‘We’re gonna be great’
After a two-year battle with PTSD, a veteran Toronto cop didn’t know if he’d ever be able to go back to his job. Then he met Scarlett
Last January, Paul Breeze visited two Labrador retriever puppies being sold by his wife’s family friend. He spent about an hour alone with each. One was an energetic boy who couldn’t settle down; the other, a girl named Scarlett, sniffed Breeze for a bit before gently sitting on his lap.
“She’s going to be perfect,” he thought.
More than a year later, Scarlett the yellow Lab loves playing with Breeze’s four kids and running around their house. That’s until Breeze dresses her in her blue vest. That’s when Scarlett switches from family dog to service dog — the first at the side of an active Toronto police officer.
Before his gradual return last November, Breeze, 42, spent two years on and off work while managing a diagnosis of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Now, the officer of 14 years is back part-time as a police constable in the integrated gang prevention task force at 23 Division, alongside Scarlett.
In an interview with the Star last week, he said he had thought his return was nearly impossible. But after overcoming the mental health stigmas that prevented him from getting help, he wants fellow veterans and police officers to follow in his footsteps. “I wanted to show people that these resources are available, that I managed to get through it,” he said.
Breeze is a veteran, with 12 years of service in the British army — he joined in 1995 at age 16 — and four more in the Canadian Forces, a fact he displays with a sticker on his car and a patch on his jacket sleeve. His experience as a medic in the British army made him Toronto police’s go-to person for crisis situations. He would work in trauma rooms almost four times a week; most of the cases were fatalities.
During a night shift in 2018, Breeze was at a collision scene that left one man dead. There, he comforted a severely injured woman until an ambulance arrived.
For the longest time, Breeze said he’d had a “suck it up, buttercup” mentality and believed that he would never get PTSD — but, he said: “I woke up the next day and I just broke down completely.”
Still, Breeze tried to manage everything by himself. “I didn’t want to be that guy and I just tried to hide it,” Breeze said.
In the end, Breeze says it was a minimal incident at work that sent him over the edge. “One of the staff sergeants found me rolled up in a ball in the parking garage of the Traffic Services building,” he said. He had an emergency session with a psychologist lasting around four hours, and was later diagnosed with complex PTSD — a kickstart on his road to recovery.
His psychologist referred him to Project Trauma Support, a six-day program designed for Canadian military workers, veterans and first responders experiencing PTSD. There, he met a participant with a similar background in military and police who had a service dog. Breeze was amazed by how the dog comforted its owner and always stayed by their side.
That led to the visit with the two puppies last January, and then on to a check-in with a trainer at Citadel Canine Society, a non-profit that trains service dogs for veterans, nurses and first-responders with PTSD.
Donna Boileau, who’s based in Mississauga, remembers Scarlett was a “giant fluffball” who wasn’t too timid or playful — the perfect combination for a service dog. Scarlett now has a few months left of training, but she’s already great at her job, Boileau said.
What stands out most to Boileau is Breeze’s drive to heal from his trauma and take back control of his life. “He just wanted everything back. And he worked so hard to try to do that,” Boileau said.
Scarlett’s job is to give Breeze something else to focus on if he starts feeling distressed. “If she senses my breathing is going up or I give her a verbal cue, she will come and give me a hug, putting her paws right up on my chest,” Breeze said.
Today, Breeze sees himself as “a walking billboard for, ‘Hey, I got PTSD.’ ”
Breeze recommends fellow Toronto police officers to find peer support groups for police workers, like Toronto Beyond the Blue and Boots on the Ground. “They’re there to help, and they really did help me. So, don’t be afraid to just pick up that phone,” he said, adding a few officers are interested in bringing their own service dogs, and Breeze is happy he’s paved the way for them.
Breeze specifically credits Pete Grande for helping him navigate Toronto police’s mental health resources. Grande, director of member benefits for the Toronto Police Association, said that all he did was make some phone calls and thinks most of the credit goes to Breeze himself. “I just helped him just by being a friend, by letting him know that he wasn’t alone,” Grande said.
Ivy Nanayakkara, manager of the Toronto Police Service’s wellness unit, says she strongly encourages Toronto police employees to find and use resources available at work, considering how gruelling their job can get. “Having the resiliency to face that work every day and bring their best selves forward is important,” she said.
“Having empathy for the people that we serve makes all the difference.”
As for Scarlett, all she has to do is keep up her good work. “As long as she keeps doing what she’s doing, we’re gonna be great,” said Breeze.