E.243 How A Cop-Turned-Coach Helps First Responders Heal And Lead

When a split-second choice could become tomorrow’s headline, how do you stay human under the uniform? We sit down with former deputy sheriff turned coach and author AK Dozanti to unpack the real toll of first responder life—and the science-backed tools that help you heal without losing your edge.

AK traces a rare path: undercover ICAC work at 19, road patrol, officer of the year, rapid burnout, then a pivot into victim advocacy, graduate study in criminology and victimology, yoga teacher training, and ultimately a mission to coach police, fire, EMS, and dispatch. She shares how early suicide losses set a hidden baseline for stress, why trauma is a near-universal experience rather than a diagnosis, and how high-velocity calls collide with a nervous system built for survival, not perfection. We break down the biology of stress—adrenaline surges, the brainstem’s grip, and the prefrontal cortex going offline—and show how that clashes with modern expectations: body cams rolling, phones pointed, pristine Miranda, and zero room for error.

We also tackle the weight of public narratives: how one viral failure can stain an entire profession, how ambushes and doxxing amplify hypervigilance, and why the “off switch” at home can be the hardest skill of all. AK offers practical, field-tested resets for the nervous system—slow exhale breathing, orienting, grounding through the feet, and micro-recoveries between calls—along with culture shifts leaders can make today: protect days off, normalize precise language around suicide, include dispatch in wellness training, and reward process over speed. The goal isn’t spin; it’s operational readiness and human dignity.

If you serve on the front lines or love someone who does, this conversation gives you language, tools, and hope. Subscribe, share with a teammate, and leave a review to help more first responders find what they need. What practice will you try first?

Visit her website at: www.akdozanti.com

Transcript

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SPEAKER_01 0:01

Welcome to Resilience Development in Action with Steve Bisson. This is the podcast dedicated to first responder mental health, helping police, fire, EMS, dispatchers, and paramedics create better growth environments for themselves and their teams. Let's get started.ai.

SPEAKER_00 0:37

You heard me talk about it. I'm gonna keep on talking about it because I love it. I've had about a year and a half, 18 months practice with it, and I still enjoy it. And it saves me time and it saves me energy. Free.ai takes your note, makes a trans what you're talking about a client, just press record, and it does either transcript, it does a subjective, and an objective with a letter if needed for your client and for whoever might need it. So for$99 a month, it saves me so much time that it's worthwhile. And if you do it for a whole year, guess what? You get 10% off. More importantly, this is what you got offered, because you are my audience that listens to Resilience Development in Action. If you do listen to this and you want to use free.ai, put in the code Steve50 in the promo code area, Steve50, and you will get$50 off in addition to everything we just talked about. Get freed from writing your notes. Get freed from even writing your transcripts. Use that to your advantage. Free.ai, a great service. Go to getfree.ai and you will get one of the best services that will save you time and money. And I highly encourage you to do so. Well, hi everyone, and welcome to episode 243. If you haven't listened to episode 242, go listen to it with Susan Rogendorf, a friend of the podcast. Crisis work, mental health, first responders, the whole nine yards. She's really great. But today I have someone that I met through LinkedIn and I saw all of her stuff. It was always fascinating to me, and I really appreciated her. So I wanted to have her on. So I bugged her and she genuinely generously offered to be on here. AK Desante, welcome to Resilience Development in Action.

SPEAKER_02 2:25

Thank you. I'm excited to be here.

Meet AK Desante: Career Snapshot

SPEAKER_00 2:28

Well, you know, I'm excited to hear like I looked at the stuff you put on LinkedIn, then I went to your website and I see a lot of the stuff that you did. I was kind of sad. I saw that you were in my area in September last year for a presentation at New England College.

SPEAKER_02 2:42

Oh yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:43

I wish I would have gone there because it's not too far from my humble abode in Holliston, Massachusetts. So going to City California, I know you have one coming up in California, it's kind of a like a long ride for me, so I can't really do that one.

SPEAKER_02 2:57

But uh yeah, well, it's it's a long, long haul for me too. But I was actually just in Connecticut a couple of months ago. So I'm gonna have to start posting my upcoming events because people are more interested now.

SPEAKER_00 3:12

I and I I'm very interested, and I really, you know, honestly, the hardest part of my job is I meet great people here face to face, so to speak, on a computer, but I never get to meet them face to face. Part of why I'm doing a presentation at the fraternity something police in Las Vegas in uh March, so I can actually meet a couple of people I've interviewed and they're like, Oh, I'll be there, we'll say hi, and all that. So that's really cool. But you know, like I said, I read a lot about your stuff. I saw some stuff on LinkedIn, but I'm sure my audience may not know who you are. So, how about you introduce yourself a little?

