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Thursday, September 10th, 2015

American police are 300% more likely to kill themselves than be shot and killed by someone else

Author:     Shaun King
Source:     Daily Kos
Publication Date:     Fri Sep 04, 2015 at 07:06 AM PDT
 Link: American police are 300% more likely to kill themselves than be shot and killed by someone else
Stephan:   This year so far 806 people have been killed by the police in the U.S., 395 Whites, 205 Blacks, 14 Asians, 9 Native Americans, and 67 face unknown; 24 so far this month. But that, as this report describes, is only part of the story. What few know is how many police kill themselves.
St. Louis County Police Chief Jon Belmar Credit: Daily Kos

St. Louis County Police Chief Jon Belmar
Credit: Daily Kos

As conservatives spread lies blaming the Black Lives Matter movement for the recent deaths of police officers, the greatest safety risk to police is all but being ignored publicly: suicide.

In 2013, the last year on public record, 126 police officers committed suicide.

“Suicides can happen in any profession, but they occur 1.5 times more frequently in law enforcement compared to the general population,” psychiatric nurse Pamela Kulbarsh wrote in an Oct. 9 article for Officer.com.”Quite truthfully, the actual rate is probably higher as law enforcement suicides are more likely to be underreported or misclassified as accidental deaths. This misclassification usually occurs to protect the family, other survivors, or the agency from the stigma of suicide,” she wrote.

Compare that to 47 police officers who were shot and killed in 2014 or the 43 that are predicted to be shot and killed this year, and it’s increasingly clear that people who love police officers and want […]

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