A source of considerable confusion in the law enforcement
community has been the question of “how many” police suicides occur in a given calendar year. Attempts to
fill this gap have given rise to a variety of speculative, often wildly exaggerated figures, none based on verifiable research
or gathered in an organized, useful manner. Attempts to obtain a verifiable sampling of this data or even the most
rudimentary validation have been futile, however.
Such figures have then been translated into wildly
varying “rates” and “profiles” that, because they lack any basis in fact, do little to help and much
to impede the meaningful development of programs that can address the problems of police stress, trauma, posttraumatic stress,
suicide and the promotion of improved general health in the law enforcement community.
The National Surveillance of Police Suicide Study
(NSOPS) was the first of its kind to study actual suicides on a daily basis across all 50 states for an entire year.
This exhaustive study took place from January 1, 2008 until December 31, 2008, inclusive. The
information gathered in the study goes beyond mere numbers and encompasses a range of other serious questions surrounding
each suicide, including:
Date
Location
Department
Age
Rank
Time on the job
Means of suicide
Circumstances leading to the suicide
Emotional state of the officer prior to the event
Known trauma prior to the event
Statements by departments and medical examiners.
We established that 141 police suicides occurred during 2008. This figure
is, not surprisingly, in concert with CDC/NOMS data, current research, and comparisons with groups such as the United
States Army.
Highlights that you will find included in the study include:
The NSOPS study includes state-by-state figures and information on each, the reasons
potential suicides will continue to elude prevention/awareness programs, and the need for a re-focusing of efforts to self
care rather than on the surveillance of others, such as occurs in QPR programs.
Given the present stage of research on police stress, it is likely that inaccuracies
will continue to exist in the reporting of police suicide, including underreporting, misclassification, the lack of updated
nationwide data, and difficulty associated with collecting data. NSOPS has demonstrated that such data can be collected with
reasonable accuracy, however. Those with far greater monetary and staffing resources
are encouraged to pursue this research further.
