Recent suicides highlight chronic stress officers face on the job

As much as veterans have hold of my heart, cops come in a very close second. There is a huge difference between the level and type of PTSD military and law enforcement personnel end up with. They do not just respond after the event happens. Their jobs require them to often participate in the event itself. They use weapons. They have to use violence in response to violence. They see others wounded and at the end of the day they wonder if tomorrow will be their day. Considering both professions come with a lot of hatred from too many people, it makes everything harder on them.

Wednesday I was speaking with a Chaplain for the Orlando police. He is a minister, a veteran and ex-motorcycle cop. He said that when a firefighter shows up, everyone is happy to see them but when a cop shows up, no one is happy. It usually means they are in trouble or totally upset because a crime has been committed against them.

The number of exposures to traumatic events add to all the stress they already feel.

Recent suicides highlight chronic stress officers face on the job
BY MAUREEN FEIGHAN THE DETROIT NEWS
JANUARY 29, 2012
Greg O'Dell was a respected law enforcement official and a married father of two when he drove his car to a residential street in Scio Township two days before Christmas last month, got out, and killed himself.

O'Dell, 54, the chief of the Eastern Michigan University Police Department, never told his colleagues he suffered from depression. Now, a month after his death, the department is trying to move forward while struggling to understand why a man who seemed to have it all would take his own life.

"He never let on that he had any issue," said Bob Heighes, Eastern's interim police chief.

In the past month, three men from public safety careers have died of suicide in southeast Michigan. Some public safety officials say it highlights the chronic stress law enforcement officers face and the challenges of persuading them to get help.

On Jan. 6, Daniel Armitage, an Ann Arbor firefighter whose wife had been hospitalized with domestic abuse injuries, lay down in traffic on Interstate 696 and was killed. Three days later, a border patrol agent stationed in Gibraltar killed himself in the parking lot of a Trenton hospital.

Studies show police officers have a higher suicide rate than the public. About 140 to 150 police officers kill themselves each year, or 17 per 100,000, according to Badge of Life, a group of active and retired police officers, medical professionals and surviving families of suicides from the U.S. and Canada. The rate for the general population is 11 per 100,000.

"Police officers are human," said John Violanti, a research associate professor at the University of Buffalo who has studied the suicide rates of police, military personnel and firefighters. "They not only have to put up with life's usual struggles, they also have to put up with this job that exposes them to death, human misery, abused kids. They can't get rid of this baggage and it eats at them."
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