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Fourth police officer who responded to Jan 6 attack dies by suicide

103 points by AndrewBissell 5y ago

exo-pla-net 5y ago
These officers faced BLM hostility on the left, as well as violence against them and accusations of being traitors from the right. The public that they're supposed to serve was spitting on them and demonizing them from both sides. Add a pandemic to the mix, and anybody's mental health would be flatlining. Suicide among some of them is tragic but not surprising. I don't know how effective counseling services are, but if they do anything, they should be made available to the Jan 6 officers. If anybody reading this is in a dark spot, the suicide lifeline is 800-273-8255, and it's available 24/7.
- elygre 5y ago
  I think I understand what you mean by “accusations of being traitors from the right”. However, I was unaware of “BLM hostility on the left”. Could you share some more information about this?
  - exporectomy 5y ago
    Police in general were the main target of hate in BLM. Some were murdered in the name of BLM because all of them were seen as complicit in the black killing issues.
  - cat_plus_plus 5y ago
    Just one of many lies Capitol Police specifically faced: https://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/us-elections-government/ny-trump-church-photo-black-lives-matter-protest-inspector-general-report-20210609-537e7ztrljb5bbn5mjecrto6qi-story.html https://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/us-elections-gover...
    - rob74 5y ago
      totally off topic, but as a European reader I'm getting the following message on that website: > Unfortunately, our website is currently unavailable in your country. We are engaged on the issue and committed to looking at options that support our full range of digital offerings to your market. We continue to identify technical compliance solutions that will provide all readers with our award-winning journalism. Come on guys, 3 years after GDPR you could at least change your text from "we are engaged and committed to looking at options" to "we don't really give a s***"!
      - Cockbrand 5y ago
        I agree! Here's a snapshot of the article: https://archive.is/xWaut https://archive.is/xWaut
      - Tenoke 5y ago
        I am from the EU and more like GDPR (assuming it's even that and not e.g. licensing like BBC Global) than not but I think it's totally fair in general for companies to not provide their services to places where the local laws don't suit them.
        CRConrad 5y ago
        Sure. But then they can frigging say so, can't they? "Sorry, we ain't gonna" is one thing, whereas "Just a sec, your custom is important to us!", three years afterwards is just utter fucking bullshit. Companies are free to ignore my custom, but not to serve me bullshit.
      - mjevans 5y ago
        They really don't, and FFS, I refuse to ever agree to a cookie question on a site I do NOT create a sign-in for. I block those elements and disable javascript, etc. I'm saddened that 3 years later they still haven't given up trying to demand things I'm never giving them. Too many have given in to the Windows UAC / Popup 'just click yes' illness of security fatigue.
  - neartheplain 5y ago
    The Democratic Party and BLM movement entertained calls for police abolition and defunding all summer. Three times as many officers were hospitalized defending the Portland federal courthouse compared to those defending the Capitol. BLM grafitti in Portland called for officers there to be defunded, abolished, and killed. The Democratic Party mayor of Portland banned city officers from helping defend the federal courthouse, and personally appeared at the siege to show solidarity with the rioters. I could list a hundred more examples.
    - okamiueru 5y ago
      From the list of examples, only the Portland grafitti suggesting cops be killed seems valid to me. Defunding police is something I'd assume cops could be very much for, assuming they understand the intention behind. It's isn't a "let's get rid of police" as much as it is "let's reduce the scope of police responsibility". This way, people who might have a mental or drug problem are met by health care professionals, rather than people with guns. If I were a cop, I'd be all for it.
      - legostormtroopr 5y ago
        A motto you have to explain is a bad motto. To a police officer "Defund the police" sounds a lot like "unemployment".
        okamiueru 5y ago
        I think it is mostly hindered by an unwillingness to listen and/or understand, and not that it requires explanation (which, in of itself isn't necessarily a bad thing... explaining things to people seems par for the course when misinformation is high). If I'm well aware what it means by just following international news, while also not having the affected profession, and living on the other side of the world... you would think the onus should fall sliiiightly on the people directly involved for not understanding the motto, rather than it being a bad or convoluted one. The inspection required to understand it also doesn't do a whole lot of leaps either. "Defund the police!". "What, like completely?", "Nah, that would be insane. Just the part where they need to deal with shit they shouldn't be dealing with". "Ah, ok.". That said, I'm sure there are some who mean "fully". Probably a smaller percentage of people meaning it than people assuming others mean it.
  - GaryTang 5y ago
    A multitude more deaths caused by BLM protests. It wasn’t the rosy portrayal the TV showed you. And many people are still living in fear, not knowing when a BLM protest might come burn down their home.
