Suicide, Re-Traumatization, and Finding a Purpose in the Aftermath

Like many in my generation, I grew up watching all of the cop/investigation shows such as Forensic Files, NCIS, Bones, X-Files (hooray for the Scully Effect!), etc. I knew from a very young age that I wanted to be just like Agent Dana Scully from the X-Files. I knew it was a long road, but usually when I set my mind to something, I work hard to achieve it.

That goal set me on a long, woven, road. At the ripe age of 17, I decided I would enroll in some college credits to get a head start on college. Part of the program I enrolled in called for me to pick an internship for 2 weeks. Unlike my high school cohorts, I chose to do my internship at the Coroner’s Office. My goal? Agent Scully of course. I put in my application for the internship and much to my surprise, I was accepted. Two weeks later, I was standing in the autopsy suite ready to dive in to my first autopsy. Much to my mother’s dismay, the macabre nature of my choice didn’t deter me from following my passion, but lit a fire in my soul to show me my true calling.

I had no issues with my internship at the Coroner’s office. I was fascinated, drinking in everything I could to figure out exactly what my future held for me. I learned pretty early on that while the job of a Forensic Pathologist was fascinating and would be the route I needed to take to be just like my idol, Agent Scully. I found, however, that the aspect of medical school was a pretty large deterrent. I didn’t want to be in school for another eight to ten years, I wanted to be doing things now! So I settled on the aspect of potentially becoming a Crime Scene Investigator (CSI), because TV made it look like so much fun.

With my heart set on becoming a CSI, I enrolled in my local university and began the long and arduous road to getting my degree. Throughout the years, my degree fluctuated a bit and I may have changed some majors, but eventually I was able to get myself a Bachelor’s degree in Biology with a minor in Criminalistics. This was it! I was finally on the road to becoming a CSI and I was absolutely ready for it. Except, they weren’t exactly ready for me and my lack of experience. So, I promised myself I would give myself a year to get in to the profession, or I would move on to greener pastures.

In 2015, almost a year to the date of my not-so-hard-fast end date, I managed to land myself a job as a Property and Evidence Technician for one of the biggest, if not the biggest, police departments in the state. I was so excited, this was my foot in the door to get exactly where I wanted to be. So for two years I worked and for two years I learned. I had frequent contact with CSIs for the department because who else would be collecting evidence and booking it in for a case? It was in those two years that I learned the aspect I absolutely loved about the law enforcement field was not a job function of the CSI unit. I only was half-heartbroken because in those two years, I spoke to many other individuals, too. I spoke to police officers, I spoke to forensic scientists, I spoke to members of special task forces, and I spoke with detectives.

I learned a lot. I mean, A LOT. About the entire field, about my goals for myself, about what it is that I actually wanted. I found that television had misguided me (I mean realistically, who hasn’t fallen for everything they see on TV?) and that the draw to the field for me was the puzzle aspect of solving a case. My expectation was that CSIs gathered the evidence and processed the scene, so they were the ones that put the pieces together right? Wrong. Detectives was where it was at. Detectives were the thread pullers and story finders. Detectives were the exact people that I felt I was when I decided to do all my sleuthing and figure out the puzzles before anyone else did. Detectives was where my heart was set.

Before working as a Property and Evidence Technician, I never put thought into becoming a police officer. I always assumed the requirements for becoming a police officer were similar to the requirements of going into the military and that boat had sailed long before going to college (stupid asthma). It was a pleasant surprise to learn that the requirements were not the same and the more I researched, the more I decided that’s exactly what I wanted to do. Of course, like many other plans in my life, I veered in a completely different direction for the upteenth time and I made the life changing decision to become a police officer.

In my recollection, the veering took a lot more time than the actual real-life scenario. In reality, I decided in 2017 that I was going to be a police officer and, luckily for me, in 2017 I enrolled in the police academy. I learned how difficult some other applicants had it and learned that many spent years waiting to get where I was, so I made sure to be thankful that I did not have to endure years of waiting to get where I wanted to go.

