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Stephanie Samuels

Psychotherapist, Copline Inc.

Stephanie Samuels is a psychotherapist who works exclusively with police officers in New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania. 

Ms. Samuels has lectured all over the country on PTSD and the fallout from departmental silence after officers are involved in critical incidents and undiagnosed PTSD.  She was featured in “Cop Counselors” on A&E Investigative Reports with Bill Kurtis in July of 2001.

She has been featured twice on COPNET, a nationally syndicated radio talk show, to discuss PTSD and the aftermath of 9/11 as well as the need for educating recruits. She was a founding teen of Teen Line Cares and the founder and creator of two law enforcement officer hotlines.   Ms. Samuels currently is working on Copline Inc., the first National Law Enforcement Officers’ Hotline in the country. 

Ms. Samuels has created an Officers' Assistance Program for officers to use for both critical incident debriefings and confidential counseling. She is the general partner of The Counseling and Critical Incident Debriefing Center, LLC, which specializes in debriefing and long-term counseling of first responders and their families. She has taught at the Monmouth County Police Academy for the past 10 years and has been a guest lecturer at The FBI Academy in Quantico. 

She has authored a chapter entitled “Police Trauma: Past Exposures and Present Consequences” in the book Managing Traumatic Stress Risk: A Proactive Approach, Paton, Violanti, Dunning and Smith, 2004. She received the President’s Award in Social Work in 1999 for the legislation that she wrote to get a statewide hotline now known as Cop2Cop and critical incident debriefings for law enforcement officers. She received the “Honored Citizen Award” from the New Jersey Honor Legion for her contributions to the law enforcement community. 

She has authored five legislative bills in New Jersey and has helped get two of them passed.  One bill was introduced in Pennsylvania that would recognize a psychological injury as the same as a physical injury for the law enforcement community. Ms. Samuels is the author of the “Dear Steph” column for the New Jersey State Fraternal Order of Police Newspaper

Ms. Samuels received her Bachelors degree from UCLA, a Masters degree in Psychology from Antioch University, Los Angeles, and a Masters degree in Social Work from Rutgers University, New Brunswick.

 

 

 

 

 

 


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