Early Trauma, Loss, And Grit

SPEAKER_02 3:47

Yeah, well, I appreciate the kind words. So I day to day, my in my normal life am wife and a mom and a dog mom and just normal stuff. But I am a speaker, an author, and a coach for first responders. And before all that, I was I started my law enforcement career at 19 years old doing undercover online investigations. That led me to going to the academy at 20 and led me into being a deputy sheriff. And the bulk of my career there was on afternoon shift road patrol. We were like, we were having fun most most of the time. And in 2015, I went from officer of the year to a complete burnout, and at that point went and became a criminal court victim advocate. During that time, I went back and got my master's degree in criminology and victimology, which is where I started to understand what trauma was and that it wasn't exclusive to victims, it wasn't a dirty word, it wasn't a weakness, it was something that nearly every human being experiences. So simultaneously, because I my nervous system wasn't ready to slow down, I was also going through a 10-month yoga teacher training and I started to understand the physiology of stress and trauma. And I had all these like ding, ding, ding, ding alarm bells going off in my brain. And I went down every possible rabbit hole I could find. And in 2020, I left that position for other reasons. But then in 21, I created LifeSaver Wellness and I started coaching people, developing curriculums and training, and did a whole lot more research and certifications and all of that. And that morphed into keynotes and lots of different opportunities. And I have since authored two books, and now I'm here with you today.

SPEAKER_00 5:45

Well, I would love to hear more about those books, and particularly the other thing, too, is I will want, I'll buy one and you can sign it for me because I always like to get that from my guests. And you brought up about 14 other questions. Just hearing a 19-year-old being undercover is brought me a question. You doing all these things brought up ADD and ADHD, and how many first responders have this problem in general? It's not a really problem because it helps them in their career, but sometimes it becomes in the way at the long term. And then you talked about trauma, and then what I kill myself saying to a lot of people, and I had that conversation this morning with someone is like trauma and PTSD are two different things. Everyone has trauma. PTSD is a diagnosis that has specific issues. So when you talk about trauma and we talk about a victim, it only has weight if you decide it has weight. But anyway, I can go on and on, but a lot of stuff that you talked about. How do we be but like the first thing that came to mind is I've seen firefighters, you know, it's in the family, so they become firefighters at 18 because dad, grandpa, uncle, whatever did it. But being 19 years old and undercover, I don't hear that a whole lot from any like police people, so very intrigued as to how that starts off.

SPEAKER_02 7:06

Okay, so I was I was in the criminal justice program in my undergrad, and I got an opportunity to shadow this department that was working under the umbrella of the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force or ICAC task force. And it was a very small agency, which was a great benefit to them because they were undercover and they were bringing people like anyway. So I go to shadow them and I am exposed to this world that I had no idea because I wasn't really mind you, this was like in 2007. So first of all, I wasn't really like a tech savvy person, and second, all of this internet stuff was kind of just emerging. So I was exposed to this and I was like, this is heinous. Like, we've got to do something. There, these these people are complete predators, and they think they're talking to a 14-year-old. And so if you can remember, Chris Hansen to catch a predator. Now, this is real life without the entrapment charges. So it was, but I was I was chatting with them online and then a decoy for them. And the operations were very successful, and it just led me into this world that I was like, I have to do something, I have to continue to do something. And I was like, How do I get here? How do I do this for real? Because I was an auxiliary officer at that point. And they said, Well, you don't just jump to being an investigator or detective. You have to go through the academy and be a road cop and do all this. And I was like, sign me up like yesterday. So I had to wait because like you can't actually be a sworn officer until you're 21. So I had to wait until I was 20 to go to the academy, and then I still had to wait to be commissioned. So that's how that went down.

SPEAKER_00 9:07

Okay. Well, you know, and then it brings up the question of 19-year-old undercover, you know, the to catch a predator, so to speak. So is that where your trauma started, or did it happen before that? Because that's what I find sometimes is that people do that for a while and they're like, there's a vile people out there, and it starts like really starting to change their view of the world.

From Officer Of The Year To Burnout

SPEAKER_02 9:31

Yeah. So interestingly, and I've actually never even said this on a podcast or anything. Growing up, my dad was a trapper by trade. So it was nothing for me to see animals being killed all the time. I don't know that that was any kind of I didn't register that as trauma. I still don't.