    - altacc 5y ago
      As with many things, the perception of BLM, and associated fear, is based on how the media portrays it and what they give attention to. People living in fear of BLM mostly have that false fear instilled in them by the media, especially the right wing media. The overwhelming majority of BLM protests in the US are completely peaceful. Where protests have turned violent it is often initiated by police action and is typically both small scale and very localized. The definition of "violent" demonstration includes blocking roads, which many people wouldn't consider actually violent or destructive. However some people think BLM is an immediate threat to themselves & their property. To be clear, BLM is certainly not the only example of an incorrectly perceived event/movement/whatever. This happens every day and across the spectrum of politics, geography, etc... Human nature is not perfect and neither is the environment we're living in, so perfect understanding of complex & large scale systems is impossible. https://acleddata.com/2021/05/25/a-year-of-racial-justice-protests-key-trends-in-demonstrations-supporting-the-blm-movement/ https://acleddata.com/2021/05/25/a-year-of-racial-justice-pr...
    - the_why_of_y 5y ago
      Here is what we have found based on the 7,305 events we’ve collected. The overall levels of violence and property destruction were low, and most of the violence that did take place was, in fact, directed against the BLM protesters. First, police made arrests in 5% of the protest events, with over 8,500 reported arrests (or possibly more). Police used tear gas or related chemical substances in 2.5% of these events. Protesters or bystanders were reported injured in 1.6 percent of the protests. In total, at least three Black Lives Matter protesters and one other person were killed while protesting in Omaha, Austin and Kenosha, Wis. One anti-fascist protester killed a far-right group member during a confrontation in Portland, Ore.; law enforcement killed the alleged assailant several days later. Police were reported injured in 1% of the protests. A law enforcement officer killed in California was allegedly shot by supporters of the far-right “boogaloo” movement, not anti-racism protesters. The killings in the line of duty of other law enforcement officers during this period were not related to the protests. Only 3.7% of the protests involved property damage or vandalism. Some portion of these involved neither police nor protesters, but people engaging in vandalism or looting alongside the protests. In short, our data suggest that 96.3% of events involved no property damage or police injuries, and in 97.7% of events, no injuries were reported among participants, bystanders or police. These figures should correct the narrative that the protests were overtaken by rioting and vandalism or violence. Such claims are false. Incidents in which there was protester violence or property destruction should be regarded as exceptional – and not representative of the uprising as a whole. In many instances, police reportedly began or escalated the violence, but some observers nevertheless blame the protesters. https://www.radcliffe.harvard.edu/news-and-ideas/black-lives-matter-protesters-were-overwhelmingly-peaceful-our-research-finds https://www.radcliffe.harvard.edu/news-and-ideas/black-lives...
- mjevans 5y ago
  Some communities have also been disproportionately persecuted by the police for, a very long time. Maybe it's a legacy of slavery and later segregation. Maybe it's a lack of unifying national spirit (the melting pot of cultural assimilation and a desire to be a small spice in a greater whole) which might have just been wishful thinking on the part of history book authors. I suspect most of the non-anarchist who feel that way would agree with my take that "defund" might be better expressed as RE-form. Re-form the Police in a de-militarized way. Structure community interaction so they are helpful, rather than penalizing. (E.G. more like Japanese neighborhood branches.) Split out social and mental health crisis, maybe with domestic violence response teams that include a mix of branches. Also, for mental health, make it easier to get interventions earlier, before assault with a deadly weapon leads to regrettable and unavoidably bad sets of outcomes.
  - horrified 5y ago
    "Some communities have also been disproportionately persecuted by the police for, a very long time." Are you friggin' serious? It's OK if a police officer commits suicide, because some other people harassed some other people before?
    - mjevans 5y ago
      Not what I said. Please do not put words like that in anyone's mouth.
      - horrified 5y ago
        I don't see how it is not what you said. What point were you trying to make?
        yetihehe 5y ago
        He says where violence comes from. It's not justifying violence, it's saying why it exists and what area should be looked in for solution.
- the-dude 5y ago
  Maybe his cat died. Or his girlfriend left him. Or he has been depressed all his life. Or he was diagnosed with a terminal disease.
- jzb 5y ago
  Trying to lay any of this on BLM is bullshit. This is directly tied to the attack on the Capitol by Trump traitors.
- arkitaip 5y ago
  Exactly how were they targeted by BLM?
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - josteink 5y ago
    You mean, aside from police being the main target of BLM ever since the George Floyd incident?
- rorykoehler 5y ago
  It pretty obvious police protect capital not people. Sure many of the police officers didn't realise this until it was too late and they had committed but I think that would have a bigger detriment on their mental health than being vilified by fringe groups.
