Officer Suicides Beat Intro Voiceover 00:00 This is the Beat—a podcast series that keeps you in the know about the latest community policing topics facing our nation. Interview Mora Fiedler 00:08 Hello. My name is Mora Fiedler and, on behalf of the COPS Office, I’d like to introduce to you Dr. John Violanti, professor at the University of Buffalo in the department of social and preventative medicine. Dr. Violanti is here today to talk to us about the alarming issue of police officer suicide. Dr. Violanti, can you tell us what got you interested in studying the topic of officer suicide? John Violanti 00:34 Well, in the first place I was a New York State trooper for a period of 23 years. During that career I saw many of my comrades develop problems with depression and chronic stress and use of alcohol. During that time I decided to continue my education and one of my first priorities was to look into this problem. We were quite surprised to see in our first mortality studies that the police suicide rate was much higher than the general United States population, and that really piqued my interest. So we started from there and have been doing research since that point. Mora 01:11 Tell us about your research on officer suicide. What are some of the more important findings? John 01:17 Well, I think one of the most important things is that the rate is increasing. I think it’s important that we start preventive measures to let departments realize that this is a problem. They don’t happen often but when they do they really have a bad—a terrible effect on a police department. One of the more recent findings was that there is a higher rate of suicide in smaller police departments. As you know, in the United States, the majority of departments are under 50 officers. So we’re finding an increased rate of suicide in smaller departments as opposed to larger departments. They have not been studied much because most of our—most of the large studies focus on large departments. We’re quite—we’re a little bit alarmed about that. We think more work is needed in looking at that. Mora 02:07 I understand there is a controversy regarding the exact number of police suicides. What can be done to obtain a more accurate count in the United States? John 02:16 Well there is a controversy and, depending on what research you read, there could be anywhere from 400 suicides a year to 500 a year to 100 a year. It’s all over the board. I think what we need is something similar to the FBI Law Enforcement Killed and Assaulted data that they put out every year. If we could get a large governmental agency like the FBI to track police suicides over the year, I think we could get a much better estimate. That would give us a much better opportunity to deal with this problem. Mora 02:50 Why do you think it is difficult for agencies to address the prevention of, or to even discuss the issue of officer suicides? John 02:58 I think one word that comes to mind is “stigma.” Nobody wants to talk about police suicides. Nobody wants to hear about it. There’s generally an opinion that it’s an unusual occurrence and has nothing to do with police work. In my opinion, it does have a lot to do with police work. I think the culture, police culture, is one where one cannot admit to weaknesses. We’re all trained as police officers to be strong and to not be affected by anything. Unfortunately, we’re all human beings as well and that being the case, we are affected psychologically by the things we see at our job. Mora 03:39 What is the best approach in handling an officer suicide, should it occur, for an agency? John 03:45 Well, I think post-vention is most important. Getting the gang together after the suicide, getting the people together and discussing what happened and why it happened. Generally after a suicide in a department you’re going to see a sinking of morale, you’re going to see people blaming each other, you’re going to see guilt, you’re going to see shame. These things need to be resolved if you want to get back to your working environment. I believe in debriefing and post-vention in police suicides. I also believe in care for survivors. The suicide survivor has a different kind of grief. They generally are feeling some of those same things, the guilt and so forth. Sometimes they feel abandoned by the police departments, from the interviews I’ve had with survivors. Mora 04:33 What can an agency proactively do to break down the barriers and stigmas of discussing officer depression and suicide prevention? John 04:41 You know, when you first come into police work in the police academy, I think that’s the best place to address this issue. You have an idealistic bunch of young people coming into this job for the first time. Let them know ahead of time— inoculate them, if you will—about what they’re going to experience as police officers and what they’re going to feel, the fact that they are going to feel emotions and they are going to feel bad about things they’ve seen. Let them know ahead of time so when it happens to them they’ll understand why it’s happening. One of the suggestions we’ve seen recently is something called the mental health check. Every year, have police officers go in to see a counselor or a police peer support person and talk about issues that they have. They don’t have to have issues, it’s just like going to a dentist or a doctor, just going to talk to somebody. If you have no issues, that’s fine. If you do, you can discuss them at that point. This stops small problems from becoming big problems. Mora 05:40 Thank you so much, Dr. Violanti, for providing us with your expertise and your time. John 05:44 You’re welcome. Beat Exit Voiceover: 05:46 The Beat was brought to you by the United States Department of Justice COPS Office. The COPS Office helps to keep our nation’s communities safe by giving grants to law enforcement agencies, developing community policing publications, developing partnerships, and solving problems. ####END OF TRANSCRIPT####