In the above interview, Brian Ross interviews three persons — the head of the Police Executive Research Forum, a retired New York PD detective, and a researcher about police suicides.
It is a good overview about a growing problem. After all is said, leadership matters and I am reminded that good leadership is the business of growing and caring for the men and women you are privileged to lead.
I had a former partner take his life, another who drank himself to death. (Both were WW II and Korean War vets. Both may have suffered from what we know today as PTSD.) However, we worked in a culture where it was considered weak to have personal of family problems. That must change.
I served over 20 years as the chief of police in Madison (WI), four years as chief of the Burnsville (MN) Police Department, and before that as a police officer in Edina (MN) and the City of Minneapolis. I hold graduate degrees from the University of Minnesota and Edgewood College in Madison. I have written many articles over my years as a police leader calling for police improvement (for example, How To Rate Your Local Police, and with my wife, Sabine, Quality Policing: The Madison Experience). After retiring from the police department, I answered a call to ministry, attended seminary, and was ordained as a priest in the Episcopal Church. At the present time, I serve a small church in North Lake (WI), east of Madison. Sabine and I have nine adult children, eleven grandchildren and four great-grandchildren. She is also a retired police officer and we both continue active lives.
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