A closer look at the impact of suicide.

Individual Impact:

• 79% of all people who die by suicide are male.
• Although more women than men attempt suicide, men are 4x more likely to die by suicide.
• Suicide is the 2nd leading cause of death among people aged 10–14 and the 3rd leading cause of death among people aged 15-24 in the U.S.
• Suicide is the 12th leading cause of death overall in the U.S.
• 46% of people who die by suicide had a diagnosed mental health condition - but research shows that 90% may have experienced symptoms of a mental health condition.

Community Impact:

• Annual prevalence of serious thoughts of suicide, by U.S. demographic group:

o 4.9% of all adults

o 11.3% of young adults aged 18-25

o 18.8% of high school students

o 45% of LGBTQ youth

• The highest rates of suicide in the U.S. are among American Indian/Alaska Natives followed by non-Hispanic whites.
• Lesbian, gay and bisexual youth are nearly 4x more likely to attempt suicide than straight youth.
• Transgender adults are nearly 9x more likely to attempt suicide than the general population.
• Suicide is the leading cause of death for people held in local jails.

Data from CDC, NIMH and other select sources.

The five stages – denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance – are often talked about as if they happen in order, moving from one stage to the other. You might hear people say things like ‘Oh I’ve moved on from denial and now I think I’m entering the angry stage’. But this isn’t often the case.

In fact Kübler-Ross, in her writing, makes it clear that the stages are non-linear – people can experience these aspects of grief at different times and they do not happen in one particular order.

You might not experience all of the stages, and you might find feelings are quite different with different bereavements.

This story is about the day that I died.

Bear with me, I promise, I’ll get to it. One fateful day, about ten years ago, started much like any other day. It, and many days after it, would not finish the way that I expected. I was involved in an OIS that afternoon and shortly after, I died. The stories about the nightmares that cops have…the “one” where your gun doesn’t fire, or the magazine falls out, or the trigger pull feels like 43,000 lbs., well, those go away typically if you have to use your weapon. Just like many officers, I had that dream (more accurately, one like them) and after the event, they stopped. Like I had heard that they would. Unfortunately, they would be replaced by something far more sinister. Something that I was not prepared for.

Following the shooting, like every good cop, I was told that I would report to “psych services” and speak with the city mental health care team. Since I didn’t believe in the head shrinker mumbo jumbo I went, reluctantly. I went with the expectation that they were wasting their time and mine. The questions were not hard, and the Docs were very nice, and they accepted my answers without any appearance of doubt or second guessing.

“How do you feel?”, they would ask.

“I’m fine.”, would be the reply. Complete with wide open eyes and a smile, to further complete the lie, that I was trying desperately to believe.

“Any nightmares or suicidal thoughts?”

“No, not at all.” Finished up with a mock surprise and a chuckle in an effort to add a degree of determination to convince this person to let me (please) get back to work and not send me to a unit outside of my current patrol assignment. Lest, I be branded “broken”, “weak”, or the worst, a “coward”.

And, I am not a coward. I am a grown man who has served in this great nation’s military, and now serve as a Dallas Police Officer. Cowards aren’t police officers. Det. Martin Riggs would not permit anything less than blind courage and steely resolve, so neither would I.

Unfortunately, movie law enforcement is not exactly drowning in realism, and I was slowly dying trying to prove to everyone, the opposite. Very soon after I returned to work, like 3 days soon, I had my first nightmare. Normally, dreams aren’t recalled with any accuracy, but this dream would haunt me for the next 9 years, give or take. The start was always the same, a sinking feeling that I was never strong enough to escape from. That sensation would seem to go on forever, sinking deeper, and deeper so slowly that I was convinced that I was being crushed, without pain. Then I would feel a sense of acceleration. A pull on my body that was so powerful and intense, to suddenly find myself at the entrance to a pit where my hands would grab futilely at the soft edges as I slid toward some “evil” that I could sense but not see, just blackness with a terror undertone. My silent suffocated scream would wake me (and invariably, my wife) up. And I would be done sleeping.

That led to being awake at all hours of the night, and then to help myself go back to sleep, I started drinking alcohol.

The part about reaching for alcohol was one of the most unexpected parts of this. Both of my grandfathers were alcoholics. My aunt on my mother’s side, was alcoholic until it killed her in her early 50’s. I lost a friend, who was driving drunk. I felt that I knew the bad side of drinking and would never go down that path, but alas, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. I was hiding my drinking from my wife. I was hiding my drinking from everyone but myself, I believe. I was a very good “coping” drinker, if there is such a thing. I never worked under the influence, but I definitely had the “math” down. I knew exactly what time I needed to quit drinking so I would be ready for the day. I knew that I didn’t want to get fired because I was drunk at work, I didn’t think I would be able to handle that. Gotta know your limitations, right?!

Basically, I had a 10-month binge that nobody was the least bit aware of. All the while, all that time dealing with Grand Jury hearings and all of the not knowing. 10 months where all I knew was Pain. And then, the release of the body worn camera footage, that brought everything that I was running from, right back to the forefront of everything that I did.

I allowed myself to “read the comments” on social media. The hate that was directed at me, was squeezing the last of my resolve. Around April of 2015, I had this moment where I realized that I was drinking too much. I was drinking a lot. I was in the “mix vodka with red Powerade” club. Hey, I’m hydrating and dehydrating at the same time! I’m breaking even! Don’t worry about me, I’m just over here fooling (and by fooling, I mean “lying to”) everyone I love. So, I Quit. Cold-Turkey. How was I supposed to know that was the best/worst thing I could have done? Immediately, I fell into the worst depression of my life. So bad that I had to take a week off of work to “deal with” some things that were coming up. To its credit, the department never questioned me. “Sure, take your time” they said.