The police academy is not an experience that can be explained. I’m guessing it is similar to the transforming process that new recruits face during boot camp when entering the military and to me, that is a life changing and mind altering experience. I had an idea of what I was getting myself into, but getting through the police academy forced me to dig deep and find strength I didn’t know I had. In hindsight, I’m appreciative of that process because it allowed me to stand strong for what was to come. I thought the academy was going to be my most life changing experience, but I was absolutely wrong on that front.

After 22 long, grueling weeks, I graduated the police academy and was an official police officer in my state. I was ready to go into field training and learn everything I possibly could because I learned through the academy that I was exactly where I was supposed to be in every possible way. After 11 weeks of what my department called an “in-house” academy, I was sworn in, given my badge, and I was ready to be on the road with my field training officer. This was in March of 2018 and I was elated.

My first three days of training were uneventful and consisted of the majority of what police work actually is. Paperwork, learning the city so I know where I am going, responding to calls for service that aren’t super high priority calls, saving dogs in the street, you know, the usual. Day four. Day four threw my life into a tailspin that I have yet to recover from and will be dealing with for the rest of my life, police officer or not.

When most people think of police officers, they think of “runnin’ and gunnin’“ and having an awesome set of tools on your belt. In reality, those calls don’t happen often and most of our time is spent interacting with the community and finding ways to deter crime before it happens. But when those ”crazy” calls come out, we are all ready for them and we all want to be called out to them. I was especially excited to get called out to my first “major incident” because I wanted to learn as much as I possibly could.

Day four was the day my field training officer allowed me to start driving the patrol vehicle. It was also the first day I was responsible for making sure I got us where we were supposed to go without thinking about it too hard. We were sitting in our patrol car when the tone came over the radio, a triplet of a loud siren like sound to indicate something major was going on and everyone on the radio needed to pay attention. After the tone, the dispatcher came on and indicated there was a suicide attempt at a residence where the caller’s roommate had shot themself in the head. The radio traffic was very vivid, very graphic, and frankly, I wasn’t expecting it. Based on the information provided, it sounded as if it had just occurred and all hands were on deck. Meaning, as I was the driver, I was able to “run and gun” to the call, lights and sirens included.

It was my first day driving the patrol car with lights and sirens, so I wasn’t really paying attention to the radio while I was trying to get us to the location safely, without causing a crash. Of course, in the middle of it, my mom tried calling me and I silently cursed in the back of my head thinking of all the damn days for my mom to call and ask me how my new job was going. I ignored the call and continued on my happy little way thinking I was going to get to learn what it was going to take to be a detective one day. My training officer and I discussed the logistics of what I should do when I got there on the way and when we arrived on scene, I felt confident and ready to go and I was ready to gather as much useful information as I could.

It never occurred to me on the way there that I had never been to or seen a major incident, let alone be the one to handle the incident. When I pulled on scene, I was overwhelmed by the sheer amount of people and vehicles that had arrived before us. Essentially, there were 18 of us in field training at this time and all 18 of us were trying to get on scene to learn as much as we possibly could. Since I was the last one to the game, I didn’t get the opportunity to take charge of anything, let alone learn very much. But I was eager to help, so I asked my training officer how I could be useful. She advised that we needed to talk to the officer in charge, so we exited the patrol car and walked up the driveway.

It was surreal to me walking up and realizing it appeared everything was going in slow motion. I looked up at the residence and remembered seeing a window with a bullet hole in it (my first by the way) and realized that the size of the bullet hole made me realize there was likely no hope for the roommate to be saved, thanks to my internship at the Coroner’s office. Once my brain processed the noise, the bustling, and the constant changing of red and blue lights, I was able to start taking in the rest of my surroundings. A shared driveway for four townhomes, plenty of police officers, plenty of onlookers, and a group huddled around the front door consoling each other in grief, as they had been told there was no way to help the roommate and she had died. My training officer found the officer in charge who then instructed me to do a neighborhood canvas, meaning, speak to the neighbors and find out what they saw and what they heard. I jumped right on it saying I was going to do the best job I could.

