard, he received an official reprimand for failing to follow department policy by enforcing the new seatbelt law.
Here's the stress relief part - He got the reprimand thrown out because he had all the copies of his tickets and proved that he was writing seatbelt violations, but in addition to that he convinced the office supervision to define a minumum number of seatbelt tickets that had to be written per month in order to "follow department enforcement policy". So yes, that office had a quota for a while
Then he went out and for the next quarter, he wrote exactly that number of tickets every month and the seatbelt violation was always the number one violation listed so he precisely met the quota every single month. I think he filled the rest of his time working crashes and "showing the flag" by simply driving around, which can be just as effective in highway safety as making lots of stops. Anyhow, the Lt got promoted because his office had statistics proving they followed the policy, the Sgt got a stress retirement, the new supervisors threw the quota policy out the window and my Dad went back to busting his butt as usual after getting a good chuckle out of the whole thing.
He outlived dozens of Sgt's and Lt's and as far as I know in a 30 year career they never got one complaint that stuck. He's probably just as proud of the fact that he survived the threats of his supervisors as he was of his 20+ year record of no avoidable on duty accidents while he was a pursuit driver.
But back to the point, it's a shame when a cop doesn't have a harmless way to release that overwhelming stress because otherwise it can come out in really harmful ways.