- GoodJokes 5y ago
  That you start off with shoehorning legit BLM protest against police brutality into this tells us everything we need to know.
thundergolfer 5y ago
This sounds alarming, like something that could be called a mental health crisis in the DC police. How many police responded on Jan 6, maybe five hundred? 4/500 in seven months would be a terrible rate.
cat_plus_plus 5y ago
Well, yeah, police was endlessly demonized and underfunded in the past decade. There are a few bad apples, but that doesn't justify group guilt and neglect. Rioters should have never been able to attack Capitol OR government buildings in Seattle/Portland. Not saying that Jan 6 was not a bigger threat to the union of those events, although vast majority of rioters were simple hooligans with no credible plans to gain or hold power.
- zimpenfish 5y ago
  > police was endlessly demonized and underfunded in the past decade. https://cfo.dc.gov/sites/default/files/dc/sites/ocfo/publication/attachments/fa_mpd_chapter_2021m.pdf https://cfo.dc.gov/sites/default/files/dc/sites/ocfo/publica... suggests that the DC police have had a stable budget since at least 2018. https://ibo.nyc.ny.us/RevenueSpending/nypd.html https://ibo.nyc.ny.us/RevenueSpending/nypd.html suggests that NYPD have had an increasing budget since 1980. https://www.injusticewatch.org/data/2020/chicago-has-nearly-tripled-per-capita-police-spending-since-1964-data-show/ https://www.injusticewatch.org/data/2020/chicago-has-nearly-... suggests that Chicago PD have had an increasing budget since 1964. Do you have some sources for the "underfunded in the past decade"?
  - formerly_proven 5y ago
    You can have stable or even increasing budgets and still be underfunded. Not saying this is necessarily the case here, just that it's definitely possible to pull that off.
    - Splognosticus 5y ago
      It's not the case as far as I can tell--the DC Metro PD reports show crime there is dropping steadily over time[1]. There's a lot of factors that go into why crime rates change, but suffice to say that if the police weren't funded properly they wouldn't be able to handle the workload. [1] https://mpdc.dc.gov/page/district-crime-data-glance https://mpdc.dc.gov/page/district-crime-data-glance
  - 5y ago
transfire 5y ago
WTF? Is this for real? People don't go about killing themselves so readily -- no matter how much they are being ridiculed. Whenever I read about suicides like this I strongly suspect murder and a cover up.
- shapefrog 5y ago
  Sounds like a paid crisis actor. No doubt when you do some reasarch into the person in question you will struggle to find they actually exist and what little information there is about them will have strong connections to the so called 'spherical earth' propaganda cabal. That and radical liberal marxist communist satanic pedo restaurateurs.
wudangmonk 5y ago
I guess I'm a cynic at heart since my mind went directly to this being somehow related to harrasment by their peers rather than being depressed about the public not appreciating them.
- LightG 5y ago
  Could easily be both, compounded with personal problems. Who really knows. Sad state of affairs either way.
  - nelsonfavedra 5y ago
    Or it could be "suicide." After all, there's four of them now, and a fifth one of "stroke," so what are the odds? As you said, who knows. https://edition.cnn.com/2021/08/02/politics/dc-metropolitan-police-officer-suicide-january-6-capitol-riot/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2021/08/02/politics/dc-metropolitan-...
    - drno123 5y ago
      This was my thought as well. Perhaps they got orders to shoot at unarmed people, wanted to testify about it, and were silenced?
      - AndrewBissell 5y ago
        Or orders to let agents provocateurs push things up to a certain point.
ALittleLight 5y ago
From a little light Googling I don't see that any police officers connected to the 100+ nights of rioting and protests in Portland killed themselves. Why would one event result in so many suicides while the other didn't?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- loopz 5y ago
  Because of the treason of storming a democratic process, and then lying about it? It makes you question who you're working for, when half of politicians are behaving in such shameful manner without reprecussions and justice. These police officers were physically assaulted and had no way of knowing wether they'd come out of it alive or dead. Some people were even searching for politicians to murder, and officers had no way to be able to guarantee for people's safety (ie. doing their real job). It was an extremely volatile and uncontrollable situation, a bet from the curtains behind, that could've gone either way. Expectation is another attempt in a few years, as happened between 1930 and 1940. I wish this warning is unnecessary!
  - dead-snake 5y ago
    BlueAnon-level delusion.
    - ikerdanzel 5y ago
      Yup can see you admit it.