SPEAKER_00 9:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 9:54

But it's not normal as like a seven-year-old to see animals being killed all the time. So that could have contributed to it. But in my upbringing, I experienced a lot of death. And at 14, girl that I was on a sports team with died by suicide. At 15, a friend of mine's father, who was our soccer coach, died by suicide. And at 17, I lost my best friend since we were four years old in daycare to suicide. So there was a lot that happened. And then two years later, I'm like, I'm gonna save the world and unknowingly go into a profession where I'm going to experience a lot of things that might are going to be overwhelming to my brain and my system. And so looking back, it's really no wonder why I burned out after just a few years. It was actually a culmination of my whole life. So yeah, that definitely looking back contributed to it, but that was not the beginning of it for sure.

SPEAKER_00 11:05

Well, I think that, you know, we talk about the accumulation of stuff. I I explain that sometimes trauma is like putting 10 pounds of shit in a five-pound bag. It just starts leaking all over the place. And if you don't believe me, I've said this before too. Go see Metbusters, they tried it, and it works out exactly how you probably think it worked out. So at the end of the day, I mean, I think that that's what's funny is that sometimes people go through a lot in their young age. I was talking to another police officer today, and he was saying, like, you know, some of the shit I went through as a kid, that's what made me want to become a cop. Because I didn't want people to follow that. And ironically, I think therapists do that too, but that's a different story for a different day. But I I do believe that suicide is like those are the starting of the accumulation of stuff because we still there's still a huge stigma around suicide, and it's hard to talk about it. And when it happens to someone that you love and appreciate, how do you bring it up to other people in order to discuss it? And I don't know if you were able to discuss it, or was it more like, you know, that happened, move on, or like again, the secret that no one talks about?

SPEAKER_02 12:11

I was so young, and I guess I wasn't crazy young, obviously, but I was still a teenager. And so I I just didn't have the language or the tools to express what I was experiencing, and the the people around me didn't know how to handle it either. And I don't, I'm not blaming them by any means. Um, it it's not something you ever want to have to prepare to deal with, and so it was kind of just one of those things where you just keep going. The the biggest one in particular was my my lifelong best friend. And when she died, it was the big or I'm sorry, the end of May. And that summer, I know that I worked two jobs and went on a family vacation, but I cannot recall any of that. I can't recall anything until I went back to school for my senior year that fall. So it was kind of just put your head down and keep going. And that was that kind it it that really helped formulate some of my grit, but it also didn't allow me to offload any anything that I was just going through.

Public Scrutiny And Split-Second Decisions

SPEAKER_00 13:30

And you know, I when I talk about this too, when people I know no one is blaming their family, no one's blaming anyone, it's just someone of those things that generationally we didn't talk about. And to this day, still, I mean, if you ask me, suicide is a big secret at times too, because they they gotta say people died suddenly, or people died, and sometimes you're like, so when I hear suddenly, I go, overdose of suicide. And but that's maybe me being savvy as to what that means, and I see that particularly with the first responder world, where suicide is a very dirty word to talk about because you know, we have every three days there's a completed suicide in the police force in in the United States alone. I'm sure across the world there's a lot more, and that's because of the stress and the stuff that first responders face on a regular basis that they don't talk about because like you said, you know, you you had your burnout, but sometimes burnout leads to I'm not good enough or I don't want to be from this world again. And I know that with technology nowadays, first responders face a shitload of different things than maybe 20, 30 years ago, first responders did not face. Can you speak a little bit about those challenges that they face and how to handle it? Because to me, having, and I I use an example of one of my clients who talked to me about it, when you're doing an arrest and doing everything right, still having someone's iPhone pointed at you is a huge pain in the ass and is traumatic. And you start overthinking. Did I say this? Did I do this? Did I do that? And you don't say it out loud, you just say it in your head. You write your police report differently, but in your head you say a lot of different things. But that's just a thought. I just want to know what you think about this for the stressors they now face.