I walked across the shared driveway to the neighbors I could see first. I walked up and started speaking with a female, who‘s name I have long forgotten. I asked her to tell me when she last saw the decedent. She had told me that she last saw the her outside on the driveway the previous morning, in her pajamas, smoking a cigarette. My inner dialogue was taking everything in and comparing it to people and things I knew and that were familiar, since everything my senses were taking in was unfamiliar. In this particular instance, I thought her description aptly described my sister, Sara. I stopped asking questions for a moment when one of the roommates of the decedent walked up and asked to use the restroom since their’s was not accessible due. I watched the roommate and realized that I knew him some how, but I couldn’t place how I knew him. That wasn’t unusual for me because I worked in the same city I grew up in. I made a mental note of him and told myself to try and remember where I knew him from later.

I continued asking questions of the neighbor for what felt like a long time, until I was approached by my training officer and immediately told that we were leaving. Startled by her reaction and the look on her face, I felt like I had done something wrong and I was not doing as great of a job as I thought I was. The feeling compounded when the Commander, a step above my sergeant, walked up and told my training officer that he would meet us at the police department. I couldn’t fathom how I would have screwed up so badly in just asking some questions for the neighborhood canvas, but I did as I was told and got my keys and prepared myself to drive us back to headquarters. I figured I drove there, I could at least drive us to the department. I became even more concerned when my training officer told me she would be driving, not me.

Internally, I’m thinking that I just managed to get myself fired before I could even get out of the gate. Did I ask the wrong questions? Did I step on someone’s toes in the investigation? Was I too eager and that wasn’t the type of police officer they wanted on their force? So many things were running through my head about how I managed to screw up after all the hard work I put into the academy, that my mood immediately plummetted. I was thrown off guard when my training officer’s line of questioning to me as we walked back to the patrol vehicle had nothing to do with my performance as an officer.

She started off with simple questions. Do you recognize this place? Do you see anyone here that you recognize? Have you ever been here before? I told her I recognized at least one person, but not the place and that I had never been there before. I thought I failed to be cognizant of my surroundings and that was why I was being taken away from the scene so abruptly, so I started looking around. I saw two young adults holding each other in grief again, same as before, but I started looking closer. I realized one of the adults was a young woman with shoulder length hair that was extremely curly. I was wracking my brain trying to figure out why her hair stirred something in my memory when my training officer asked me, “Do the names Tina and Tony mean anything to you?” That hair, the stirring, of course.

The stirring in my memory and the question she asked me clicked in my head, then it felt like my world was collapsing around me. Like a ton of bricks had just landed on my chest and I couldn’t breathe. Just when I thought it couldn’t possibly be true, an officer inside the residence had found an ID for the decedent and started asking our dispatch to clear her name to see if there was any record of her. I heard every letter, every change in intonation, every pause as each letter was given phonetically to complete her name. It was at that time that everything clicked in the worst imaginable way. The roommate that I was speeding through the city to get to, the reason my mom called me in the middle of my shift while I was driving, the description the neighbor gave that made me think of her. The decedent, the roommate that made the bullet hole in the window that was now permanently etched in my head never to allow me a moment of peace again, was my baby sister Sara.

I crumpled as soon as I got into the patrol car. I wailed, I screamed, I closed in on myself, and for a few brief moments, I allowed my training officer to see the sheer despair I was feeling in that moment. My baby sister, the one I spent my entire life taking care of and helping in a moment’s notice, the baby sister that gave me a reason to become an officer, was dead. Then I remembered where I was, what I was doing, and what I was going to have to do. With tears still streaming down my face, I took many deep breaths to compose myself to make the phone calls I knew were going to break me. I called my father and my mother and told them to meet me at my mother’s house. They were trying to ask questions and my mom already knew what had happened because Sara’s roommate and ex-boyfriend, Tony, had called her after they called the police. I allowed a moment in my smooth facade to break to make it clear to my mom that she was not to show up at the residence and that we would talk about it when I got to her. She agreed, turned around, and started heading back home.

