'Are you OK?': Fourth NYPD officer suicide a reminder of 'combustible' situation

Hours after a New York Police Department officer died by suicide, Frank Dowling, a psychiatrist who works with members of the NYPD, tweeted a plea to those in uniform.

“NYPD officers — look in the mirror — take a good look at your coworker … ask your partner are you OK?” he posted Thursday.

The latest suicide of a member of the NYPD — the fourth in three weeks — has rattled the nation’s largest police department and led its top brass to once again highlight available resources. Mental health professionals and policing experts also say it’s time for the entire profession to redouble outreach efforts and reevaluate its strategy for how to destigmatize depression and mental illness within the high-stress job.

NYPD Commissioner James O’Neill told reporters on Friday that the department will review how it tackles mental health and suicide prevention, including offering peer-to-peer counseling at every police station.

“It’s not an ordinary job. People face a lot of stresses they’re exposed to, a lot of trauma,” O’Neill said.

Dowling is also a medical adviser to the nonprofit Police Organization Providing Peer Assistance, or POPPA, which offers mental health support to NYPD officers and was formed in 1996 after 26 members of the department killed themselves during a two-year period.

This latest string of deaths in such a short time is the worst Dowling can recall since.

“If this continues, oh my God — but hopefully this cluster settles,” he said Friday.

Data on suicide rates in law enforcement has been historically incomplete, but recent studies show more officers die by suicide — at least 167 officers in 2018 — than are killed in the line of duty, according to Blue H.E.L.P., a nonprofit made up of active and retired police officers.

The Ruderman Family Foundation, a private philanthropic organization, found last year that post-traumatic stress disorder and depression rates among police officers and firefighters are as much as five times higher than for civilians.

New York City has averaged about four to five police officer suicides a year since 2014, officials said, and in the past six months, there have been six.

After the third suicide of an NYPD officer this month, O’Neill declared a “mental-health crisis.”

“There is no shame in seeking assistance from the many resources available, both inside and outside the department,” O’Neill said in a June 14 statement. “Accepting help is never a sign of weakness — in fact, it’s a sign of great strength.”

His comments followed the fourth NYPD officer death on Wednesday, which NBC New York reported involved a 24-year department veteran who served in the Bronx and shot himself while off-duty at his home on Long Island.

The other incidents this month involved a deputy chief who was set to retire and a veteran homicide detective — both of whom died within 24 hours of each other — and a 29-year-old patrolman who took his life outside of a precinct on Staten Island.

The city of Chicago has also grappled with a cluster of police suicides, with at least three this year and four last year, officials said.

O’Neill said his department reached out to Chicago’s police superintendent, Eddie Johnson, who recommended New York look at expanding its peer-to-peer resources and evaluate its policy for when an officer’s firearm should be taken away.

“One of the biggest challenges — and why it takes courage to get help — is as someone’s becoming anxious, depressed, jumpy, maybe starting to self-medicate with alcohol, get burnt out, it becomes tougher for that person to believe they can get help and that help will work,” Dowling said.

source: nbcnews.com