Join Janet Zipper and Gale Glassner for an iinterview with Stephanie Samuels. She is Founder of COPLINE, Inc, First Confidential National Law Enforcement Officers' Hotline in the USA, manned by retired officers. Ms. Samuels began her career as one of the teens in the first focus group of Teen Line Cares, a mental health help line for teens. Ms. Samuels recognized that teens only trusted and confided in other teens. With this same concept in mind, Ms. Samuels went on to create two law enforcement officer hotlines. She is currently the Founder and President of COPLINE, Inc., the first Confidential National Law Enforcement Officers' Hotline in the country manned by retired officers.

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. Ms. Samuels was hired after the Boston Bombing as the Clinical Director of the Boston Police Department Peer Support Unit and co-founded the LEADER (Law Enforcement Active Duty Emergency Responder) Program at Harvard's McLean Hospital and continues to work with the Boston Police Department in a different capacity.

Ms. Samuels has co-authored "Under the Blue Shadow: Clinical and Behavioral Perspectives on Police Suicide" with Dr. John Violanti .She taught at the Monmouth County Police Academy for 16 years and has been a guest lecturer at The FBI Academy in Quantico.

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 got her Bachelor's 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.

https://www.copline.org/