I was taken to headquarters first so my Commander could give me his condolences and let me know the services the department had available to me. I didn’t hear him. I mostly put all my effort into being stoic and trying not to cry to this man that I had only just met and didn’t want to show weakness to. I thanked him for his time and asked my training officer to take me to my mom’s. While on the way, I kept thinking about how I was going to tell everyone what I still had issues believing. All too quickly, I was at my mom’s house and I was faced with a part of being a police officer every officer dreads, giving a death notification. I never in my wildest dreams thought my first death notification would be to my own family. But I remembered my training and I stayed calm and collected while I watched every single member of my family collapse into their grief. I had to make arrangements, so while my family broke down, I trudged on getting things in order.

Through the phone book I went and the easier it got to give each notification. I used my badge and my vest as a guard and a safety net to give me the strength I needed to give the notification over and over again. First, Mom and Dad. Next, Grandma. Next, aunts, uncles, and cousins. When I finally hit the end of the phone book, I stood there not knowing what else I should be doing, not knowing what I should be feeling. My training officer was still there with me, so I felt I had to keep it together and show them I could get through this and still do this job. Then the detectives showed up. In any other situation, I would have been thrilled to have the opportunity to work with a detective since that was what I ultimately wanted to be, but I couldn’t muster the excitement even with the strength of my badge and vest keeping me going. I spoke to the detective and learned that Sara, my baby sister who was so full of life and adventure, had died by suicide. I finally became numb and remained that way for some time after that.

I took my designated bereavement leave and returned to work after a week off. After all, I had training I needed to finish so I could get out on my own and do the things I had planned for myself to do. I had a wall up and it kept me going and kept me motivated. But I began to find after going to different calls that my focus started to change. Don’t get me wrong, I still wanted to be a police officer and become a detective, but I was awakened to this ugly aspect of declining mental health and a system that couldn’t support that decline and I wanted to do something about it. I didn’t know what, I didn’t know how, but I realized that I had a unique position to be able to do something, anything, about the potential issue, even if I didn’t know what the particular issue was yet. Fueled by a new motivation, I threw myself back into my work to figure out how I could make a difference.

Six weeks after I returned to work, I was in my second phase of training when that tone, the tone that signaled to me that Sara had died, came over the radio. In almost the same fashion as Sara’s call, dispatch advised that a female had shot herself inside her apartment and her boyfriend found her in the living room. I turned to my training officer at that time and told him I had no idea how I would handle that call. I was very fortunate to have a fantastic training officer at that time and he walked me through every step and shielded me from the potential issues that could have arose from that call. I felt good. I told myself that I would have no issue in the future handling these calls and I could prove to the department, yet again, that I could handle myself and I could handle this job. I got myself through training with that thought in my head and I was lucky to not have a similar call again for the remainder of my training.

I was not so lucky once I got out on my own and no longer had a training officer. My first day on my shift with my new partner, we were dispatched to a suicide where a father had shot himself with a shotgun. His wife and daughters found him. I managed to get myself on scene with my partner and to my relief, I had just gotten done explaining to my partner where I might have issues, so he took lead on the call and handled it. Not so lucky for me, he thought my biggest issue would be seeing the victim. On the contrary, dealing with his grieving family was my kryptonite, so to speak. I was not prepared for the victim’s wife to come barreling out the front door, throwing herself at me, and clinging to me like I was a life line in an ocean of despair. She would have collapsed on the ground had I not caught her. Through her sobs and tears, all I could hear her say was, “I should have done more.” Just like that, I was her and she was me. She was vocalizing the words I had been telling myself for months.