SPEAKER_02 15:14

Well, so I left full-time law enforcement in 2015. So a lot of what they're dealing with now has evolved since then, but I can see it. And and I talk, you know, in my clients, we talk about some of those things and just the pressures of, you know, am I gonna be the next headline? And and I did somewhat experience that. I had a strange incident where I almost shot an 11-year-old. And in the back of my mind, as I'm squeezing the trigger or starting to rock back on the trigger, that was a thought. Am I gonna be the next headline? And thank God that situation worked out the for everybody being safe and everything was fine. But but the fact that you even have to think about the public scrutiny in moments of life or death situations is really insane because once you realize how the brain operates and how when you're when you get an adrenaline dump or you're in the middle of a stress response, you're you're operating out of your brainstem, you're operating out of that primal caveman brain. You don't have access to reason and logic and critical thinking in the place where words are born. Like you don't have access to that prefrontal cortex. Yet, first responders are expected to navigate a life or death situation and think about all those other things at the same time. Read Miranda and make sure you're getting make sure that the arrest that you're making is valid that because you have all of the elements of the crime, you know, as you're wrestling with this person, you know. Right. And making sure that you're not doing anything that somebody else is going to judge you for on Monday morning. And that's really difficult. That's a lot of added pressure that that weighs on you, and it just it constricts your ability to tolerate the job and normal everyday life, really.

Fight, Flight, And Brain Science On Duty

SPEAKER_00 17:24

Right. I mean, you just talked about fight or flight response, right? Because that's where we stay in the primitive brain versus their our our like cerebral cortex, never mind the prefrontal and the frontal cortex. There's a lot of decisions to be made. You talked about being 21 to be sworn in. Frankly, I think 25 is when your brain stops being like it's fully developed. I think sometimes I wonder if 25 would be a better age, not only for that, but for a shitload more of other stuff, because we don't have a lot of judgment before that that's really, really thought out. But I also think that what you said is also very important. Am I going to be the next headline? I've talked about this before on my podcast, and I'll say it again. If a therapist fucks up in Washington, you know how much that affects me here in Massachusetts? Right, exactly. Very little for those of you who are listening to a little or zero, it doesn't even affect me. Well, probably you don't want, frankly, we won't even hear about it. Frankly, I was on a committee for a company for a while where we vetted people and we looked at these charges and stuff, and some I'm like, they're still practicing after that. I can't talk about what it was, but I'm like, holy fuck. But that's what happens with therapists. It gets, you know, no one's some if it makes the paper, you're lucky if it makes the back page. But when you're a police officer and you fuck up in Arizona, well, every cop in the United States of America are fuck-ups. Not that singular cop in Arizona. And that's a pressure that I find is very unrealistic for any job. And no one understands that, particularly police, get that scrutiny. And if if I don't want to trigger anyone listening to this, but if you are triggered, we can talk. Think about the Black Lives Matter protests and how you know, yeah, there were bad things that happened, and we agree. And a lot of the cops I spoke to have said to me, Yeah, those are bad things that happened, and those are not cops we support. Yet the same cop who is, quote, a nice person, woman or man, got pissed thrown at them, bottles thrown at them, batteries thrown at them, and that's because some cop in Missouri and Florida fucked up, not the guy in we'll say Burlington, Vermont. So I don't know if that's part of what you also see, but that's certainly a pressure that no other job in the world is like that.

SPEAKER_02 19:46

Yeah. And and when I left in 2015, that was shortly after Ferguson. And that that did not contribute to my leaving. My my departure was because of my own internal issues. But I'd be lying if I didn't say that certain events, because the way public sees things that officers do certainly affects that that perspective. But it goes both ways because when there's an officer that's attacked, or there's some kind of an ambush or something like that, now we're going, oh crap, that bullseye that's on my back now has a neon light on it. And I feel like I've got a laser pointed in my at my forehead. So that sends our alerts way higher because it so it goes both ways, right? And being like already in fight or flight often as you're on duty is one thing, but then you've got people, you've got officers being attacked and ambushed at their homes and they're being doxxed. And now you're like, I can't, there's nowhere in this world I can go and feel safe. And being able to downshift from that fight or flight is being able to establish a felt sense of safety within your body. And if you can't do that, you're going to burn out, you're going to experience health issues and mental health issues, and your relationships are going to fall apart. All of these things are natural byproducts of living that way. And it's and it's no fault to them. It's just, you know, it's a natural byproduct of the environment, and that's sad to see. And it's it's very frustrating to have lived it and to be on the other side of it now and still see people in it.

SPEAKER_00 21:49

As a therapist who has done this work for a multitude of years, it is frustrating to see people go through that. And it is frustrating to have that perception from the public. And I one day I got so angry with a civilian, and yes, I'm a civilian too, don't get me wrong, who told me, you know, all cops want a blankety blank. I can't even remember what the comment was, but something fucking vulgar. And I said, Oh, okay. So if I said that about black people, what would you say? That's terrible. That's an over-generalized. Oh, but you're allowed to overgeneralize about cops. Is that what you're telling me? And they did not like that. They did not like, but that's that's unfortunately the other part of the uh narrative that I just can't stand is that you know, don't discriminate towards people. Someone messes up, that's woman, poor, rich, whatever, they're not all like that. Somehow police, though, they're all like that. Yet isn't that the same fucking discrimination, if you ask me?

