Bowling Green Police Department invests in peer support

BOWLING GREEN, Ky. – Everyone needs a shoulder to lean on, even the police. The Bowling Green Police Department is not only taking care of their own but inspiring others as well.

It started around 2018, when detective Sergeant Clifton Phelps decided to make some lifestyle changes. Phelps said after being involved in a shooting, followed by another the next year along with the daily pressures of being an officer, negativity started to weigh on him and that was adversely affecting his family.

He started to do things like meditate and take cold plunges, but maybe the most powerful move he made was sharing his story on social media, which led other officers to feel not so alone.

Cindy Lemon, a psychiatric nurse practitioner and wife of a retired BGPD detective, would eventually become a big part of the team as well, initially by proxy but shortly before the tornadoes of December 2021, on behalf BGPD’s chief. After the storms, the idea was more needed than ever with first responders seeing terrible sights. Since then, the peer support group has been a big hit.

Phelps said he and other officers will meet at the “Lemon Ranch,” which is Cindy and her husband Mike’s house, and do breathe work, ice baths and meditative exercises.

Phelps and Lemon said without support from administration, this has been a real shift in the culture where as years ago, the law enforcement field was not somewhere to air out your struggles.