TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – Doug Monda has dedicated his life to helping first responders address the trauma he faced on the job. It’s a struggle he knows first-hand.
“Sometimes this job and any first responder job, it takes you down a dark road,” said Monda.
Monda’s dark road was a series of traumatic events he witnessed as an undercover narcotics agent and S.W.A.T officer with the Cocoa Police Department.
When he first started working on the force, he responded to a call on Christmas Eve night where a child was hit by a car.
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“And the next week it was something else, and it was something else,” said Monda.
His job as a police officer took him to ground zero after Hurricane Katrina and countless other tragedies. Then one day, an injury he suffered while at work led to a long recovery at home.
“During that time all I did was sit on the couch by myself at home, and what it did was it gave me all the time in the world to think about all the horrible things I saw over the past 10 years,” said Monda. “So, I slipped into depression. I was already dealing with anxiety and things like that, but I wasn’t trained to recognize it.”
It was a breaking point for Monda, and after a failed suicide attempt he went back to work with a mission to help first responders just like him.
“I had been gone for a while and one of the officers sitting next to me leaned over and asked me a question. He said, ‘Can I talk to you?’ And he said, ‘I need help.’ And I knew right then and there that the system was broken,” said Monda.
In Florida, 41 current and former law enforcement and correctional officers died by suicide in 2021, according to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. In 2022, the number rose to 48, and in 2023 it was 44.
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On Tuesday, FDLE and other law enforcement officials presented their solution, the first-ever Post Critical Incident Seminar. This week they will host 35 officers and their families for three days of counseling and peer support, free of charge.
“We’re good stewards of taxpayer dollars of getting the equipment they need, the vehicles, the bulletproof vests, the equipment they need to do their jobs, but we need to do better,” said FDLE Commissioner Mark Glass.
FDLE Deputy Commissioner Matt Walsh says the program will offer clinically based education to promote recovery and resiliency for officers who experienced major critical incidents or a series of traumatic events over time.
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“There’s still a stigma attached, and what changes that is having our first Post Critical Incident Seminar,” said Walsh.
FDLE says they are reaching officers through their agencies and associations, like the Florida Sheriff’s Association and Florida Police Chiefs Association. Walsh says executives can send someone like they would to a training seminar, or someone can ask to go on their own.
“This is clinically based education, so everything is confidential,” said Walsh.
FDLE says there is already a waiting list for a second seminar planned for May. They hope to host more in the future, and eventually scale to four seminars each year.
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