- Buffy Bush created a training course to help first responders recognize and respond to grief.
- Bush founded Families of the Stolen after her sister was murdered in 2011, motivated by the lack of support she saw for families navigating unimaginable loss.
- Bush says the training's message extends to anyone working with people experiencing trauma, signaling potential for broader impact.
BROADCAST TRANSCRIPT:
Buffy Bush lost her sister to murder in 2011. Now she's turning that grief into a training course designed to change how first responders show up for families in the worst moments of their lives.
Bush, CEO and founder of Families of the Stolen, created the course to help officers and other first responders recognize grief and respond to it — with the goal of strengthening homicide investigations and the relationships between law enforcement and the communities they serve.
After her sister was killed, Bush says she quickly realized how little support existed for families trying to survive the unimaginable. She still remembers arriving at the crime scene.
"I didn't know where the kids were. I didn't know what had happened. And the air to breathe was gone. That was the last thing that I remember because I had passed out," Bush said.
The course uses powerful testimonies from Omaha families and interactive exercises that ask officers to step into the shoes of those left behind — experiencing, if only for a moment, the weight of unimaginable loss.
"If y'all noticed, every last one of you said what you didn't need was access to a firearm. So just imagine every single one of our community members that has access to a firearm. That does not have that will to, let's not pull it out and go find who did this," Bush said.
Omaha Police Captain Kara Hindman says the training offers officers something they rarely get.
"People are getting goosebumps, because we live in our world in law enforcement, but we don't experience firsthand the world that Mrs. Bush has, for an example, or the community that we're specifically working a homicide in," Hindman said.
Bush hopes the course does more than strengthen investigations. She wants it to remind first responders that every case file represents a family whose lives have been forever changed.
"Just another way to look at an individual past the yellow tape, to look at them, wants the phone calls stop, to always remember that that person is still suffering," Bush said.
Bush says the training's message reaches far beyond law enforcement and can benefit anyone who works with people experiencing trauma.
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