Police Officer Suicide: How to cope, how to heal

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P1 Exclusive: Police Officer Suicide: How to cope, how to heal

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Q: The recent suicide of Lt. Derrick Norfleet of the Oakland PoliceDepartment has left the local law enforcement community in shock.This kind of event also reverberates with police departments acrossthe country. How does a law enforcement agency deal with this kindof tragedy? What can we do honor our colleague and recover as adepartment?
A: You took the first step – you asked the question. There areno easy answers, but there are some answers. In an earlier column , I dealt extensively with what fellow officers can do to helpprevent or stop the suicide of one of their colleagues. Here,I’ll focus more on coping with the aftermath of a tragedythat’s already happened.
Why Do They Do It?
Although each person has their own history and their own story,there actually are a set of fairly well-understood reasons whypeople in general – and police officers in particular –choose to take their own life. These usually boil down to somecombination of anger, helplessness, hopelessness, and/or shame.Many cops live in an either-or, black-or-white,you’re-only-as-good-as-you’re-last-screw-up kind ofworld, where anything less than total perfection all the time isconsidered intolerable. When such a rigid belief system is stressedby perceived failures at work, and perhaps further strained bypersonal problems at home, the whole system is at risk of implodingand the officer now feels that there’s “no wayout.”
Paradoxically, for other officers, it may be the opposite problem.After a suicide, or more commonly, an arrest, many colleagues maybe stunned to learn that their seemingly golden-boy colleague wasengaged in all kinds of illegal, corrupt, and unethical behavior,at work and in his personal life, and now his evil ways have caughtup with him and it all comes crashing down. This, too, may lead toa “no way out” scenario where the accused officerbelieves there’s nothing he can do to shake himself out ofthe web of trouble he’s woven himself into.
A third pattern may be more noticeable to colleagues, the“train wreck.” This is the officer who everyone knowsto be a general goof-off, screw-up, or just plain pain in the ass.This is the guy or gal who always seems to be jumping from crisisto crisis and putting out brushfires. He wears his crap on hissleeve, so to speak, never really crossing the line into majormalfeasance, but accumulating a pile of petty complaints anddisciplinary write-ups, until the sheer weight of these molehillstips over into a mountain of woe and he’s now facing serioustrouble at work or at home and, again, feels like there’s“no way out.”
Finally, otherwise competent officers may suffer from clinicaldepression or another kind of mood disorder that they just happenedto inherit from their family gene pool and that may have beenfurther entrenched by a psychologically unhealthy childhoodupbringing. These cases can usually be very successfully treatedwith a combination of medication and short-term psychotherapy butmany officers needlessly suffer in silence because they’reafraid that bringing this to someone’s attention will brandthem as a “head case.” A particular problem with somemood disorders is that the officer’s thoughts, feelings, andbehavior can often turn on a dime, changing over the course of justa few days from normal and outgoing to suicidal despair. This isoften the scenario that leads stunned colleagues to comment,“Killed himself? What do you mean killed himself? I just sawhim last shift and at a barbecue over the weekend, and he wastalking and joking like he always does. I can’t believeit!”
Prevention: What Can Fellow Officers Do?
As noted above, the subject of police officer suicide prevention iscovered more comprehensively in that May 2007 column . Here, I’ll just summarize the main points.
Education. Bring this topic out into the open. Virtually every officer whohas suffered in silence thinks they’re the only oneswho’ve felt this way. Through departmental mini-seminars,role call in-services, continuing education programs, or printedmatter, let people know that this a problem that can be helped.Back it up with appropriate training in crisis intervention andpeer counseling.
Policy. I guarantee no one is going to report any kind of mental problemif they believe that it will automatically result in administrativesuspension, confiscation of their weapon, light duty assignment, orimmediate referral for a fitness-for-duty evaluation. Adepartmental policy for dealing with officers in distressde-stigmatizes such reporting and makes it clear that unless thereis a specific reason for taking any kind of administrative action– i.e. the officer is an immediate danger to self or othersor is obviously unfit for duty at the present time – thefirst response will be to refer the officer for the proper kind ofhelp and back that up with confidentiality and departmentalsupport.
Warning signs. Very few suicides happen without somebody somewhere havingobserved something that might have clued others in that the personwas in distress. Be alert to the warning signs of suicide anddepression, such as making threats to others, making threats tooneself, acting like the officer has nothing to lose, becomingpreoccupied with morbid death scenarios, especially past policesuicides or line of duty deaths, packing more weaponry than usualor necessary, expressing feelings of being overwhelmed, or makingfinal plans.