“Ok, I will.”, was my reply, just watch. Now, I am not a necessarily “religious” person, but soul crushing depression and numbing social anxiety will make you think and feel very strange things and I recall feeling like I was the worst of all sinners. I had broken one of the “biggies” of the Ten Commandments: Thou shalt Not Kill. Isn’t that what it said? Please correct me if I’m wrong but I don’t think there’s a “defense to prosecution” in there when it comes to God’s Word. Like “thou shalt not kill (unless they are trying to killeth thou or whatever)” so I had become convinced that I was condemned to Hell and that I would never be with my wife and kids and all of my people, in Heaven. I was not about to spend the rest of my life as a dead man, walking, so to speak. I would not allow myself to burden my wife, to be a boat anchor around her neck that was never going to heal. So, she would hang in there until she couldn’t, and I would be alone, anyway.

My life was out of control. So much noise and confusion. I was spending all of EVERY bit of my energy to just keep it together at work. I was spent by the time I arrived home. Every day. Walk in the house. Check. Small talk my wife and kids. Check. Ignore repairing everything I knew. Check. Fall asleep on the couch. Check. Rinse, and repeat. It was then that I completely fell apart, as non-religious as I was, I began praying for death. Praying that someone would kill me at work. Praying that I could “miss” a gun during a search and somehow convince someone to kill me. That way, I could get relief for my wife and kids. I could cure them of their “me” problem. The department puts on a great funeral. My kids could go to school free, all the money that the wife would collect and have a new boyfriend to help her spend it.

Hopefully, He would be nice to my kids and do the things they deserve and that I could never provide them. I would get the picture in the hall at the basic academy, and no one would ever know the Truth.

The Truth was that I was broken, didn’t allow myself to heal and the sadness that I felt was not going away and since my prayers weren’t being answered, I would take matters into my own hands. I quit praying to be killed and started praying for the strength to kill myself. Obviously with enough planning to make it look like an accident. Most of my plans involved my motorcycle, unrestrained speed, and well-placed bridge/highway construction supports. Failing the ability to get the courage to drive into a wall for fear of not being successful in my suicide attempt led to even a greater sense of failure and uselessness. It seems that shame and self-loathing and depression does not begat success, strength and hope. This unending cycle of preparation and failure to act was driving me crazy and that all led to the Day that I died.

My partner was off, and I was driving around aimlessly in the squad car when the courage and resolve to never fail again at convincing myself to kill myself reared its ugly head. I pulled into a parking spot behind a Chinese buffet joint (good orange chicken btw). I had never felt so much sadness and I have never been more scared, before or after. All of these things start going through my head: Does it hurt? Do I write a note? I decided that yes you do and no it won’t (well hopefully not for long anyway, I have hurt long enough I don’t want to hurt any more) so, in an act that in hindsight is perhaps the most pathetic part of this whole event, I wrote my suicide note on a page ripped from my “whip-out” book! How could I reach a lower “low”?

I didn’t want to leave a mess for someone so I (inexplicably) had a raid jacket with me, and I thought I might wrap my head in that so as not to get blood and stuff all inside the squad car. I didn’t want to leave some image that a fellow officer would have to process.

I am crying so hard by this time. That ugly crying where you are calling out to God and being mad at Him at the same time and begging to be forgiven by Him and your family and to be somehow understood by those same people for your decision as a solution for a situation that defies understanding. And I couldn’t hear anything but static and confusion and this grinding sensation like when you scrape dog crap off the bottom of your shoe on the side of a curb or the edge of a concrete driveway, all over the inside of my body (adrenaline, I presume) and I had my duty weapon in my lap and the note was on the passenger seat and then my gun was in my mouth and I couldn’t see and then SILENCE and I heard the most beautiful thing… my wife’s voice (of course it had to be my wife she had to have a chance to boss me around one last time) saying “Martin, put the gun down. This isn’t the plan I have for you.” But my wife, doesn’t call me “Martin” she has a long list of other colorful words for me but rarely my first name. And that caught me completely off-guard. So much so that I put my gun in my holster, unwrapped my head and immediately stopped crying. I wiped my eyes and did a quick check to see if anyone was a witness to this misery, crumpled up and threw away my note… And then, I WENT BACK TO WORK. Can you believe that?

Back to answering calls and doing all of the things I was expected to do. Then I went home and put this away in the place cops put all sorts of tragedy until recently when I felt it was right to speak of it. And to be Reborn.

This event occurred approximately ten years ago, since then I have begun to attend church, I am in counseling, I see a psychiatrist, I am on medication, and I work on myself every single day. With the proper help, I was able to overcome my own private crisis. I am now thriving personally and professionally. If you are experiencing something similar, know that you are not alone. Get help, reach out to the Wellness Unit, make an appointment with a professional. Please, if you are reading this and it touches you or you need to speak to someone about whatever it is that you feel is missing inside you, I beg you to please do it. Don’t wait. Healing starts here and now. You are a priceless commodity that cannot be replaced.

Your people love you. I love you and whether or not you are religious or Christian or whatever you are, My King, is Jesus Christ and he controls my life and answers prayers and delivered me from Evil and He loves You always.

Thank you,

"MARTIN RIGGS"

Whatever issue you may be battling please remember You are Not Alone in this profession or in life.

Reach out to your partner, significant other, your family or friends and remember they will be grateful you did.

People love and care deeply about you.

Contact the Dallas PD Wellness Unit at DPDWellness@Dallaspolice.gov or 214-671-4716 and we will assist in any way to find a resource for the issue you are combating.

We are ALL in this together.