100 Border Patrol Agents have committed suicide in last 12 years

Border Patrol struggling to hire, keep agents, but may never get 5,000 Trump ordered

USA TODAY
Alan Gomez
March 29, 2019

Such stress might help to explain why over 100 CBP employees have committed suicide over the past 12 years, according to agency data.

When U.S. Border Patrol agents called on the patrol's air unit to provide overhead coverage for operations, about four out of five requests were rejected over three recent years.

The reason? A lack of pilots.

And the staffing crisis at Border Patrol doesn't end with pilots.

Vice President Mike Pence (right) and Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen (second from right) watches Virtual Simulator Training during a visit to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection's Advanced Training Facility in Harpers Ferry, W.Va., on March 13, 2019. (Photo: Andrew Harnik, AP)

As President Donald Trump's attention is focused on building a border wall to keep out unwanted migrants, the Border Patrol's "human wall" is in a serious state of disrepair, according to a USA TODAY review of government documents, congressional testimony and interviews with agents.

The Border Patrol, a component of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, faces a crisis in hiring, training and retaining agents as well as keeping track of what exactly its 19,555 agents are doing at any given time, according to internal watchdog reports.

As the Border Patrol struggles to maintain current workforce levels, its greatest challenge will be President Trump's executive order from two years ago calling for the hiring of an additional 5,000 agents to seal off the southern border.

Since that Jan. 25, 2017, order, what should have been a flood of hiring has been, at best, a trickle. In 2018, the agency added 118 Border Patrol agents, with only three stationed along the southern border.

That shortfall is part of the reason Trump has deployed thousands of National Guardsmen and active-duty military troops to the southern border and has left agency officials questioning whether the 5,000-agent goal will ever be realized.

"I can't necessarily say whether we'll be able to meet it at this point," said Temea Simmons-Collins, acting executive director for the talent management directorate at Customs and Border Protection.
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Orange County Fire Department Captain Death Spotlights Suicides

Apparent suicide of Orange County fire captain may be part of sad trend in profession
The Mercury News
By SCOTT SCHWEBKE, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
PUBLISHED: December 15, 2016

Tuesday’s apparent suicide of an Orange County Fire Authority captain is part of a sad trend among firefighters.

In 2015, 132 firefighters committed suicide in the U.S. – a bigger number than those who died of job-related injuries and illnesses, according to figures provided by the California Professional Firefighters union.

In addition, a national study of 1,000 firefighters, by researchers from Florida State University, revealed that nearly half of the respondents say they had suicidal thoughts at one or more points in their careers. About 15 percent reported one or more suicide attempts.

One cause may be post-traumatic stress syndrome, similar to that experienced by military personnel in combat, that can take an emotional toll on firefighters with their high-stress duties, according to the International Association of Firefighters.

The Orange County Sheriff’s Department and California Highway Patrol are investigating what prompted Eric Weuve to jump from the Crown Valley Parkway overpass onto the I-5 freeway in Mission Viejo, where he was fatally struck by a big-rig.
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VA doesn't know much about suicides, and other things

You would think that the VA, who claim world class care, the best medical care in the country, would be a bit more interested in facts and data, but then you would have to think they would be interested in them in the first place. You'd also have to think that they would want to live up to the claims they make and take care of all the lives placed into their hands enough to have tracked all of this from the start. There are only two possibilities here. Either they didn't want to know or they knew and just hid the data. Either way it's a slap in the face to all veterans who served this nation since the Revolutionary War.

V.A. says it doesn't know much about why veterans commit suicide

5/9/2008 9:15:01 PM

McClatchy-Tribune

WASHINGTON -- Members of Congress who questioned Veterans Affairs Secretary James Peake and his top aides about suicides among veterans accused them of hiding information about the issue.

The officials' response was simple, but hardly comforting: The VA wasn't covering up the truth, they said, because it didn't know the truth.

Last week's hearing of the House Veterans Affairs Committee was aimed at finding out whether service members who return from Iraq and Afghanistan are killing themselves in large numbers.

But where one might expect precise, up-to-date statistics there instead are incomplete figures with a decided time lag.

Here is some of what is known, according to the most recent government figures:

-- An estimated 18 veterans kill themselves each day, or almost 6,600 a year; that number includes all veterans.

-- Almost three-quarters of them had not been receiving care from VA facilities.

-- Only 144 veterans of Iraq or Afghanistan committed suicide over a four-year period, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs.

One major problem with the data is that it stops in 2005 -- thus vastly understating the number of suicides of Iraq or Afghanistan veterans. The Iraq war didn't start until 2003, and relatively few combat troops had left the military by 2005. In addition, the Iraqi insurgency grew increasingly violent in recent years.

And the risk factors for post-traumatic stress disorder, which can lead to depression and suicide, have increased, largely because of multiple deployments.

A rise in suicides among Iraq or Afghanistan veterans is shown by figures obtained by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch from internal government e-mails, with the 144 suicides consisting of 7 in 2002, 21 in 2003, 48 in 2004 and 68 in 2005.

"I'm suspicious that we're not getting all the statistics," says Matthew Cary, president of Veterans & Military Families for Progress. "I don't understand why we don't have the most recent data."
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