Suicides renew talk of care for officers
Within 3 months, 3 Chicago officers have ended lives
Deaths brought attention to the department’s mental health services.
Chicago police Officer Rob Casale attended crisis intervention training in 2010. He was paired with another officer, and the two responded to practice calls throughout the day.
That night, the officer went home and took her life.
“I hit the wall,” said Casale, who has worked for the department for two decades.
It was the impetus for a career shift. He went to graduate school to become a professional counselor, and now he treats first responders while still serving as an officer.
Casale experiences both sides of the intractable mental health issues facing first responders, brought into sharp relief last week when a third Chicago police officer died by self-inflicted gunshot wounds in little more than two months.
One took his life while on duty in his squad car, the other two in the parking lot of the Calumet District station on the Far South Side.
The cluster of deaths has brought renewed attention to the Chicago Police Department’s mental health services — an area criticized in a 2017 U.S. Justice Department report in the aftermath of the fatal police shooting of Laquan McDonald.
A proposed consent decree filed last week requires the department to reform its mental health outreach and counseling services. It must staff 10 clinicians for its employee assistance program by 2020 and ensure that officers have access to non-emergency counseling within two weeks of a request, and emergency counseling within 24 hours.
The department says it has already hired additional clinicians and undertaken a campaign to educate officers on options for seeking help.
Still, law enforcement and mental health experts say meeting the terms of the consent decree is just a start to addressing the needs of roughly 12,000 officers and their families. Ten clinicians is likely not enough for one of the largest police forces in the country, they say.
And adding more mental health professionals doesn’t address the problem if the department doesn’t lessen the stigma of seeking therapy and doesn’t reach out to officers.
“The job takes a toll on you, especially in Chicago,” said Casale, who started working as a first responder in the suburbs when he was 21. “It was like, OK, have a beer and move on. That’s not the best. It eventually caught up to me.”
‘Overextended’
Nationally, first responders are more likely to die by suicide than to be killed in the line of duty, according to a study this year from the Ruderman Family Foundation, a nonpartisan group that conducts research and advocacy on disability and mental health.
Last year, at least 243 police officers and firefighters died by suicide in the United States, while at least 222 were killed in the line of duty, according to the study.
In Chicago, three police officers and at least one firefighter, a former Chicago police officer, have died by suicide so far this year, while one police officer and one firefighter have died in the line of duty.
The Justice Department study was sharply critical of the department’s services, concluding it did not have an “overarching officer wellness plan that includes robust counseling programs, comprehensive training, functioning equipment and other tools to ensure officers are successful and healthy.”
At the time, the department had three clinicians in its employee assistance program (EAP), the primary vehicle for mental health support for a police and civilian staff of about 13,500. In comparison, the report noted, the Dallas Police Department also staffed three counselors for a police force of about 3,400. The Miami-Dade Police Department staffed six for a force of 2,900 officers and 1,700 civilians.
“EAP counselors are overextended,” the report found. “At the end of 2015, EAP’s three clinicians had provided 7,498 mental health consultations/appointments.” Alexa James, executive director of the National Alliance on Mental Illness in Chicago, noted that the department’s EAP offers a wide variety of services — such as crisis intervention, individual counseling and ongoing therapy with officers and family members — rather than acting as a starting point and referring officers to services as traditional EAP programs often do.
“If they were to continue to do that robust of a program, it doesn’t just mean adding more clinicians, it means having a strategy around a fully functioning mental health unit,” James said.
In the past year, the department has brought the number of clinicians to at least six, and is in the recruiting stages to bring the number up to 10, according to Chicago police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi. He also noted the department has a peerto-peer program for officers to offer support and mentorship to each other, as well as chaplains of different religious denominations who spend time out on the street overnight to reach out to officers and check on them.
The department also streams a video at roll call and has placed posters in the districts and offered training from the clinicians about what they do in order to publicize the available resources.
‘Tipping point’
Former Chicago police Officer Brian Warner sharply recalls his first homicide. It happened in the Cabrini-Green public housing complex, and afterward his supervisor took him out for a drink.
“He told some macabre jokes. Then you see the next horrific thing,” Warner said. “You try and self-medicate, and try coping, but a tipping point occurs.”
Warner, a former chairman of the Chicago Police survivors group, has spoken out about the lack of support he felt he received after he shot and killed a 56-yearold man who fired a gun in a squad car.
Afterward, he had a mandated appointment with a counselor. “We sat down for an hour tops and that was it,” Warner said. “Nothing else was required.”
Warner advocates for a mental health system that does not put the onus on the officer to reach out for help. He suggests the department assess officers’ mental fitness as a matter of course, as they do for firearm competency, and require periodic check-ins following a police shooting.
Warner also said counselors should have regular debriefings with officers after stressful shifts.
He recalled one incident in which an entire family was brutally killed on the Southwest Side. Afterward, the first responders, evidence technicians, detectives and other personnel involved gathered in a roll call room, had pizza and were pointed to resources.
“This should be happening way more frequently,” Warner said.
James said NAMI recommends the department work with its insurer, Blue Cross Blue Shield, to find and vet counselors outside the department to serve officers.
“Our responsibility is to support these folks who risk their necks every day.”
“The job takes a toll on you, especially in Chicago. It was like, OK, have a beer and move on. That’s not the best. It eventually caught up to me.”
— Chicago police Officer Rob Casale, also a counselor who treats fellow first responders