I was talking to someone from the Justice Department during a seminar I went to about Officer safety and wellness. The topic of Police suicide came up, and I shared my story with him. Afterwards, he asked me to write a letter to the pannel he had formed to look at physical and mental strain that officers endure. Below is a copy of that letter.......
Memoirs of a Suicidal Cop.
First
let me start of by saying that I am not trying to elicit pity or
attention. I am merely telling my
story so that other officers know that they are not alone. This incident is a little over a decade
old by now, so some of the details are fuzzy, but the emotion is still raw, and
sometimes difficult to talk about.
When
I started with the department, I was barely 22 year old and my work experience
was not that great. I had a lot of
menial jobs before I joined a volunteer fire department and was trained as an
EMT. I then got hired as a private
ambo tech, and eventually driver for an ambulance company out of a major
metropolitan city.
I was familiar with emergency
services and had seen quite a bit of broken bodies and nasty stuff by the time
I was 22. I tell you this because
it probably factors into the fact that my emotional wellbeing was a ticking
time bomb, and eventually gets me diagnosed with some form of PTSD and
adjustment/anxiety disorders from my first therapist.
When I started the academy, I was a
touch over 200 lbs, standing about 5-07. So I was a bit chubby. The DI’s used this as fodder for their
humiliation that they do to tear you down into a puddle of quivering poo. The only problem is, that me already
suffering from a low self-esteem, this was trouble waiting to happen. And eventually it did.
I remember several times in Academy
I wanted to quit. There was one
incident where the two DI’s that really hated me grabbed me by my neck and drug
me over to the gate. They kept
yelling at me to quit, and offered to bring me my car, so I could be home in
time to watch my family on Teletubbies.
They were certainly enjoying themselves, laughing and pushing me around. To a kid with no self worth whatsoever,
it seared me to my core. All this
would well up inside on a day in the future, compounded by other stressors and
ridicule that I had not learned to deal with yet.
We move ahead to my rookie years,
where I was again teased and yelled at by a Field Training Officer, who admittedly
didn’t like rookies. She would
yell at me in public in front of people who called the police for help, making
me feel like a “fake cop”. Instead
of instructions, I received insult. I got through it, but my reputation did
not. The rest of the district was
treated to tales of my inadequacies, and shortcomings. Eventually I found myself on midnights
where no one wanted to deal with me.
That only fueled the fire for a kid who already did not feel that he was
worth anything.
I made it through mids, because of
one or two officers who gave me a shot, and then the rest of the squad “let me
in”. I did my year and got off
mids, going back to a swing shift.
I thought this would help things, but it didn’t.
I still never felt like I
belonged. I found comfort in the
one thing that doesn’t ridicule, food.
I gained about 50 lbs on midnights, and another 50 since to this day,
off and on of course. Weight has
always been a major adversary of mine, and I have always turned to food, and
sometimes alcohol to “fix things”.
While all this was going on at
work, I had home stressors, too. I
was fighting with my parents about living with my fiancée and not being
married, and then after we were married, I found myself trying to repair a
strained relationship that was pushed to the limits by the family infighting
with my brothers and their issues too.
I don’t want to air family laundry here, because that is too personal,
and that doesn’t help anyone, but just want to say that an officer’s problems
aren’t always solely work related.
Work goes home, and home comes to work. You never really separate the two. You are called to people’s houses to help them with their
family issues, yet, you can’t fix your own at home. You start to feel like there is no peace, and you are a
failure. You can’t talk to anyone
about it, so you try to hide from it.
When I was on Midnights I would drink to sleep, then have nightmares
while I was sleeping. I was always
tired. I was afraid to tell
anyone, because they would think I was weak. I don’t think I was ever an alcoholic, but I think I came
awfully close. I wound up going
“dry” for a year to make sure.
I worked for a Lieutenant who was a
body builder, and fitness nut. You
can imagine what he thought of me.
Well, I don’t have too. He
would tell me all the time, in private meetings in his office, that I was
disgusting, and needed to loose weight.
He would tell me that this job was not for me, and he would help me get
a new job if I wanted to quit. He
offered to hire me to sell AMWAY for him.
So, I would be a good salesman, but not a cop? Made me feel worthless. My time working with him came to an end, but the next Lt.
wasn’t much better. Next one I
worked for was a jock.
This Lieutenant was extremely
competitive. He had to be the best
at everything. He didn’t really
like me either. He would bring me
in his office and tell me that I needed to loose weight, and tell me that I
should work out and play sports. I
don’t know, even to this day, if he was looking out for me or not. I saw it as bullying. I saw what bith the Lt’s did as being a
bully. I never looked to see what
their true motivation was, and frankly, I didn’t care. Just two more guys in the long list of
people from my past who wanted to pick on “fatty”. It’s been like that since middle school.
