Former Carter County Sheriff Richard Stephens has served in communities in Colorado and Southeast Missouri for three decades as a deputy, sheriff and member of a crisis intervention council.
Now he hopes to serve both civilians and law enforcement with his first book, “The Calling: Seated at the Table with the Broken,” an examination of what inspires people to join law enforcement, and that career’s impact on their physical and emotional health.
Stephens began writing after the Ferguson unrest in 2014 because he felt the media portrayal of law enforcement was inaccurate.
“Being in law enforcement for the last 30 years, I just had a real deep feeling that this is not what law enforcement is all about, and people are not getting the true story about the men and women that are serving our communities,” he said. “So I started on this journey to really give people a glimpse of what ... law enforcement really are, and who they are, and why they do what they do.”
Working on and off for five years, Stephens drew on his own experience, looked at studies and consulted colleagues. It was important to him that his work reflected everyone’s experience, he noted, and “you can get a glimpse into everybody’s mind.”
Stephens’ initially focused on offering insights into law enforcement, but his manuscript expanded to include the importance of mental health for officers.
The book is organized into two parts, he said.
“One is talking about why people choose to get into the field and what goes through their minds as they’re doing their jobs,” he explained, adding, “... and then it touches on the trauma that’s brought forward from everything that these men and women see on a daily basis and their reactions to that trauma.”
He hopes his work helps realign how the general public views law enforcement, and how officers themselves view their mental and emotional health.
Stephens and his colleagues regularly witnessed tragedies and traumas on the job but felt pressure to be stronger than what they saw so they could keep helping others.
“I hope that ... (readers) get a glimpse of what makes up officers and what makes them tick, per se, but also for those officers to be able to understand that the emotions they’re feeling, the stress that they’re feeling, is somewhat normal,” he said, “And they need to reach out and be willing to consider their own health and their own wellbeing.”
Stephens retired from law enforcement after two terms as Carter County sheriff. However, he is still active with officers and communities as a member of the Three Rivers Crisis Intervention Team Council.
The council encompasses Butler, Wayne, Pemiscot, Dunklin, Reynolds, Carter and Ripley counties.
Its emphasis is “teaching our local law enforcement officials how to recognize when somebody may be going through a mental health or substance use type of crisis, and then also equipping them with the tools to effectively deescalate that situation,” Stephens explained.
Stephens has prior writing experience contributing columns for the Daily American Republic and the Current River Observer.
“Columns are very easy to come up with,” he noted. “When you got into the actual book ... Doing the research into it was much more detailed than the normal writing of a column.”
Stephens has three more outlines for potential books, he said. He and his wife hope to collaborate on a work of fiction in the future.
“The Calling” is currently available in digital and paperback through Amazon.