Susan Murphy-Milano...

In two years on the Fort Wayne Police Department, officer Stephanie Souther went from believing there is a lot of

Carrie and J.D. Bleeke and their dog Jaxon sit in the living room; Carrie grades papers, and J.D. watches the evening news.

Carmen and Reggie Moore prepare dinner at their home.

Fort Wayne police officer Stephanie Souther gets only a few nights a week at home with her husband, Nathan, and 1-year-old daughter Jayden.

Carrie and J.D. Bleeke sit down for dinner together after work. J.D. said he’s never cheated on Carrie, whom he’s been married to for more than two years.

Being a patrolwoman assigned to Fort Wayne’s southeast quadrant made Stephanie cynical and angry most of the time. She was suspicious of everybody and thought everybody was lying, including her husband, Nathan.

Stephanie projected her unhappiness on to her husband and believed he was the cause. It even led her to consider being unfaithful to Nathan.

“I’m not going to say I’ve never been tempted, and he knows that, and we’ve had discussions about that,” Stephanie said. “It made me want to look elsewhere. It made me much more susceptible to that kind of thing, but I am very thankful that I never took it to that extreme.”

Stephanie’s anger and temptation to cheat are not uncommon in police departments. Law enforcement has the second-highest divorce rate next to doctors, said Edward Jordan, who works with the Police Stress Unit, a non-profit group in New Jersey that provides support for officers.

An article by retired police Chief Chuck Pratt, author of “Police Headquarters,” said many police officers are prone to cheat partly because their personalities drive them to experiment and seek adventures. Police can also be surrounded by hordes of women attracted to a man in uniform, and many times either cannot or don’t even try to resist their advances, Pratt wrote.

“It’s very common,” Stephanie said. “I’ve seen all sorts of marriages crumble. I’ve seen men cheat on their wives, and then the wives take them back, and then they do it again.”

Divorce rates for the general population have been estimated at 50 percent, but the U.S. military says divorce rates for law enforcement are as high as 75 percent.

About 11 percent of Indiana residents and 10 percent of Allen County residents are listed as divorced, according to the 2000 U.S. Census. The Fort Wayne Police Department does not track divorce rates of its employees.

Crazy work hours and being emotionally unavailable are the main contributors to marital problems, said Jordan, who is retired from the Camden, N.J., police department.

To deal with traumatic situations and basically the worst of society, officers tend to shut their emotions off while they’re on the street, he said. It’s hard to turn them back on when they walk in the front door and have to deal with a wife and kids.

According to a 1996 article in the FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin, many officers become cynical after realizing the reason they become officers – to better society – is not realistic.

If they’re attuned enough to recognize they have a problem, most officers won’t seek counseling because they’re afraid of the stigma attached, Jordan said. Many won’t seek help because they’re afraid the police administration will take away their gun for fear they are unstable, Jordan said.

The city of Fort Wayne has employee assistance programs available for officers and city employees involving counseling, police spokesman Michael Joyner said.

Regardless of whether an officer seeks help or not, it’s the spouses who probably first see the changes in the person they married.

They’re also the ones who take the brunt of the consequences derived from that change.

The veteran

When Carmen Moore, 47, was dating her husband, Reggie Moore, 47, he would bring her flowers every other day. Carmen, a community outreach nurse with Parkview Hospital, describes her husband, whom she married within eight months of their first date in 1984, as romantic, tender and loving at the time.

But within five years of joining the Fort Wayne Police Department as a patrolman in 1985, Reggie changed.

“He wasn’t as gentle,” Carmen said. “He wasn’t the man that I married.”

Reggie’s exterior became tough, his language changed, he exercised all the time and he had a sterner demeanor, Carmen said. At the time, Reggie was oblivious.

“First of all, you don’t see the change,” Reggie said. “It probably takes our wives to tell us we’ve changed.”

Looking back, Reggie can see that he was more aggressive and wanted to be in control. It was hard for him to shut off his police persona when he got home for the day.

Reggie, now a detective in the juvenile unit, would get home from work, and his three young daughters would be pleading for his attention. He would give them whatever they wanted so he could be in peace, but Carmen would get home and wonder why the girls were so hopped up on sugar, he said.

Reggie is willing to admit he changed to an extent but isn’t quick to attribute that change directly to his career. How many people are the same person from when they got married to five years into the marriage? he asked.

“ ‘He doesn’t send me flowers anymore. He doesn’t send me candy anymore. He doesn’t remember our anniversaries anymore,’ and I don’t think that has much to do with being a police officer; I just think that’s just the way couples can be after being married for a number of years,” Reggie said.

The couple decided it was time to get back to basics. They went to a couples retreat that Carmen said brought them back to their Christian foundation and saved their marriage.

“You have to go back and remember why you fell in love,” Carmen said.

