Chief Bailey discusses suicide awareness and officer mental health

Indianapolis, Indiana – The IMPD is requesting that the city include more money in its 2025 budget for mental health services. Since Chief Chris Bailey claims to have made it a priority, we had a private conversation with him on Thursday, Law Enforcement Suicide Awareness Day, to discuss his goals.

Bailey remarked, “They witness the worst aspects of society every day.” “The quantity of trauma they experience… One day of work may be more than some people would ever see in their lifetime, depending on where they work.

Hence, suicide claims the lives of more police officers than accidents while on the job.

“Return to work and put on your boots.” That, in my opinion, typified [the] mindset in our field for a long time, Bailey continued. “We’ve adjusted that.”

Bailey and the majority of police officers, if you ask them, will tell you that asking for assistance has always been stigmatized. However, the badge can be emotionally taxing, which is why he plans to request an extra $340,000 from the city the next year for ProTeam Tactical Performance’s “SHIELD” program. The Indianapolis Fire Department and a number of other local organizations currently utilize the program. Officers can use it to monitor conditions including anxiety, depression, and thoughts of suicide.

“I’ll suffer in silence because they won’t let me do what I love to do if I confess that I’m having suicidal thoughts,” Bailey said. “That’s not what we want.”

When the IMPD established its wellness section fourteen years ago, Captain Brian Navity was the lone officer on duty. Discipline was the main priority at the time. Since then, it has changed to services that are primarily requested voluntarily from a full-time staff of six, Lieutenant Jonathan Baker among them. Lieutenant Baker also mentioned that Deputy Chief Valerie Cunningham played a crucial role from the start.

For a department that is having trouble hiring employees, “that’s a serious commitment of resources,” stated Baker. “For the benefit of the community as well as the officers, we’re all striving to have healthy officers.”

According to Baker, the main indicator of PTSD in police officers is a reported lack of support, which is far greater than in the general population. The wellness unit of IMPD provides peer assistance and, if necessary, connections to mental health professionals. He states that he would like to see more resilience training as needs change.

Baker said, “I think I had a pretty good idea of what physical danger I was going to be in when I joined this job 23 years ago.” “I don’t think people really understand the psychological risks involved in becoming a police officer.”

The FBI clarified in a 2022 report to Congress that although law enforcement suicides are a national issue, there is a “gap in information regarding law enforcement officer suicides and attempted suicides.” It has become more difficult to provide enough money and help to stop these catastrophes because of the lack of knowledge.

Only in that year did the FBI start gathering information on law enforcement officials, both active and retired, who try or die by suicide in an effort to better understand and prevent them in the future.

However, I don’t have to be a reporter to convey to you the significance of the problem.
“I consider the guy almost daily,” my father, retired Chicago police officer Mark O’Hara, remarked. He had excellent people skills and could handle a variety of circumstances. Just a nice man all around.

We commemorated the retirement of my father Mark and his colleague Pat from the Chicago Police Department together two summers ago. Unaware that we would be going back to the same East Side pub a year later, but without Pat this time, only our memories of him.

“My dad recalled that after a suicide, we were talking to each other about it while we were sitting in the squad car next to Pat.” “Hey, listen, don’t you ever think about it,” I said. “You don’t have to worry about me,” he said. Though you never know. He appeared to be the most physically and intellectually robust person.

He exhorts everyone to check in on their friends, family members, and coworkers—especially those with connections to the police enforcement community.

He went on, “Officers have to deal with personal issues in addition to helping people at work with their problems.” It was, to put it mildly, terrible.

Retired cops are equally at danger of suicide, and not all departments have the same support available to them as IMPD.

My dad remarked, “I’ve worked with several people that we’ve lost to suicide.” “We are better off the more we can do to prevent it.”

“It’s likely an area we need to improve on as well—considering our retirees,” Chief Bailey informed us. “I think that if one of those people called our wellness unit, they would get the help they needed and I wouldn’t push back.”

In remembrance of retired Chicago police officer Patrick Glinski and everyone else, we lost far too soon, whether they were serving or had retired.