Posted on 06/21/2019 9:42:20 PM PDT by Kaslin
A recent New York Times story brought up an emerging crisis in the profession I dedicated 40 years of my life to. As a society, we generally find it difficult to talk about suicide. The stigma involving suicide holds many people back from talking about it, which leaves only hope that this crisis will end. This is not an effective strategy.
At some point, many Americans lose a family member or friend to suicide. When a family member or friend succumbs to suffering in silence and decides that the only way out—the only way to find peace is to take their life—surviving family and friends are left to pick up the pieces of a life ended tragically. Survivors grieve and deal with the self-guilt about why they didn’t notice the problem and continuously ask themselves what more they could have done to intervene. I know of which I speak because I have lived through this in my own family.
We have a serious crisis on our hands. Police officers are killing themselves in numbers that are not only shocking but are well above any other profession. Sadly the trend continues upward.
Over the last three years, the single greatest cause of death for law enforcement officers each year is suicide. Your communities' finest have a better chance of taking their own life than being killed in the line of duty. That is not a misprint or misstatement. Police officers are two to three times more likely to kill themselves than to be killed in the line of duty. In 2018, at least 159 officers died by suicide, which is 10 percent more than the 144 line of duty deaths, which include felony assaults, patrol vehicle accidents, heart attacks, and duty-related illnesses.
Male officers are overwhelmingly more likely than female officers to commit suicide by a ratio of 151 to 8. The states of California, Texas, New York and Florida, respectively, lead the nation in police suicides. Maybe it’s because those states have the most officers? That conclusion would be the easy way out.
The standard indicators of someone contemplating suicide, such as severe depression and marked changes in personality are low hanging fruit as far as I am concerned. No profession subjects its employees to the daily stressors that policing brings. A typical shift can have an officer going from a barking dog complaint to a child who was sexually assaulted or abused, and shortly after that, respond to a neighbor dispute or domestic battery complaint, or even a homicide. As you can see, they are exposed to a gamut of incidents. They then go home to deal with their own household issues only to return the next day and repeat the cycle of solving everybody else’s problems.
This is not a plea for pity. We chose this profession voluntarily. It is, however, raising the question of what police departments and the cities and states are doing for their mental well-being. Agencies spend a lot of money on equipment and training for physical survival in the field but offer not much more than employee assistance hotlines for cops in need of mental survival help. Police officers are not wired to ask for help. We provide help. We train police officers to stay in a constant state of hyper-vigilance as a street survival mechanism. The problem is that we don’t teach them how to turn it off. Physiologically and mentally, it is draining. Imagine that stress over the course of a career. By the way, there is a surge in retired officer suicides as well.
Cops are wired and trained as problem solvers. As a result, they suffer in silence, preferring to try and work their own problems out alone. The growing number of police suicides indicates that they are not as successful at solving their own issues as well as they are at solving everyone else’s problems.
Here is what needs to be done. More state and federal grant money needs to be appropriated for university schools of psychology for specific study in the area of police mental health. I scream every time I hear advocates ask for more spending in the field of mental health every time some killer commits mass murder. These advocates are not as loud in asking for more money to study the mental health of police officers.
One particular area of study that is needed should concentrate on the effects that the War on Cops is having on the mental well-being of police officers. The constant verbal beat down directed by cop-hating anarchists and movements like Black Lives Matter over time has to have a negative impact on the mental health of police officers. They are human beings. Being constantly called racists, blood-thirsty killers, and other despicable references when they are merely trying to protect and serve would affect anybody. No other profession is subjected to the bullying we hear so much about from the left.
We ask a lot of our first responders. Politicians always say how much they appreciate their service. It is time to demonstrate it beyond rhetoric. Our officers deserve our best efforts in combatting Blue suicide.
It is a difficult problem.
Wish I had an easy solution.
Police officers are routinely exposed to the worst in society.
They tend to transfer that to all of society, which means they have a more cynical view than most.
I think you could go and review the average twenty-year career of a cop in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s....to find it was fairly low-stress. But as you get into the 1980s, and look over the past thirty years....it’s now loaded with stress. A cop will tell you that every single day as they enter duty...they presume that they will have to pull their gun out and potentially have to fire it.