The couple learned that when Reggie got home from work, he needed to take about 30 minutes to wind down and switch from police officer to a husband and father. He still uses that time today.

Reggie’s job change also seemed to help the couple. When he was a patrolman for nine years, Carmen said she would go to bed fearful every night as Reggie worked a 6 p.m.-to-2 a.m. shift.

She used to listen to the police scanner every night, worrying that every call involved Reggie. But Carmen got to a point where she couldn’t do it anymore; she made peace with the fact that Reggie was in a dangerous situation every night.

“There’s no way I could sit up at night and worry about him. I did that initially,” Carmen said. “It’s not worth worrying about every siren.”

Reggie went on to pilot the student resource officer program for Fort Wayne Community Schools, worked as a D.A.R.E. officer in the schools and has been a detective for about five years.

Both Carmen and Reggie said they are aware of statistics detailing infidelity among police officers, along with high rates of divorce. Of the men who were married in Reggie’s police academy class more than 20 years ago, only five or six are still married, Carmen said.

But she isn’t worried.

“I’m 110 percent confident that Reggie is very, very (faithful) to me,” Carmen said.

Reggie believes his attitude toward the world has come full circle since he became an officer.

“You’re always seeking the worst in people because that’s the way it is on a daily basis,” Reggie said. “But after years of being on, I don’t see it being that way. I look for the good in people, and I just think after 20 years on now you just take a different perspective on people.”

The rookie

J.D. Bleeke has a less definitive viewpoint on issues related to his profession than Reggie Moore. But he’s been employed with the Allen County Sheriff’s Department for less than two years.

J.D., 26, is a bailiff at the Allen County Courthouse and a member of the SWAT team. He and his wife, Carrie Bleeke, 27, have a hard time saying whether his job has changed him.

The most they can come up with is that the previously passive, indecisive J.D. is more outspoken.

“I think there’s been some type of change,” J.D. said. “It’s been good. I guess I speak up more for myself than I have in the past.”

Carrie said: “I think he’s changed a little bit but not majorly. I know that he tends to be a little more vocal in his opinions than when I first met him.”

As a bailiff, J.D. will sometimes see the same criminals come in and out of the courtroom.

“You do see a lot of stuff that’s irritating, and you kind of think why do these people do this,” J.D. said. “It can be frustrating, but I don’t see myself as angry.”

J.D. has so far managed to escape the negative attitude that many officers have been plagued with. He’s also not as tied into the department as a veteran would be and therefore doesn’t have the insight on who’s been unfaithful to their wives.

J.D. said he’s never cheated on Carrie, whom he’s been married to for more than two years, and Carrie said she’s never had any suspicions.

“I never would,” J.D. said. “I respect her and wouldn’t do anything like that.”

Despite her confidence in her husband, Carrie, who is pregnant with the couple’s first child, can understand why infidelity runs rampant in police departments.

“They’re under a lot of stress and a lot of pressure,” Carrie said. “For some marriages, it would get difficult depending on what shift your spouse works. I can see it going both ways if you have a husband that’s gone all the time, I can understand how the situation can arise.”

The woman

Stephanie Souther’s turning point came when the Fort Wayne Police Department hired someone to lecture about police stress three years into her career. It opened her eyes as to how and why she was behaving the way she was.

As far as Stephanie knew, the problem was rooted in her marriage, not her job. The realization got her marriage back on track.

“I turned a little bit more into the person that he married,” Stephanie said.

Like Reggie Moore, Stephanie, 27, also has learned to wind down when she gets off a shift. The five-year veteran will plop down in front of the computer while her husband, Nathan, watches television.

“Even just the process of taking the uniform off is a big ritual to unwind,” Stephanie said. “If he starts talking to me before I even get my uniform off, then things get testy.”

As a woman in a male-dominated profession, Stephanie used to have to battle over her career aspirations with Nathan, whose first instinct, like that of most husbands, was to protect his wife. When Stephanie was in college, she aspired to work with the FBI.

Nathan, an MRI technician, was initially uncomfortable with the notion because it meant their family would have to move frequently. She compromised and decided to work for a police department. Stephanie was assigned as a patrolwoman on the southeast side – one of the most dangerous parts of Fort Wayne, she says – which made Nathan uncomfortable.

“He wanted me as far away from danger as possible, and I wanted to dive head first,” Stephanie said.

Stephanie did compromise on working undercover and joining the SWAT team, both of which Nathan was against.

“We had many of discussions about that as far as what I could or could not do in my career, and we finally reached more of an agreement on it,” Stephanie said.

After having their first daughter Jayden, 1, Stephanie realized Nathan was right and she needed to put her family first.

“I think I’m coming back to being more centralized. I’m definitely calming down a bit,” Stephanie said. “I know there were many times where I was not fun to live with and yet, he stuck through it and it didn’t even occur to him to leave as far as I know.”

(source: Fort Wayne, IN Journal Gazette)