It was in that moment that I realized throwing my shield up and hiding behind my badge and vest was not going to help me. Those simple words threw me back to Sara’s call and all I could do was repeatedly tell her, “You did everything you could, there is nothing you could have changed.” I was able to hold myself together while saying this and I looked her straight in the eye and had her follow my breathing. She started to calm, then her eldest daughter came out with her younger sister to join her mother. The eldest daughter took on a role that I was all too familiar with and I realized I was seeing myself in her. This daughter being the rock for the remaining family members and trying to be the calm in the storm that would never go away. I looked at the eldest daughter and told her what I should have been telling myself, that she didn’t need to hold herself together if she didn’t feel like she could. At that, I had three women in absolute despair where I had to be a rock for them. I heard the same wailing, the same sobbing coming from them that I had heard come from myself just six months previously. My training held me together for the most part, but thankfully for me, I had fellow officers who had my best interest in mind and they took over for me so I could leave and deal with my own grief. It was at that time, I started trauma therapy to deal with the trauma of responding to Sara’s call.

The work I did in therapy allowed me to respond to another suicide call where a girlfriend had watched her boyfriend kill himself right in front of her. I arrived on scene to find her in a heap on the ground, about to be transported by ambulance to the hospital because she wasn’t responding to fire fighter’s commands to breathe and she was on the verge of passing out. I realized in that moment that I could help her. Perhaps I was the only one there that could. Armed with the tools I learned in therapy and my newly repaired shield (the cracks were still visible), I grabbed her by the shoulders and made her look me in the eye. She listened and the first words out of my mouth were, “I know what you are going through, we will get through this together.” I saw something click in her eyes, despite the fact that she was still beside herself with grief and all she could do was wail, that she knew I was right and trusted me to help her. I was able to get her breathing again. I was able to get her to a point where she could walk. I was able to get her to tell me what happened. I stayed with her for over three hours to help keep her calm when the despair bubbled through. In the end, she was able to go to sleep and did not get transported to the hospital. It was at that time I learned that I could use my grief and use my experience to help people, as long as I continued to work on myself and deal with my own grief.

Once I learned what I could do, I used it at every opportunity. Even when I wasn’t responding to suicide calls, I used my story as a way to educate. People who support police officers always wonder what their worst call is and don’t hesitate to ask them when given the opportunity, so I tell them. I tell them, and I educate. I get dispatched to calls of parties threatening suicide and I use my experience to assure them that they are wanted in this world. I share how painfully I miss Sara and wish she had done what they are doing and call for help. I don’t know how many people have reconsidered suicide after speaking with me and hearing what I have to say, but I know there is at least one woman who I still speak to regularly that tells me she decided to live because Sara didn’t. That keeps me going. That makes everything I’ve experienced worth it.

I continue to go to therapy and use tools to help me get through my own grief, but finding a purpose out of the grief that helps save lives is more than I could have ever asked for after being dealt such a bad hand by life. As much as it helps other people, it helps me to talk about it and find a purpose for what I went through that day. Helping people was part of the decision I made when becoming a police officer, however, I never in my wildest dreams believed these would be the circumstances in how I do it. I don’t regret my decision to become a police officer. I wouldn’t be able to help the way I do if I hadn’t, because Sara would have died by her choice whether or not I was a police officer. I cherish this platform that allows me to educate on mental health and be in a position to provide resources to those who need it most. I also cherish the fact that I was able to learn about myself in new ways during the academy and learn that I can endure, no matter how many times I thought, “This is it, I am done.” I want to share that with as many people as I can, whenever I can. So, while I didn’t have this vision for myself when I started on this journey, I am grateful for this vision now. Even if I only saved one woman, it’s one woman that would have died without my having learned and grown from this experience. I can never go back now and I don’t think I would even if I could.