Toss in drugged-out and incoherent ‘customers’, complicated laws, pressure by municipalities to issue tickets, and being a first-responder at scenes where multiple deaths have occurred...it just all adds up to major stress. You end the shift, get eight hours of sleep, and come right back for more tomorrow.
Wouldn’t mind seeing the internals on the statistics. Is the crime the gating factor, or is the shift-work too much for the marriage?
The problem is not new but they used to be respected and held in high esteem by more of the general public. Now thanks to the media and the constant maligning of all LEO plus political interference a tough job got a lot harder. I don’t know how to reduce or stop it, but it’s a terrible trend.
- Here is what needs to be done. More state and federal grant money needs to be appropriated for university schools of psychology for specific study in the area of police mental health.
No. University schools of psychology need to do voluntary police work.
Wasn’t this also a problem fifty years ago? I remember reading THE NEW CENTURIONS and seeing George C. Scott eat his pistol in the movie.
Well, there is a solution.
It does work.
It was successfully applied to law enforcement, the military, and firefighters for many decades.
But it’s not popular anymore, and people don’t want to hear it. In fact many of them get angry.
During my years with NYDOCS, I saw many divorces amongst co-workers, many co-workers, and supervisors who drank too much, and approximately 3 co-workers who committed suicide. They were all male. All died from self-inflicted gunshot wounds. We lost many good people, most from illness, cancer being the most common cause. And the majority of them were younger than me when they died. One that wasn't younger than me was a good friend who lost his life doing what he loved most...parachuting. He'd jumped out of the plane, and his chute never opened. They figured he'd had a stroke or heart attack on the way down. His name was "Red", and he loved to pump iron to John Thoroughgood's "Bad to the Bone." I can't listen to the song without thinking of him. He was a Navy Vet, and about 55 when he passed. God Rest His Soul.
My goal was not to die working for New York State, and I managed to retire early in 2003, due to the retirement tier I was in. I never married again, and I was never a drinker, and never smoked. I'm diabetic now, and don't touch the stuff. Being a divorced mother of two sons helped me keep my focus, and my interest in history, and taking college courses, helped get me through those 23+ years in uniform. A lot of the people I worked with didn't have hobbies, or outside interests. Many of them would leave work at 3 p.m., and head for the local bar where everyone hung out. They'd sit there for hours, drinking, and talking shop. Once I clocked out, I left the job at work...didn't take it home with me. I feel very fortunate that I've had almost 16 years of retirement, because there were plenty who never lived to see it.
Please tell us.
Many of us are not good at mind reading.
“We present these posts and comments because we believe that they could undermine public trust and confidence in our police. In our view, people who are subject to decisions made by law enforcement may fairly question whether these on line statements about race, religion, ethnicity and the acceptability of violent policing—among other topics—inform officers’ on-the-job behaviors and choices.”
“what more they could have done to intervene”
Therein lies the problem. Even
with family members’ recognition,
they really can’t convince nor
force their family member to
seek help. The realization of
a problem must come from the
who is suffering.
Even if they do recognize
they have a problem, they feel
weak when asking for help.
Compassion, respect, appreciation.
Thanks for sharing. Glad you’re here.
appropriate
verb
past tense: appropriated; past participle: appropriated
1. take (something) for one's own use, typically without the owner's permission.
2. devote (money or assets) to a special purpose.
Or, just flush our tax money down the drain, it is the same thing.
Yes.
The war on police pushed by the last President did not help at all.
Colleges and universities are now behind enemy lines and are willing soldiers for the other side.
And it seems to me that that kind of fear/pressure can lead to depression...alcoholism...etc.
In the early days of my 25 year career in health care I did shift work...days,evenings *and* nights.Long story short,I was so sleep deprived that I was nearly suicidal for a time.When I got on to the evening shift things were better and then,finally,I got on to the day shift and things were back to normal.
Most suicides are not due to family problems or external factors like watching crimes happen, but due to political lefty pressure from the top.
No one commits suicide for watching a dead body, but people will be pushed when their career and entire life dedication is threatened by a blackmail operation and corruption coming from the top, sending gangs within the outfits to make virtual hits to shame and defraud or real ones.
I have been too long in the military to know about how the system controls cops via cutting off morale and resiliency and keeps making people blame third parties when it is the evil of government turning on itself that generates this crap
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