An invisible tragedy
We need to compile data on police suicides to gain insight into officers’ stress.
One-hundred twenty-nine police officers were killed in the line of duty in 2017. The figure is lower than past years, but any on-duty death is unacceptable.
A different cause of death claimed more officers last year than shootings, stabbings and vehicle accidents combined: suicide. That figure, 140, may itself be low, and police suicides may be on the rise. We simply don’t know, because there are no official statistics. Mental health advocates say it’s impossible to develop policies to prevent these deaths until we understand the extent of the problem.
It is time for local and state governments to cooperate with Washington to study and address police suicides.
As the Chronicle’s Keri Blakinger reported, the Houston Police Department has lost 20 officers to suicide since 2007. In one instance this past year, a 21-year veteran sergeant shot himself in his west Houston patrol station. The Harris County Sheriff ’s Office reported four officer suicides since 2014, an average of one a year.
Equally troubling is that of the 31 police agencies surveyed by the Chronicle, fewer than a dozen initially provided official statistics. Others tracked suicides only informally. Houstonians should be thankful our city department was among those with official stats, but Fort Worth, Dallas, Lubbock, Amarillo and Laredo appear to be far behind.
A crucial first step in solving this problem is understanding how many police suicides there are each year. Though groups like the nonprofit Badge for Life collect unofficial data to come up with an estimate, there are no requirement for law enforcement agencies to collect the data.
This must change as soon as possible. Bob Douglas of the National Police Suicide Foundation and Ron Clark of Badge For Life agree that a good candidate to collect data on police suicides, since it already collects and publishes annual uniform crime reports on a number of law enforcement subjects, is the FBI. The government must also make submitting stats on officer suicides a requirement.
Suicide, Clark was quick to point out to the editorial board, is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to concerns over officers’ mental health. Constant stress and exposure to trauma puts officers at risk for depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. Police are often reluctant to show when they are struggling, for fear of displaying weakness. In the words of the widow of a Houston policeman who took his own life, “You have to be a super person.”
How to provide officers with adequate mental health care during and after their careers, and how to overcome a bottle-it-up culture on the force are complex questions. Collecting data on police suicides is a logical and easily achievable starting point.
The Trump administration should instruct the FBI or another appropriate federal department to require the 18,000 law enforcement agencies across the country to submit data on police suicides for an annual report. If necessary, Congress, with the support of the Texas delegation, should fund this effort.
Legislators in Austin should also consider a state effort during the next session.
We recognize that policemen and women perform among the most difficult and dangerous jobs around. The public is rightly horrified when police are killed while doing their jobs, like Harris County sheriff ’s deputy Darren Goforth, Precinct 3 Assistant Chief Deputy Constable Clint Greenwood and a Dallas policeman killed just last week.
All of us must have this same reaction when we lose officers to suicide, and conduct the research necessary to prevent it.