Every other day, a cop dies this way. PTSD is rampant among police. Civilian deaths by cop counting all fatalities in the criteria we list should total approx. 2,500 civilian fatalities during police encounters. But cops are dying, too. We liwt officers who died from anything other than natural causes here:
We list all causes of death on duty regardless of cause. This includes some sudden cardiac arrests. If they occur on duty, we list them in our police database. if they occur off-duty, the case is impossible for us to differentiate between natural illness or job-related cause of death. We list a number of cases of unknown causes of death which are predominantly officers who die by suicide. In most cases of officers dying, the public is informed via PIO to media, photos and names of deceased officers are shown in the media and generally, causes of death are readily revealed, especially if they died on duty.
.
Officer suicides, in contrast how they are portrayed, are generally described as sudden and unexpected (this wording is repetitively used by LEOs announcing such deaths) and LEOs typically specifically decline questions about cause of death by media. We list these cases as such, sudden and unexplained but because there is a high probability of a suicidal death, we do list them also. Search of our cop fatality database reveals a rather small number of such cases of openly disclosed officer suicides. Compared to the established statistic of an average of 184 annually, that suggests one every other day but despite all searches, we are finding only about 10% of them listed as such publicly. This suggests there are at least 150 or more suicides known to law enforcement that are not publicly disclosed if we compare these numbers. Suicides in law enforcement are multi-factorial in origin. Many are CPTSD cases are a culmination of personal trauma, military PTSD and an ongoing exposure to traumatic situations that heighten PTSD responses. We must consider how officers who resort to fatal violence – whether self-harm or killing civilians – arrive at this and do something to address and drastically transform the endless traumatization caused by American policing systemically. Abolish this whole miserable system, for our sake as well as the mental health of cops. Civilians and officers are symbiotically tied to this closed loop of violence until we dismantle and restructure all tasks the police state currently performs with routine excessive force.
.A report by First HELP and CNA Corporation highlights that law enforcement suicides have been a persistent issue, with about 184 officer suicides per year over the last several years. The majority of these officers were actively serving at the time of their deaths, and many were battling mental health challenges, including PTSD and depression. Notably, a significant portion of these deaths occurred in larger police departments, and nearly 70% of officers who died by suicide were men, often aged 40s or 50s. The FBI reported fewer suicides (32 in 2022), but nonprofit tracking systems like First HELP gathered more comprehensive data.
About 184 law enforcement officers die by suicide each year: Report
2024 midyear preliminary law enforcement officer fatalities report
