EDDIE’S STORY

by Andy O’Hara

Badge of Life Suicide Prevention Program

January 29, 2009:  A retired police officer died in his home of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.  Eddie was 62, a military veteran, and had served 26 years as a police officer, retiring in 1998.  It was learned that he lived alone and could find no one that could stay at the hospital that day with him, a requirement, for routine surgery on his foot. He had also lost much of his retirement savings in the recent stock crash and had recently been robbed and assaulted, considered a humiliation by many cops.  An officer at the nearby station had agreed to take him and drop him off and then return to pick him up, but the retiree was afraid the officer wouldn't be able to stay through the procedure.  He was afraid to ask.

"Police are control freaks," said one mourner. "We are. We think we have control over our lives, but we don't. I think Eddie felt he was losing control over his."  It was noted that active police officers "spend inordinate amounts of time together, protecting each others lives while protecting others, and then go out and spend time with each other again." Focusing on retirees, the police chaplain noted, "We need to reach out to each other. We need to reach out to our retirees like Ed. ... Ed died alone. But Ed was never alone. God was always by his side."

Eddie’s story made the news.  But far too many similar stories involving retired police officers happen across the country and go unnoticed.  While researchers suspect that the suicide rate for retirees is higher for retirees than for active officers, the number and rate is unknown because they’re impossible to track.  Retirees move, the years pass, and it’s often forgotten that they were even law enforcement officers.

John Violanti (1997) feels that “police officers continue to experience the ‘residual’ of trauma after separating from police service. Unfortunately, confusing matters greatly has been a single, unpublished doctoral dissertation by a C.W. Gaska from over 30 years ago that, in spite of its disproportionate figures, has been quoted widely.  In it, Gaska uses scattered information to come up with a suicide rate for retired officers of 335/100,000 (for active officers the rate is 17/100,000) and, Gaska estimates, for disabled officers a suicide rate of 2,616/100,000.  Carried to its full logic, it would mean that retired police officers would be gunning themselves down at a rate that is not just epidemic, but full-blown carnage.

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While researchers suspect that the suicide rate for retirees is higher for retirees than for active officers, the number and rate is unknown because they’re impossible to track.  Retirees move, the years pass, and it’s often forgotten that they were even law enforcement officers.

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What do Gaska's figures really mean?  Probably not much.  Additionally, unlike active duty officers, retirees are extremely difficult to track.  They move, disperse into the community, lose touch with their departments, and as they reach advanced ages they often pass on and news of their passing escapes notice beyond the local area.

The issue of retiree suicides is now under fresh study, however, and we hope to see results soon.  Researchers like John Violanti do feel, generally, that retiree suicides are high and quite likely higher than those of active officers, but there is nothing to substantiate it, yet.

Nonetheless, few departments recognize the tremendous impact retirement in general has on an officer. From practically the first day in the academy, a cadet can tell you roughly when they will retire. At varying times during their careers, they will maintain a focus on that approximate date, which will become more and more concrete as they grow closer to it. 

It has been suggested, however, that one of the most vulnerable times for a police officer is that period nearing retirement and the first year or two after. Before actual retirement comes uncertainty—the uniform will be hung up for the last time. More pressing on the officer may be financial fears, depending on pension arrangements and individual debts. The possibilities of employment because of age and disability (in a real world) may be lessened.  Far too many departments still stubbornly refuse to recognize--at all--the role of emotional trauma on police officers and make the disability and eventual departure a living nightmare.

A random survey of 25 police departments in California by Captain Valerie Tanguay of the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department (2008) found that only one had any kind of retirement counseling with retiring officers and their spouses--and that was in a program offered to all city employees.  That program in and of itself was of interest, however:  it is six weeks long, with couples meeting once a week for three hour sessions.  In the first, couples were separated and asked to draw a picture of what they felt retirement would look like.  Coming together, they often found wide differences in their idea of "happily ever after," which led to dialogue and, ultimately, a far smoother transition by planning joint and separate activities to avoid miscommunication. 

One wonders why.  If the things troubling a retiree were related to the job, why didn’t they come out before retirement?  The truth is, they often do—but officers are masters of “shoving things down,” of masking the things that bother them.  This is easier to do when one is working full time in the same occupation for 15, 20 or 30 years.  But the “emotional quiet” of retirement too often allows the suppressed memories of the past to wreak their havoc.

Further, not all trauma is of the “critical” or “dramatic” kind.  Many of the things that haunt an officer the worst are the “little things”--the mistakes that affect other lives, the embarrassments, the betrayals, the near-death experiences often known only to the officer himself.  These are often shoved away and “forgotten,” only to resurface later in a variety of forms after retirement.  They appear in the form of anxiety, strange or frightening dreams, insomnia, anger and irritation, or unexplainable isolation.

Not long ago, I was contacted by a retiree who “wanted to talk.”  He couldn’t understand the waves of anxiety he was experiencing, and felt some of it might be associated with his police career.  We met for breakfast—and he didn’t want to talk about it.

He was trying to “reach out” but was unable to, just like Eddie.  As police officers, that’s the last thing we ever did unless it was a request for backup.  Most certainly, we never reached out for emotional help.  Why would it be any easier for us now, as retirees?

It’s important that, as we grow older, we not isolate.  We need to learn from Eddie and reach out to one another, maintaining contacts on a regular basis and learning the importance of “being there” for one another.  It’s called realism.  Round out your associations—reach out beyond the police retirement community.

Don't wait forever to do these things.  John Violanti, noted researcher on police mental health, estimates that an average life span for police officers is 66 years, or 10.6 years after retirement, adjusted for age and gender. This is lower than the average for males in the United States (76 years of age).

And, along with your physical health, it’s crucial that you add a good therapist to your yearly list of “things to do.”  It a way to see how you’re doing—not only with old police issues, but with issues of aging, loss, and coping with life’s new challenges.

Eddie would be the first to tell you.

The Badge of Life is a nonprofit educational organization dedicated to the health and wellbeing of police officers, retirees and survivors of police suicide.  For more information, visit them at http://www.badgeoflife.com/