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 estimate
that the suicide rate for retirees is many times higher for retirees than for active officers, they’re impossible to
track. Retirees move, the years pass, and it’s often forgotten that they
were even law enforcement officers.
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.
John Violanti
(1997) feels that “police officers continue to experience the ‘residual’ of trauma after separating
from police service. A study into the deaths of 4,000 police officers showed disability retired officers have an extraordinarily
high suicide rate--ten times that for active police officers.
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.
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/