Peer intervention. You’ll be in a position to observe your partner, colleague,or supervisee long before any shrink gets to see him, sodon’t be afraid to step in and offer assistance if you can.Help your fellow officer define and clarify what’s botheringhim. Ensure that he’ll be safe until he can get further help.Provide support and let him know you’ll back him up if hedoes the right thing. If he’s feeling hopeless, help himexamine alternatives to checking out; maybe there are real thingshe can do to fix the situation that he hasn’t thought of andyou have. Make a plan and get some kind of commitment: if hecan’t handle things on his own, he’ll make anappointment with the EAP counselor or a mental health professionalof his choice, but just as you wouldn’t let him go out therewith a defective weapon, vehicle, or radio, you won’t walkaway and just let him percolate in his own misery.
A number of once-suicidal people have told me that their initialreaction to the helping efforts of others was some version of,“Get the f*** away from me and mind your own f***ingbusiness!” but that later they went back to those same peopleand told them, “I’m really glad you didn’tf***ing listen to me when I was being an asshole and that youf***ing hung in there and made me get some f***ing help.Thanks.”
Reactions of Fellow Officers to an Officer Suicide
Sometimes, the worst happens and now you have to deal with it.How? The first step is to understand some common reactions ofofficers to a colleague’s self-inflicted death.
Shock and disbelief. “No, it can’t be him.” Many officers just refuseto believe that the person they knew and worked with could do sucha thing. In other cases, there were inklings that something waswrong, but no one ever expected it to go this far. In still otherinstances – e.g. in the “bad boy” or “trainwreck” cases noted above – the death, while sad, reallycomes as no big surprise, inasmuch as it appears to be just thecapping event of a long string of dysfunctional behaviors. What ismost disorienting, however, is when the suicide seems totally outof character for the officer you thought you knew.
Identification. “Shit, it could’ve been me.” Underlying almostall of these reactions is a powerful identification factor. Onecomment I hear over and over again from cops who’ve lost acolleague to suicide is something along the lines of,“I’ve felt pretty bad at some points in my life. How doI know I won’t do it?” Answer: because you’re youand everybody’s personality and adaptive coping resources aredifferent. The kinds of stresses that could destabilizes oneperson’s psyche enough to make them want to check out may,for someone else, impel them to try to repair the situation or toseek help from someone who can guide them. If there’s anykind of a silver lining that can come from black cloud like this,it should be to heed the warning signs in yourself and others anddo something about it.
Symptoms. No, you’re not going crazy, but there are some strangesymptoms that can occur after the traumatic death of a familymember – blood family or work family – that may weirdyou out. For example, even though they know their friend is gone,many officers say they expect to see the deceased colleague sittingat his desk or in his patrol car. A few may actually report seeingthe deceased colleague or hearing his/her voice but, under thecircumstances, these quasi-hallucinatory experiences are usuallynormal and temporary. Don’t be surprised if you dream aboutthe deceased officer; some of these dreams can be scary when thedreamer imagines himself in the place of the officer, about to dothe deed. Others are “rescue dreams” in which thedreamer is trying to stop the suicide but fails. More commonsymptoms involve disorientation and emotional numbing, just“going through the motions” at work and at home.
Sadness. No shit, Einstein, how do expect us to feel – happy? Thereason I mention this is that many people, and a number of mentalhealth clinicians, often confuse the natural sadness and grief of atraumatic bereavement with clinical depression. In fairness, thesigns and symptoms – impaired sleep and appetite, low energy,loss of motivation, difficulty concentrating, irritability andagitation – of both syndromes frequently overlap. But justlike you’re not a hypochondriac if your stomachache is causedby a bullet hole in your abdomen, you’re not necessarilyclinically depressed if your psycheache is caused by a hole in yoursoul. In a few cases, people can suffer from what’s calledpathological grief, but this usually involves serious disabilityfar beyond the point when most people have been able to move on.
Guilt and anger. These have a way of cycling with each other andfeeding off each other. Anger can have several targets. You may beangry at the deceased for doing this to himself, for leaving youand the other guys and gals to cope with this grief, even as youfeel guilty for feeling this way – the guy’s dead, forchrissake. You may feel angry at the deceased because his suiciderattles the cage of your own identification factor and forces youto wonder what it would take to push you over the edge. You mayfeel guilty for maybe not taking more action that could haveaverted the death, but then feel angry at the deceased for puttingyou in that position, or angry at others who overtly or implicitlyimply you should have done more: “Who died and made me thisguy’s personal social worker?” You may be angry at thedepartment for not being more proactive and protecting the troubledofficer from himself. You may be angry at the deceased’sformer partners, family members, or others who you feel were makinghis life miserable and pushing him closer to the brink. Finally,you may be mad at the whole freakin’ world for just notgetting what you guys sometimes go through to try to keep the restof us smug, selfish, unappreciative citizens safe.
