(NewsNation) — A new report released this week captured a fuller picture of law enforcement suicides, finding that more than 1,200 officers died over seven years.
The report, issued by First HELP and CNA Corporation, found that from 2016 to 2022, there were 1,287 law enforcement and corrections officers who died by suicide, amounting to an average number of 184 deaths per year.
In 2022, there were 183 suicides, and 2019 saw the highest number of deaths with 234, according to the report.
First HELP is a nonprofit dedicated to reducing stigma around mental health that has been tracking deaths by suicide among public safety personnel since 2016. The organization partnered with CNA Corporation, a nonpartisan research organization, on the report.
The organizations gathered data using social media, Google alerts, direct contact with family and other methods.
The report comes at a time when data collection on law enforcement suicides has been largely lagging and incomplete despite efforts by both the Federal Bureau of Investigations and the Bureau of Prisons.
The FBI keeps databases on these deaths, but its “initial efforts have encountered challenges,” the report stated. In its 2023 report, the FBI identified 32 suicides in 2022 from 22 law enforcement agencies nationwide, “a figure that failed to capture the rest of the approximately 17,500 local agencies across the country,” according to the report.
Law enforcement agencies are not mandated to submit data to the FBI database, which has contributed, among other factors, to the low participation the FBI effort has seen to date, the report stated.
Other key data found that over half of the law enforcement deaths by suicide involved officers from local police departments. Twenty percent were from sheriff’s offices, and another 13% were corrections officers.
White male officers made up a bulk of those deaths, accounting for over 80%, according to the report.
“These preliminary findings underscore the critical necessity of expanding and refining data collection endeavors to garner a more comprehensive understanding of public safety personnel suicides and addressing the issue at a national scale,” the report said.