I don’t know what the straw that
pushed me over the edge was, and I don’t really care to find out. But one of
the things that used to really get to me was the feeling like I wasn’t held to
the same appreciation as the rest of the shift, either same seniority as me, or
junior to me. The evidence, I
felt, was when it came to me getting my car. Everyone in my graduating class had a take home car by
now. I still did not. It had been almost 3 years and I didn’t
have a car. First I was told that
I didn’t do enough traffic, so I ramped it up. I was in the top 3 or four officers in percentage of traffic
on the shift for a few months, no car.
Then they said that I didn’t lock up enough people to get a car, so I
looked for more lock-ups. No
car. Then thy said that it
shouldn’t matter, I only lived a few miles from the station, and it is not that
much of a commute. Besides, I live
in a bad neighborhood, they don’t know if I should get a car to park over
there.
I know it is a silly thing to get
upset about. But here I am. I am now 24 or 25, and pushed to the
end of my rope. I was fighting
with my wife, fighting with my parents, I had an estranged relationship with
both my younger brothers, and I felt useless at work.
We had these details where we
worked stationary patrol at the lightrail stations in the county. I t was a slow day, and I was working
lightrail. I was at a station where
there was not a lot of foot traffic.
It was a station without a parking lot, so it was a walk up and get on
type station. I had been yelled at
again that morning by the Lt, I don’t remember why, and I had been fighting
with my wife again about I don’t remember why. No one ever came by to check on me when I worked lightrail,
especially this stop. Later in my
career, I would learn to love that.
On this day, however, I felt especially low.
I remember sitting at the stop
being pissed off at everyone. I
didn’t have a feeling of despair, or anything that typical people who think of
killing themselves feel. I didn’t
want an escape from pain, I wanted revenge. I wanted people to hurt. I wanted to kill myself as a big “fuck you” to the
department, my family, and the community.
I imagined that someone would have to clean my brains and blood out of
the pool car that I signed out that morning. I imagined the closed casket that my family would have at my
funeral, and I imagined the news story.
I wrote a scathing note, I named names, I told stories, I put it in my
pocket, and pulled out my gun. I
to this day remember what the front blade sight feels like on the roof of my
mouth, and the taste of militech.
I remember how shiny the hydroshock looks like at the end of the
barrel.
I couldn’t bring myself to do
it. I don’t know why, I came to my
senses. It had been a long time
since I had been to church, or prayed.
But I prayed that day. I
don’t remember what I said, or how long I prayed. I do remember drowning my sorrows in a pint of Ben and
Jerry’s Chubby Hubby ice cream. I
tore up the note. I didn’t want to
talk to anyone about it, or admit to myself how close to stupidity I had
come. It would be years until I
told this story to anyone for the first time.
I buried the feelings in the only
thing I could. I ate…..a lot. A few days later, I went on annual
leave, and my wife and I went to DC to see the Police Memorial. On this trip, I found out that my wife
was pregnant with my son.
It would still be a year or so
until I got help. It took a fight
between my wife and I, where I stormed out of the house, slammed and broke the
storm door glass. She made a threat that she would leave me if I didn’t go to
“anger management”. I went to a
therapist that I knew from our Mobile Crisis Unit. I told her what had happened before, and what I was going
through.
I didn’t know at the time, but she
specialized in Police suicide. I
worked with her on how to prevent myself from taking things personally from the
people around me. I learned about
“Projection identification” and that people don’t necessarily hate “me” but the
badge I wear. This helped me deal
with a lot.
I went back to church, and my wife
and I started talking more. Having
someone to lean on was good. My
therapy sessions had run their course, and I wasn’t growing anymore at the
time, so I stopped going.
I was far from cured, and still am
not to this day. I still deal with
taking criticism too personally or to seriously, but it doesn’t effect me
nearly as hard. I try to remember
that it isn’t always about “me”.
I finally gave in and asked my Dr
for prescription medication to help me with my anxiety, and I have went back to
therapy, this time to someone different, to work on my self esteem and other
issues. I have a long way to go,
but I am doing well. Suicide is
the farthest from my mind when I am down.
I always look for a way to push through the troubled times.
The short answer to “How do you
deal with feelings of depression and suicide?” is simply this. You have to learn to put things into
perspective. You can’t fix
everything, and you need help. The
stigma of therapy has always been touchy.
Some people look down on you when you admit that you go to counseling,
and think that you are crazy if you admit that you take medication or see a
therapist.
I read the book “Cop Shock” which
is about PTSD in law enforcement.
It was an excellent read, and helped me see that I was not alone. I think that if we were able to destroy
the negative stigma, and be able to set up a support group for officers in trouble,
that would help greatly reduce the numbers of officers that take their own
lives.
training. "
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