How to Cope, How to Heal
I’m not going to pretend to give you a formula, because thereisn’t one, but there are some things you can do to help oneanother get through this and honor the memory of your deceasedcomrade.
Talk about it. I know, takes a real genius to recommend that one, right? But Imean talk productively. Try to understand what happened, withoutrecrimination. I’m not saying spill your guts to people youdon’t know well, but among a group of your trustedcolleagues, try to achieve what psychologists call cognitivecontrol: coming to a rational understanding of what took place soyou’ll feel better prepared for next time. In essence, thisis not dissimilar to the kind of operational debriefing manyspecial units do following an officer-involved shooting or hostagecrisis. Know what went right and what went wrong. I always teach myclasses that 20/20 hindsight = 20/20 insight = 20/20 foresight.Also, use communication to deal with the feelings and symptomsnoted above. Let your colleagues know you’re going throughthe same things they are. Despite the circumstances of his death,try to find something to honor the deceased.
Alcohol. Okay, let’s live in the real world here. We all know thatmost of these discussions are not going to take place over soy milkand Gatorade. Retiring to your local tavern for your group therapyis not necessarily a bad thing, as long as the alcohol is usedmoderately and constructively to oil the mechanism ofself-expression in a supportive atmosphere, not self-destructivelyto drown feelings by getting totally smashed or drinking alone andstewing in one’s solitary grief. However, if alcohol has beenyour particular demon in the past, don’t compromise yourrecovery by placing yourself at risk. Honor your deceased comradeby taking care of yourself and find the proper way to express yourfeelings without danger.
Clinical services. By this I mean anything that might involve the participation of alicensed mental health professional, including a formal criticalincident stress debriefing or individual psychotherapy. Most of thetime, these measures won’t be necessary, but if they are,don’t be afraid to avail yourself of anything that mighthelp.
Grief leadership. The brass should provide a model of constructive mourning of thedeceased officer. They should be the ones who exemplify the factnormal expressions of grief don’t make you a weak person andthat showing your honest feelings in a dignified way is actually asign of respect for the deceased and for each other. Police leaderstake note: your people will take their cue from you as to what isan appropriate and healthy response to a comrade’s suicideand what constitutes dysfunction and dishonor. Departmentalleadership should also be proactive in advising their people on howto deal with the media which, of course, always love “crazycop” stories. In brief, the key is to not appear toodefensive, while striving to maintain confidentiality and privacyof the officer, the department, and the families. When in doubt,always check with department legal counsel and issue all mediastatements through your public information officer (PIO) or thechief’s or sheriff’s office.
Families. And speaking of families, don’t forget them, either. Howeveryou’re dealing with your colleague’s suicide, can youimagine what his spouse is going through? His kids? His parents?Without being intrusive, offer your support to grieving familymembers, but don’t be surprised if you find your helpingefforts initially spit back in your faces by distraught, grievingfamilies who are funneling their pain and anger against thedepartment who “drove” their loved one to this. In thatcase, just let them know you’re there if you need them andback off. Crises that family members will have to endure in thecoming weeks or months include harsh recriminations by others whomay want to blame them for the officer’s suicide, intensemedia scrutiny, possible legal action, and coping withchildren’s reactions to the death. Ideally, the departmentshould have some kind of program for families dealing with line ofduty deaths and this should not discriminate as to cause of death.
In summary, the goal is not to “get over” the untimelydeath of your colleague: you won’t, and the experience willalways be a part of you. But you will heal, you will move on, youwill learn from this tragedy. You will never forget, you will neverwaver in your efforts to reach out to colleagues in distress, andyou will never fail to take care of yourself, your comrades, andyour loved ones.

Disclaimer: This article is for educational purposes only and isnot intended to provide specific clinical or legal advice.
NOTE: If you have a question for this column, please submit it tothis website.


Laurence Miller, Ph.D., is a clinical and forensic psychologist andlaw enforcement educator and trainer based in Boca Raton, Fla. Dr.Miller is the police psychologist for the West Palm Beach PoliceDepartment, mental health consultant for Troop L of the FloridaHighway Patrol, a forensic psychological examiner for the PalmBeach County Court, and a consulting psychologist with severalregional and national law enforcement agencies. Dr. Miller is aninstructor at the Criminal Justice Institute of Palm Beach Countyand at Florida Atlantic University, and conducts continuingeducation and training seminars around the country. He is theauthor of numerous professional and popular print and onlinepublications pertaining to the brain, behavior, health, lawenforcement, criminal justice and organizational psychology. Hislatest books are "Practical Police Psychology: Stress Managementand Crisis Intervention for Law Enforcement" (Charles C Thomas,2006) and "Mental Toughness Training for Law Enforcement"(Looseleaf Law Publications, 2008). Contact Dr. Miller at (561)392-8881 or online at docmilphd@aol.com.