SANTA MARIA - Mental health professionals who've worked with law enforcement say being a cop is definitely not a job for anyone, especially when it means going undercover.
"Usually it affected their home life, they had an extremely high divorce rate", says Santa Maria counselor and psychotherapist Ole von Frausing-Borch, "it's a very, very difficult occupation."
Having counseled L. A. County Sheriff's deputies, von Frausing-Borch says undercover cops face the added stress, and temptation, of getting too close to suspects they are in contact with.
"You can go all the way back to the Stockholm Syndrome", von Frausing-Borch says, "where the people being held hostage suddenly bond with the hostage-takers, its the same kind of idea."
"The problem with being undercover is trying to fit in and trying to be see as one of them", von Frausing-Borch adds, "things you have to do in order to be accepted and that can put you in jeopardy in terms of actually using illegal substances in order to prove that you are one of the guys."
"The problem there of course is many of these substances are highly addictive, physically highly addictive", von Frausing-Borch says, "not so much psychologically, but physically addictive so a person can get hooked that way."
One former undercover cop who declined to speak to Central Coast News on camera says while Hollywood has dramatized the lives of undercover cops over the years, he says it doesn't even come close to living the real thing.
