Amid the state budget taking center stage, debates about costs and a last-minute amendment, a bill to provide suicide prevention services and mental health treatment to officers, firefighters and EMTs never came before a vote in the Connecticut legislature and died.
“It’s unfortunate,” said Carol Martin, executive director of EMDR Humanitarian Assistance Programs at the organization Trauma Recovery. “[First responders] are stigmatized if they identify themselves as having trauma and are less likely to seek help. I thought the bill was a sure-in.”
The bill, titled “An Act Concerning Mental Health Care and Wellness Training and Suicide Prevention for Police Officers,” aimed to allow first responders to seek treatment for, among other behavioral health ailments, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and depression without the fear of discipline or termination, or of permanently losing the service weapon necessary for the job. It also called for the establishment of peer support groups, in-department counseling and critical incident protocol. Additionally, it would have established a database to track cases of suicide to make studying the issue, and thus finding solutions, easier.
“The more clinicians we can train, the better off we are,” Martin said. Trauma Recovery had offered to provide training to other police departments, which it is doing now with the New Haven Police Department. “Trauma is not a life-long sentence. I was really surprised anyone would be against [the bill].”
Republican Senator Kevin Witkos introduced the bill in the Public Safety and Security Committee. It ended up not making it to the Senate floor because, Witkos said, an amendment had suddenly been drafted and there hadn’t been enough time before the end of the session to reach an agreement. However, Witkos added he would bring the bill up again in the next legislative session, citing his own 28-year-long career as a police officer as an example of why its passing is important.
“You wanna make sure that [officers] get the assistance that they need without the fear of losing their jobs,” Witkos said. “These are folks that put their lives on the line every day. If they’re having difficulty doing something because it was unexpected or tragic or horrific, they can seek the mental health counseling that they need and they’re back to work.”
Mary Kate Mason, a spokesperson for the Connecticut Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services, said that the department would support the bill if it came up again.
“This is the type of [legislation we will support],” Mason commented. “We’re always looking to make sure that first responders have access to mental health care and wellness.”
Furthermore, though the bill had bipartisan sponsorship and public support, dissent existed. The Connecticut Post reported in April that Waterbury Mayor Neil O’Leary said the bill “would be a costly unfunded mandate” because “no state funding is included in the bill.” Witkos said this belief was not true.
“Some folks were misled to believe that the officers could be out of work on workers’ compensation injury, but the bill said they could only use their own sick time or vacation time. It’s not an additional cost [or a] mandate on the municipalities,” Witkos explained. “But we’re going to work that out.”
“What’s the cost of lost lives?” Martin also responded to such concerns. “The cost is far greater [for our society and our community] and for police officers who lose their lives.”
“I’m sorry I failed my family.”
The bill, as well as its scrapping, is emblematic of a larger problem. In a public testimony before Connecticut’s Public Safety and Security Committee regarding the bill, Naugatuck police officer Rebecca St. George relayed an excerpt from a suicide letter by her “brother officer,” Robert “Tommy” Byrne, which had been left to his family.
“Tell Tyler [Byrne’s 6-year-old son] I’m sorry,” St. George read from Byrne’s letter to the committee. “My depression is too great and it would rub off on Ty. I don’t want him to have to continue to see me in this uncontrollable state. He’s young enough to get over the memory of me and will be okay without me. I’ve tried medications, but nothing is stopping the bleeding of my broken heart. I’m sorry I failed my family.”
Byrne’s case is part of an unnerving statistic plaguing the United States. A study by the Ruderman Family Foundation, a philanthropic organization focusing on assisting individuals with disabilities, found that first responders—police officers and firefighters—were more likely to die by suicide than in the line of duty in 2017. According to the study, 103 firefighters and 140 police officers died by suicide, while 93 and 129 died on the job, respectively. That does not include suicides that were not reported to the victim’s department, meaning the numbers could be higher.
Additionally, the Center for Disease Control and Protection ranked first responders and others employed in protective services as sixth on a list of the top 20 professions with the most suicides in 2016, reporting “stressors including exposure to traumatic, violent, and lethal situations; work overload; shift work; and access to lethal means” as contributors to the high rate.
Statistics like these, St. George told the committee, guarantee that Byrne’s death “will likely not be the last time I experience losing a fellow officer I know to suicide.” Ignoring the lack of resources in the Naugatuck Police Department and other Connecticut departments, she furthered, would not help the prevention of future cases either.
Retired police officer Robert Rudewicz is of the same sentiment. He wore a badge for 20 years while serving in the city of Hartford. In the span of those two decades, Rudewicz experienced went through enough hardships to cause him to send the legislature a testimony expressing his approval for the bill, citing his personal past experiences as reasons for its passing.
“During my time as a police officer I experienced depression, anxiety and [a] substance use disorder that took me years to overcome,” Rudewicz wrote in his testimony. “Having been retired since 2002 I can easily talk about my experiences and my struggles with depression and self medicating with alcohol and finding long term recovery. However, I know the difficulties in admitting the need for help in a profession that carries a strong stigma regarding mental health needs. After all, we are the ones who help. We are not supposed to need help.”
In Connecticut, five officers—Byrne included—committed suicide in the last three months of 2017, according to the Police Officers Association of Connecticut. St. George had hoped that the dead bill would have provided the necessary resources to prevent another loss.
“His coworkers saw the depression and tried as best they could to help him in the months before his death,” St. George testified. “We were in the best position to help him. I would like to think if we had the tools in this bill at our disposal it could have been different.”
Witkos concurs, saying that first responders deserve these services so that they can not only better themselves, but better the community, too.
“When somebody’s in fear of their lives or need help, they call 911,” Witkos said. “You wanna make sure that the person who’s responding to your call for assistance has their wits about them and their head on straight.”
“No matter what the conversation is, we need to do more for mental health in Connecticut,” he continued. “This is one small step towards that.”