Honoring All Our Fallen Heroes
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The prompt for this round of the FEDforum is better late than never. This week, hear from the Survivors of Blue Suicide Foundation (SBS).
While working at home one day a wife of an agent hears a knock on her door. When she answers the door, she observes a chaplain and a very tall man dressed in a black suit. She immediately knew something was wrong. She looks behind them, as they stand in the doorway, hoping to see her husband. She suddenly gets tears in her eyes and asks them if her husband is okay. The chaplain asks her if they can come in and she steps back and lets them in. Her heart is racing and she has trouble catching her breath as she knew he had been killed in the line of duty. When they began talking to her the tall man tells her that her husband had died. She starts screaming, “no, no, no!” The chaplain begins to console her and once she is able to catch her breath, she asks him how it happened. The tall man pauses and then says, “He took his own life.” She stands up and looks at him and says, “There is no way my husband killed himself; he was a happy person all the time.” She begins crying again and the chaplain helps her sit back down. And, so she begins the lifelong grieving process and the search for answers which may never come.
Sadly, law enforcement personnel die by suicide at a much higher rate than those that are killed at the hands of others. A significant number of these families are forgotten by their agency and left to walk this horrible and tragic path alone. Their loved one is never honored, and their sacrifice is quickly forgotten. Very few, if any, benefits were available to the spouse/family as line-of-duty deaths historically did not include law enforcement officers who died by suicide.
On August 16, 2022, President Biden signed Public Law 117-172, the Public Safety Officer Support Act of 2022. This law recognizes that the traumas suffered by law enforcement officers affects them mentally, and provides public safety officer death benefits for the families of law enforcement who die by suicide or are totally disabled, after taking an action to bring about their death, while on duty, and if it meets the criteria established within the law, and occurred on or after January 1, 2019.
With the passage of this law, some families of law enforcement officers who die by suicide or are totally disabled, will receive federal benefits, which include financial assistance and educational assistance for the spouse and children of the fallen officer. It is better late than never when recognizing the service and sacrifice of law enforcement officers who die by suicide, and the sacrifices of the family they leave behind. Finally, these law enforcement officers are being honored for the life they led, not how they died.
This column from the Survivors of Blue Suicide Foundation (SBS) is part of the FEDforum, an initiative to unite voices across the federal community. The FEDforum is a space for federal employee and law enforcement groups to share their organizations’ initiatives and activities with the FEDagent audience.
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