The NYPD is facing a mental health emergency after its ninth officer this year died by suicide.
For ex-cop and suicide survivor Chris Prochut, the crisis highlights a chronic issue in the force.
“New York City cops — they’ll hold it together right to the edge, until they break,” says Prochut, 46, who worked as a cop in Illinois and is now a national law enforcement suicide prevention trainer.
“When I saw that the ninth officer had died, I thought, ‘How much more do we have to do?’ ”
For those close to the crisis like Prochut, the recent spate of suicides is devastating, but not shocking. Whereas 13 out of every 100,000 people will die by suicide in the general population, that number climbs to 17 in 100,000 for police officers, according to a 2018 report by the Ruderman Family Foundation, a disability advocacy nonprofit. Furthermore, the report found, officers are more likely to kill themselves than to be killed on the job — a result, experts believe, of high stress and traumatic encounters in their line of work.
“[Cops] are seeing mass murders, dead children, human misery, no matter which way they turn. All these things hit the psyche pretty hard day after day,” says former New York State Police Trooper John Violanti, a professor at University at Buffalo School of Public Health and Health Professions.
The numbers are worse than usual this year, though: Typically, four or five NYPD officers take their own lives every year. Nine suicides by August is unusual — and some believe that the problem is even worse than we know.
“The medical examiner and coroners are misreporting sometimes on purpose,” says Marla Friedman, a longtime police psychologist and chairman of Badge of Life, a nonprofit focused on suicide prevention in law enforcement. “They can be convinced to [not mark a police death as a] suicide” — either to protect their reputation, or so the officer’s surviving family members don’t lose their pension. (The NYPD declined to comment on its policy regarding pensions in the event of suicide.)
Experts believe that the current crisis on the force is being driven by a mix of new and old problems. One of the newer ones is that cop morale is especially low right now, with the boys in blue under harsh scrutiny over such scandals as the 2014 death of Eric Garner, who died when Officer Daniel Pantaleo restrained him in a prohibited chokehold. (Pantaleo was fired Monday.)
“You’re there to serve and protect and people treat you with such disrespect,” says John Petrullo, director of the Police Organization Providing Peer Assistance, referring to recent cases where buckets of water were dumped onto officers in Harlem. “The abuse they have to put up with is taking a toll.”
Violanti says this summer’s startling uptick in cop suicides can also be attributed to a “contagion effect.”
“The police feel that they are a family — they are in this all together,” says Violanti. “If someone [in a family] commits suicide others start following because they think, ‘I’m going through the same thing, maybe I should.’ ”
These newer struggles are worsened by an enduring problem on the force: Officers fear that speaking up about a mental health issue will put their job on the line.
“It’s a weakness to expose a weakness,” says retired NYPD Officer Peter Konovitch, who was on duty during the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. “There are certain things I’ve seen that still bother me immensely, but I would never address it with anyone.”
He says that officers often hear horror stories about colleagues being deemed mentally unfit for duty and demoted. They have their guns taken away, or are placed at a desk job — what Violanti and others call “the rubber gun squad.” (The NYPD declined to comment on demoting officers with mental health issues, but many close to the department say it’s common enough that it prevents cops from seeking psychological help.)
“When they remove your guns, they remove your assignments,” Konovitch says. “They put you . . . on restrictive duty. It’s a room where you watch cameras in the housing projects. It’s a dead end. You’re not a cop anymore.”
There are further barriers to treatment, says Friedman.
“Officers can’t be on [anti-anxiety medications] like Xanax or Valium, or anything that will slow down reaction time,” Friedman says. “They can be on antidepressants, though, and many of them work well.”
‘New York City cops — they’ll hold it together right to the edge, until they break.’
Konovitch says that, with the constant threat of drug tests looming over officers’ heads, they may not want to risk taking any medications that may show up on a test and jeopardize their careers, regardless of whether they’re legally allowed to take them or not.
Even when cops do seek therapy, they’ll often go to great lengths to make sure it’s off the books, says Petrullo. His volunteer group of retired cops man a 24-7 hotline (800-599-1085) and can confidentially refer police officers to professional psychologists or psychiatrists.
“Some of them are so concerned, they’ll self pay [instead of going through their insurance],” says Petrullo, an NYPD retiree. “And then there are some people who think no matter who they go to, someone is going to find out.”
Prochut, a former police commander, says that the stigma around mental illness made his condition especially dire: He had planned his own suicide 11 years ago, down to the exact day he would shoot himself with his department-issued gun. He rejected talk therapy and was flushing prescribed anti-depressants down the toilet. He was afraid and embarrassed to share his feelings with his colleagues — who, eventually, had to personally escort him from his home to a mental hospital when his wife caught wind of his suicide plans.
As a result of his hospitalization, Prochut was stripped of his rank and his pension.
“I was so ashamed,” he says.
The NYPD is taking this year’s spate of suicides seriously: On Thursday, the department announced new initiatives to address the crisis, including a new mental health services app for cops’ department-issued smartphones. It is also working on expanding health insurance coverage so cops can connect with mental health experts off the clock, if they prefer.
But Prochut doesn’t think the solution lies in shiny tech or better benefits. Instead, he believes police departments need to address the career and social consequences of what happens after a crisis, so officers know they have a future post-treatment. He thinks it would change everything if top brass modeled a healthier culture for their departments by sharing their own experiences with therapy and mental health.
“As a cop, I thought, ‘I’m always wearing a gun. I could do it at any time,’ ” says Prochut. When the stakes are that high, “you need to sit down and talk. That’s what’s going to save these officers’ lives.”
Nine suicides have plagued the NYPD in this year alone. Here are the faces of the department’s dire mental health emergency.
