Some Very Dark Truths About Police Suicide
The following article was published as editorial on the Law Enforcement Today website, and elements were used in an op-ed piece for the Tampa Bay Times.
Photo via Pixabay.com
It’s a small world after all.
I was at a condo in the Disney area with my family when I received a shocking direct message through Instagram. I confirmed the news through other friends, and though I was physically at what is sometimes dubbed “the happiest place on Earth”, my mental monorail transported me to a dark and evil place. The twists and turns of Space Mountain had nothing on the realities and details once they began to emerge. I was heartbroken, angry, and confused as I tried to process the events on the fast ride that was anything but thrilling.
A diamond in the rough in our profession was tragically killed while she was on a weekend getaway of her own. She was murdered, and soon after, her murderer killed himself. Aside from the usual shock and grief that is caused by a murder-suicide, this one hit differently. The murder victim and the murderer were both cops.
The news was very grim for the law enforcement agency from where I retired a few months ago. To be clear, this story is not about that agency, as they have been making efforts to address the current mental health crisis for a few years now. If anything, it illustrates that this could happen anywhere. The entire profession is suffering. It’s time for our own informal leaders of all ranks to have that closed door team meeting to discuss taking matters into our own hands, rather than leaving it up to any administration.
There have been two suicides in as many months at that agency. It is also the third murder-suicide committed by one of its officers in a three-year period. Police suicide is neither unique to that agency, nor to this part of the world. There were 153 active police officer suicides in 2021 in the United States. That number doesn’t account for retired officers or emergency dispatchers, as both groups are often overlooked in these conversations. For a frame of reference, the number of deaths by suicide decreased from 2019 and from 2020- both of which had twice as many suicides than line of duty fatalities (minus the Covid-19 related deaths.) It seems the biggest threat to our profession is the inability to get out of our own turbo cycle of bad thoughts.
As someone who worked in the profession for nearly three decades and having struggled with suicide myself, I feel I am uniquely qualified to opine on the topic. I’ve been there. I had a full-blown drink-to-blackout alcohol problem that almost got me arrested and fired. I had suicidal ideations with actual plans on more than one occasion. I was high functioning but living in victimhood. In other news, I also worked hard to break through and not let the demons take me down. Therapy, medication, 13 years of sobriety and a lot of honest self-reflection allowed me to re-wire my brain. It still makes it even harder when I learn of another one of our brothers or sisters who never made it out of their darkness.
As law enforcement officers, we see things that are not supposed to be processed by a normal human brain. The scenes can be gruesome, and the reactions of those involved are not only gut-wrenching, but often burned in our memories forever. I am not just talking about blood and guts. Even the painful cries of a small child who doesn’t understand what is happening and doesn’t want to see their parent go to jail can take its toll. When you see death and suffering for a living, or when you identify locations in your city by the tragedies you’ve witnessed there, sometimes you just want to be able to let it all out. But it is not that easy.
Nothing we do is normal, but “normal” people seem to think they know what we go through.
Accumulation of trauma is a huge factor. There is a widely reported spike in violence, which means we as officers are responding to increasingly gruesome scenes on a more frequent basis. Sometimes we are unable to get the images and noises out of our heads. So, to open the mental health conversation with the general public, or even family members, let’s look at the alternatives from a cop’s perspective.
We are reluctant talk to family members about exactly what we see.
As inherent protectors, our families are who we want to protect the most. Aside from shielding the ones we love from the tragedies we endure, there are policies against sharing confidential information about cases. Even pillow talk comes with a level of trepidation on the officer’s behalf. In a plausible but worst-case scenario, your significant other innocently says the wrong thing in front of the wrong person, and an investigation could be compromised because of you. Next thing you know, you’re under investigation and being punished. Whether real or imagined, it is something that officers contemplate. Isolation is a common crutch, and families often don’t understand why they their loved one seems so lost. This potentially leads to family problems, which only feeds the beast.
Officers sometimes feel they can’t tell their employer or supervisors about what is bothering them.
The law enforcement brass that touts their mental health “gains” and programs are the same law enforcement brass that punish these cops into oblivion for having a meltdown on a citizen that could have been caused by unaddressed trauma. Recent disciplinary issues are common when police suicides are examined. Alcohol is also a factor in a high number of police suicides, and substance abuse often goes together with poor work performance, which generates a harmful cycle. When dealing with alcohol or substance-related missteps, the dilemma the administrators must face is often a matter of opting for rehabilitation without punishment. Often, they hang their hats on the fearful “not punishing will send the wrong message to the rest” style of management. In some circles in law enforcement, image is not just everything- it’s the only thing that lends to agency legitimacy in a community. Optics sometimes outweigh the human capital. This is a fatal flaw in my opinion.
Trust in leadership is vital when revealing mental health vulnerabilities.
