You and your partner are a two-person patrol in a rural district of Kansas for a county sheriff’s office. Your area of responsibility is right in the middle of “Tornado Alley.” Two weeks ago, a category 4 tornado touched down at the north end of a town in your jurisdiction and hit a day care. Twenty-two children were in the day care with five care providers. Most of the children were huddled with four of the providers at one end of the structure, where there was little damage. Five of the children, who took shelter with one of the care providers in the other end of the building, were pulled out of the building by the tornado. Four of the children and the caretaker that had been with them were found on a nearby street, all dead from blunt trauma. The fifth child has not been found. The ages of the children are 3–5 years old.
Your partner is a young man with a wife of five years. They have two children, ages 3 and 4. When the children’s bodies were found, he started to cry. He did his job the entire time with tears in his eyes. You and your partner searched for almost 36 hours without sleep for the missing child, to no avail. Since this incident, your partner has all but stopped speaking. He misses radio calls and is no longer the observant partner that you had prior to the incident with the tornado strike. You thought it would be just a day or two until he recovered, but he has not rebounded, and it is going on the third week. You have concern for his and your safety as well as the safety of the public.
You spoke to him about it, and he told you to mind your own business. The sergeant came to you and asked about your partner because he noticed the symptoms. The sergeant relayed that he had spoken to the watch commander and was instructed to have you prepare a report of observations, an assessment of the problem, and recommendations to solve the problem.
Provide at least 2 recommendations for rehabilitating your partner. Explain in detail.
Consider what you are going to tell the other deputies when they ask why your partner is relieved of duty.