SPEAKER_02 22:51

People tend to forget that exceptions prove the rule, not the other way around.

SPEAKER_00 22:58

Right.

Stigma, Statistics, And Media Narratives

SPEAKER_02 22:59

And when you when you look at the the statistics of how often these awful, terrible, no good things happen in in the media or in just in the world, because when things like this happen, they make the media, it makes the news. When you look at the statistics of how often those things happen versus how many interactions police have with the public every single day, it's minuscule. It doesn't even hit the chart. It doesn't even, it's not even, it's basically non-existent. And people don't realize that. And I'm not saying it doesn't happen. I'm not saying that it doesn't matter when it happens. But what I'm saying is I wish I had the numbers in front of me because it's it's outrageous. But when you actually do the research, it is wild how little these police brutality issues actually occur. And I'm I'm gonna stop myself there because I will go completely down a rabbit hole that I've got to do.

SPEAKER_00 24:01

But I will respect the fact that you don't want to. But for me, it it is about realizing that anyone I've ever worked with who saw something wrong happen with another police officer, they would tell me that's wrong. I don't follow this. This but no one wants to hear that. No one wants to be able to listen to that. Because if you think about I don't have the stats either, but let's say you get four calls a night. That's I'm being very conservative. Four calls in a day, and you do that four days a week. I don't know if it's a 5-2 in Ohio, but it's a 4-2 around here with shift work. You do that what 250 days a year, give or take. And you do four interventions, that's a thousand interventions. And if you have one crappy one, that's one out of one thousand, which is not what is that zero point zero one percent? So, yeah, that does happen. We're not saying that it does not, but for all the good calls that occur, where's the recognition?

SPEAKER_02 25:02

Yeah, it's it's really wild. And again, I wish I had the stats in front of me because I think it's like point zero zero zero zero zero zero one is how often use of force is is jumped or escalated beyond what it warranted. Right. But I know you're stopped. I I gotta stop you or else different day conversation.

SPEAKER_00 25:24

I'd love to hear that more. Well, maybe we can have that conversation off air. But I also think that the other stat that I like to tell people is that you know, 95% of any first responders when do their job, go home safe, and that's their goal. And help the community in the middle if they can. In my job, there's 95% of therapists that are just here to care and support and love people, and name any profession. 95% of them just want to do what they can to help people. Five percent are assholes. Guess what? Same thing with police, same thing with any job that you can possibly imagine. Because if I've heard people like, oh no, I'm not like that. So I said, So if I went through all your work colleagues at this bank, all of them are stellar human beings that are really on top of everything. Well, and I'm like, and they're like, Well, you know, police take an oat and firefighters take an oat. And I'm like, that doesn't mean they're not human. That doesn't mean that people don't slip between the cracks, because that happens in the best of scrutinies. So we need to be mindful that it's not like police are any different than any other human being in this world or any job for them.

Boundaries, Safety, And Life After The Badge

SPEAKER_02 26:33

And and usually when they get sniffed out, they're out. Like, and there are rare occasions where some other department will, you know, not do their due diligence and rehire them or whatever, but it's that's pretty rare. I I've seen plenty of people get kicked to the curb and they can't find another job anywhere else, and there's reasons for that.

SPEAKER_00 26:54

So well, I I've seen that too many times, but it's also being able to have due diligence everywhere you go. And I respect anyone who knows what that means in their personal life as well as their work life. But anyway, we're we're already approaching the half hour. Would you want to stay around and uh do part two with me? Yeah, absolutely. All right, so we're gonna wrap this up here and we're gonna meet on the other side. And I really thank you for your time. And for those of you who are listening, come back on next Friday, or you will be able to listen to part two. But here we so thank you.

Part Two Tease & Closing Notes

SPEAKER_01 27:31

Please like, subscribe, and follow this podcast on your favorite platform. A glowing review is always helpful. And as a reminder, this podcast is for informational, educational, and entertainment purposes only. If you're struggling with a mental health or substance abuse issue, please reach out to a professional counselor for consultation. If you are in a mental health crisis, call 988 for assistance. This number is available in the United States and Canada.