In their article, "Mapping Police Stress," Matthew J. Pope describe a new innovative study on police stress based on the measurement of an officer's stress response using a heart rate monitor programmed with a GPS. "This research has provided direct, actual, and spatially anchored data that has overcome other research that was restricted to self-reliant stress measures such as surveys" (Hickman, Friday, Strom, Pope., 2011). The authors state that the results of the new study can potentially help advance in the understanding of officers' stress so that the departments can counter such negative factors with efficient strategies to make the lives of officers easier while on the job. .
The authors start off by mentioning how police stress on the job is of concern to administrators, the public, and the officers themselves. Officers' are physically and mentally affected by stress, thus, having an impact on their job performance and personal lives. Administrative, acute, and chronic stress are the main types of stress officers suffer from while on the job. Administrative stress is due to responding to incidents where citizens or other officers are in danger. Acute stress is sudden life or death situations that occur for a brief time while chronic stress is an accumulation of stress throughout time. The main source of all this stress is the fact that officers are routinely susceptible to all kinds of unknown dangers. For example, the authors bring up a case that occurred in the Pacific Northwest region where four officers were killed in a coffee shop to shed some light on the truth; "officers face an ever-present and unpredictable potential for violence, injury, and death" (Hickman et al., 2011). .
The authors then claim that this constant exposure to stress has caused a higher rate of disease, exhaustion, and burnout due to the production of "fight or flight chemical stress products in the body that are thought to damage the body through a process of immunosuppression (Hickman et al.