Last year, the CHP had eight suicides among its 7,200 officers - a rate five times the national average for law enforcement. Experts are calling the suicide cluster - 13 total since September 2003 - the most serious among law enforcement agencies nationwide...So the CHP (incidentally, the group sent to New Orleans to help disarm citizens wanting to protect themselves) has a suicide rate over four times that of the general population, and LEOs in general have a rate up to twice that of "the whole people."
There doesn't seem to be a common theme nor precipitating stress aside from the victims being mostly men and using firearms to kill themselves...
The comparable suicide rates: CHP has had an average 45 per 100,000 annually over the past four years, spiking to 111 per 100,000 last year; versus an annual average at LAPD of 17 per 100,000, and the Sheriff's Department at 3.4 per 100,000.
National law enforcement suicide rates run between 18 and 22 per 100,000. The suicide rate for the general population is about 11 per 100,000. [More]
Remember that the next time some asinine "study" says gun suicides will be reduced by disarming you and me, and limiting the firepower to the "clustered" hands of "The Only Ones."
We had three within a short time a few years ago.
ReplyDeleteTwo stand out. One shot himself parked in the lot of his district station. Some wondered about that one.
The other was Officer Webb. This is not to be confused with Iffucer Jeff Webb. He blew his brains out not far from where we live, in front of his wife and one of his kids.
The guy was always wound tighter than a watch. He never smiled. And interestingly, he tried some time before, to confiscate my handgun. He took umbrage to my wearing it at a meeting in a church. After he threatened to take it, I told him IPD didn't need the bad pr it would engender. They were under investigation by FBI for corruption aka drug dealing. Hmmm. There is talk of a new probe now. Old habits die hard.
BTW he backed down.