Trauma Behind the Screen: The Hidden Effects of Secondhand Exposure in Criminal Intelligence Work
In criminal justice spheres, trauma is generally thought of as something that happens on scene: to victims, witnesses, and the officers who physically enter dangerous settings. However, this concept leaves out an entire group of professionals whose work places them in consistent proximity to traumatic incidents without ever leaving their office.
For about a year, I worked as a civilian dispatcher & calltaker for a police department before moving into criminal intelligence analysis within the Boston Regional Intelligence Center / BPD. Between radio monitoring, tactical camera support, and investigative work on cases often involving violence, my exposure to trauma is rarely direct. Yet, it has almost always been continuous. What this course helped me to understand is that trauma doesn’t require physical presence. Hearing, viewing, or reading a crisis can be enough to influence the nervous system.
Dispatch (my first real job out of college) plunged me into some of my most intense exposures. Being the first voice someone hears and speaks to during a traumatic moment impacted me in ways that stuck around long after the call ended. Van der Kolk (2014) explains that trauma is remembered through sensory pieces as opposed to a narrative memory, and my dispatch work was made up of those pieces – a girl crying on the phone to me as she asked me if she was going to die, an open line as someone screamed, gunshots behind someone trying to relay their location. Even writing this, my heart rate speeds up thinking about those calls, a sign that my body reacts even though the moment has passed, and I myself was never in imminent danger.
In my current intelligence/analysis work, the exposure looks different but carries a similar significance. Monitoring the radio still means hearing every incident play out. Camera support means watching violent acts in real time, then playing them over and over again to track something or notice a new detail. Investigative support means reading homicide or assault narratives, reports, and viewing social media posts tied to violence. Maguen et al. (2009) points out that stress doesn’t need a single significant event, accumulated stressors and constant vigilance can be just as harmful. This applies in analyst roles as well – proximity to trauma occurs through information absorption instead of physical presence.
One of the biggest challenges in these “off the scene” or “desk” roles is the lack of visibility. If you’re not at a crime scene, people can assume the impact on you is minimal. But the brain still responds to the meaning of the incident, despite the lack of physical proximity. As Van der Kolk (2014) notes, the body reacts to perceived danger just as strongly as real danger. The stress of these roles doesn’t disappear just because the work is going on behind screens.
This course also showed me how trauma can accumulate across institutions. DeVeaux (2013) described how the carceral environment systematically causes psychological harm through isolation and hyper-surveillance, while Canada and Albright (2014) show that veterans who are often already dealing with trauma symptoms experience a worsening in effects when they enter the criminal justice system where support systems are absent. These examples show that unaddressed trauma accumulates over time regardless of the environment or situation that caused it, and institutional environments can worsen the issue rather than relieve it.
For me, I’ve had to be very intentional about the recovery process. I’ve tried to go down the path discussed in the Module 6 content – actively interrupting my stress cycle as opposed to passive endurance (Rousseau et. al, 2025, Module 6 Content). After a tough call or watching something particularly upsetting on the cameras, I try to remove myself for a few minutes – maybe take a walk or go to the gym on my break – ideally something unrelated to my work (no more de-stressing with true crime documentaries). Talking with the people I work with, particularly those that are in my exact role and see the same things I do, helps me to feel seen and understood which allows me to externalize some of my stress.
The biggest thing I’ve taken away from this course in relation to my daily life is accepting that it is possible for me to experience trauma through information, and that the recovery of people in my role should be taken seriously – and I shouldn’t feel guilty for feeling something despite not being out on the streets. Trauma is not less impactful when it is indirect, and healing requires deliberate opportunity for rest and regulation.
I’m trying very hard to acknowledge that my body is holding the work that I do daily, and that my work will not be impacted by me refusing to endure stress in silence. It’s a work in progress, but I hope that this will make me more capable of functioning properly in such an important field.
References
Canada, K., & Albright, D. (2014). Veterans in the criminal justice system and the role of social work. Journal of Forensic Social Work, 4, 48–62.
DeVeaux, M. (2013). The trauma of the incarceration experience. Harvard Civil Rights–Civil Liberties Law Review, 48, 257–277.
Maguen, S., Metzler, T., McCaslin, S., Inslicht, S., Henn-Haase, C., Neylan, T., & Marmar, C. (2009). Routine work environment stress and PTSD symptoms in police officers. Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 197(10), 754–760.
Rousseau, D., Smithwick, L., Tenenbaum, S., & Abbott, S. (2025). Module 6, [Blackboard].
Van der Kolk, B. A. (2014). The body keeps the score: Brain, mind, and body in the healing of trauma. Viking.