CALIFORNIA CITY, Calif. (KERO) — The California City Police Department received a grant from the Board of State and Community Corrections to address officer wellness. The funds led to the city's first police wellness program.
Officer health and mental wellness is a topic of discussion for police departments all across the nation. But in California City, their police chief is trying something new. It’s called Cordico. It’s an app that police officers can download and they can get connected to recourses all across the city.
“It releases the stigma of 'I can’t talk to somebody,' or 'if I talk to someone I’m a weaker person or I’m a weaker officer,” explained California City Police Chief Jesse Hightower.
Asking for help can be difficult, especially for law enforcement officers.
Now in his eighth month as California City Police chief, Hightower wants to make changes to improve the department for his officers and for the community.
“When I became chief I sat down with almost everyone in the organization and had a one-on-one conversation,” said Hightower. “I’ve been doing this for almost 22 years now and the differences from when I started are totally different. You didn’t discuss how you were feeling. You didn’t get those things out.”
Hightower is implementing a wellness program and partnering with Cordico, developing an app that provides current, new and retired officers, employees, and their families resources throughout the county such as peer support, articles, and even direct connections to therapists and chaplains.
Cordico keeps track of what users look for, but it’s completely confidential.
“On the bottom, there’s a directory. Are you looking for an employee assistance program? There’s articles, mental health articles, fitness articles, they recently partnered with echelon front,” explained Hightower.
Bakersfield police implemented a Cordico Shield app two years ago and Wellness Coordinator Sgt. Verion Coleman said anonymity was a big part of it.
“Officers don’t want to... a lot of the time they don’t want people to know that they’re going through stuff. So the way they use it is everyone’s username and passcode is the same, so they won’t know who’s saying or doing what or looking into what.”
Coleman said in 2022 out of 730 employees they had 589 downloads of the app with over 5,000 hits. He said the most common use of the app included peer support, therapist finder, get help now, and chaplains.
This kind of information benefits the department as a whole.
“We can kind of tailor our training if we see people in there searching alcohol, alcohol, alcohol. We can say ok maybe we need to bring someone in to talk about alcohol training,” said Coleman.
Hightower hopes he can help bring these same positive impacts to Cal City.
“I’m really trying to show people a different face of policing.”
