After a recent string of Chicago police officer suicides, mental health experts spoke with a City Council committee Thursday afternoon on what can be done to support officers.
Alexa James, CEO of the Chicago chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, said her organization has been working with the Chicago Police Department since 2004 on crisis intervention training, and through that partnership identified a need to offer mental health support to officers.Officers are more likely to lose their lives to suicide than any other manner of death in the line of duty, James told the council’s committee on public safety.
Chicago police officers stand in formation as a procession for a Chicago police officer reaches the Cook County medical examiner on March 5, 2021. A 38-year-old officer with 15 years of service apparently died by suicide, according to police. “There has been a significant amount of reform within the Police Department, and I think if you talk to many police officers, they have positively benefited from these reforms and from the fact that this is a more open conversation,” Gottreich said.
Gottreich said canceled days off have been “pared down significantly,” but there were extra days off canceled throughout spring and summer, which have now been scaled back. Even while on the job, officers have access to some of these resources.
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