Loyalty is sometimes an eight-lane mega highway that runs north, and a two-lane foot path that runs south. Oftentimes, the people making disciplinary decisions are decades removed from seeing what their employees are experiencing, but if you ask questions, you are labeled disloyal or a dissenter. Some law enforcement agencies have a shadow punishment system, and those in charge always rely on plausible deniability to minimize its existence.
The officers can’t really talk to each other because no one wants to be a burden, and no one wants to seem weak.
Police supervisors and managers have an obligation to continually check the fitness for duty of their officers, and if one is acting “off” and suddenly disappears off the street, the officers fear they will be labeled as mentally unstable. There is no amount of confidentiality in the world that will protect someone from the rumor mill of a group of adults whose main job is to investigate things that just don’t add up. Weakness and vulnerability in this case is a sign of strength, but instead it’s kept in the dark.
Legacy media, social media, and the general public aren’t helping matters.
Everyone demands one hundred percent perfection, one hundred percent of the time. The citizens demand police accountability. The same people who vilify the cops who risk their lives to protect them, often canonize the very criminals who get a pass for their criminal activity. You see headlines and click bait of, “Police Kill Teen”, but you rarely see, “Teen Shooting at Police is Killed in Gun Battle”. The inclination is to blame the police, let it spread like wildfire on social media and in the mainstream media, and bury the full facts of the case once the full investigation is done. The rest of the story or any retraction is usually on page eight, about a month too late. Cops never fully recover from that. False narratives breed discontent and destroy any legitimacy that is rightly earned. It is hard to work in an environment where the people who literally call 911 for help, often don’t really want your help when you get there because they see you as the enemy. It is even more pressure when the citizens go on the offensive and bring harm to the protectors. Ambush attacks on police rose 115% from 2020 to 2021.
Bad decisions mixed with intense pressures often beget worse decisions.
The alternative that is relied upon all too frequently is to drown ourselves in alcohol or other substances, or to seek comfort in infidelity or other horrible vices. For some, suicide is never off the table of options. Self-medicating to numb the mental pains can lead to horrible decisions like suicide.
So, what are the answers?
I don’t know what the answers are. I know that I’m tired of hearing, “This is what you signed up for.” Maybe we had it in the back of our minds, but you never know until you know. There is no course on twenty-four-hour hyper-vigilance, or how to process pulling a child out of a pool and unsuccessfully doing CPR while the family screams at you. Our families certainly didn’t sign up for the side effects.
There is no class to prepare you for the fatigue of working all night and going to juvenile court until noon the next day. You must be back at work in a few hours, so you better be ready to be perfect with only three hours of sleep. Let’s table the fact that your efforts did nothing in solving the juvenile justice problem, since you encounter the same kid doing the same thing on the next shift.
There are plenty of studies that tie that level of exhaustion with depression and poor work performance, but rarely is it readily in context in a conversation about day three of three straight twelve-hour midnight shifts.
Suggestions anyone?
For protectors to be able to effectively protect, it might be time for some outside entities and the general public to look at helping instead of always being so critical. It is time to look at root causes and not automatically assume that cops are on the hunt.
To the administrators of law enforcement agencies across the nation- put your egos aside for one minute and try to understand that you don’t understand. Stop silencing the voices that do. This isn’t about you or your image. If you encourage leadership within your ranks, now is the time to set the example by showing it. This issue isn’t solely on you, but if whatever you are doing was effective, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.
To the informal leaders within any first responder or military profession, it is time we all speak up. Leverage your influence. Have the conversations that are way out of everyone’s comfort zones. Encourage and practice buddy checks. Try therapy and encourage others to do so. Fortunately for most, you can do it through your insurance, and it’s none of your agency’s business. Remember to take care of yourselves also. Remember to put on your oxygen mask first, so you can help the passenger next to you.
And to my fellow officers, get in the practice of saying things out loud. When something traumatic happens, SAY IT OUT LOUD. Tell someone that something is bothering you. Let it out. Tell a partner at work, tell a family member, tell a pastor, tell a therapist, tell a childhood friend, tell a parent, tell a barista, tell your BJJ coach, write it down and hand it to a complete stranger- BUT SAY IT OUT LOUD. Don’t keep the trauma bottled up.
You may not be able to make your whole community the happiest place on Earth, but I assure you that you ultimately operate and control the safety bar of ride that you are on. There are plenty of us out here that have been riding it for a long time and can help you reestablish control. Can we PLEASE work together to understand that the people saving lives are often the ones who need saving?
Andrew Baxter is a retired police lieutenant with nearly three decades of experience in the profession. He is on Instagram as @drew_breasy and YouTube as Drew Breasy.
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My father was a police officer in Pa. who died from health issues in 1999. He rotated shifts every 3 weeks. In your article I thought you had interviewed him. I loved my dad very much. He became an alcoholic and was very physical with my mom. He and alcohol did not mix. We as kids (4) knew we could not call the police because he was the police and he might get fired. So families of Police/Firemen/ EMT's need some counseling to help us forget or deal with what we witnessed. We sacrificed too. Was very hard going to school or church and pretend everything was fine.