  - hef19898 5y ago
    Yes, January 6th is more like the Beer Hall Putsch. And we all know that that was only the beginning of Hitler's political career. Not sure if that is the right comparison, history is not repeating itself in that way. But having a failed, rather embarrassingly, coup attempt is no guarantee there won't be another one. Or a power grab abusing existing, legitimate democratic processes. The first time the NSDAP won was through a fully legitimate election. First order of the day was a new election that was everything but democratic, so.
aaron695 5y ago
"More than a dozen US Capitol Police officers are under internal investigation for allegedly helping rioters" https://edition.cnn.com/2021/01/13/politics/capitol-insurrection-insider-help/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2021/01/13/politics/capitol-insurrec... Perhaps the relentless attacks from the media and some members of congress could be part of it. I do suspect this is covid related if it's not a statistical anomaly / incorrect pattern finding. It's messed with everyone's heads and we are going to see that coming out with certain sub-groups before others.
john579 5y ago
They were blackmailed to testify the script and then suicided.
encryptluks2 5y ago
Were there suicide notes that even indicated it was even due to the Jan 6 attack? I think we've determined that many police officers are not the most emotionally stable individuals, with families of police officers experiencing up to a 40% increase in domestic violence. Maybe this is just another political ploy to try to find a correlation when there isn't even one.
benmmurphy 5y ago
Is this a normal rate of suicide in these circumstances? Is there anything to indicate that these are instead murders in order to hide something?
- mcherm 5y ago
  > Is this a normal rate of suicide in these circumstances? Absolutely not. For real numbers: > For 2019, the [Blue HELP] calculated the officer suicide rate at 22.4 per 100,000 population.[1] ...and that is an annual rate. > Is there anything to indicate that these are instead murders in order to hide something? No, there is nothing to indicate that. [1] https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/jun/24/facebook-posts/no-police-officer-not-job-highest-rate-suicide/ https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/jun/24/facebook-p...
  - Splognosticus 5y ago
    > No, there is nothing to indicate that. Agreed. I'm noticing this idea floated throughout this thread and it's extremely alarming. There's nothing to suggest that any of the officers died under suspicious circumstances, nobody ever supplies any evidence supporting that theory, they're "just asking questions." After years of watching as ostensibly reasonable people get mired in ever-increasingly insane conspiracy theories I'm incredibly worried to see them introduced to an already dangerously volatile situation. The Jan 6 riots wouldn't have even happened if not for the pervasiveness of the lie that the election was stolen. I really, really wish people would think more carefully before speaking this way.
- AndrewBissell 5y ago
  > Is there anything to indicate that these are instead murders in order to hide something? The huge number of instigators of the riot and leadership in some of the organizations who turned out to be FBI "informants" does call for some sideways glances.
cycomanic 5y ago
Does anyone else find the formulation "died by suicide" a bit weird? Is that commonly used? Compared to "committed suicide" it seems to me that it is supposed to associate a passive action, as if something happened to them. Just to make sure, I absolutely deplore the people storming the capitol and by no means support any of their causes. However I find this type of corporate speak often troublesome, especially if it's being used in connection with law enforcement and military actions.
- BoxOfRain 5y ago
  I think it's because the term "commit suicide" implies a moral judgement, in the past Western notions of suicide were actually pretty barbaric. To accuse someone of trying to commit suicide would have been a fairly serious accusation, in fact in the past in some jurisdictions suicide could mean that your estate went to the government instead of your family as suicide was seen as an offence against God and the Crown. Nowadays we tend to recognise it for the complicated set of behaviours that it actually is, modern notions of mental health and other factors that can contribute to suicide are often no longer seen as personal (and sinful) moral failures on the part of the suicidal person. To "commit" something usually implies that wrongdoing has taken place, for example as a thief or arsonist commits theft or arson. Since suicide is often the result of severe mental health issues, intolerable trauma, or other factors that have nothing to do with a person's moral conduct the verb "commit" is often seen as inappropriate in modern discussion.
  - cycomanic 5y ago
    Thanks for educating me, while I was aware of the strong judgements against suicide (in particular based on religious justifications), I did not connect that to the use of language. Maybe I was jumping to conclusions too quickly.
    - BoxOfRain 5y ago
      No worries! As far as I'm aware it's a fairly recent innovation in language, it'd be harsh to judge people for using the older terminology especially as top-down language changes like this are often fairly controversial.
neartheplain 5y ago
An apparent former D.C. police officer has posted their thoughts on this suicide, and the mood among Capitol and MPD police generally, in the Washington D.C. subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/washingtondc/comments/owl3ru/third_police_officer_who_responded_to_the_us/h7he9oh/ https://www.reddit.com/r/washingtondc/comments/owl3ru/third_...
prossercj 5y ago
The opening session of the house committee investigating the attack contains first-hand accounts from officers. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HutK2vVFqLM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HutK2vVFqLM
GoodJokes 5y ago
I think it’s funny this hasn’t been flagged as having nothing to do with hackernews. I guess lots of you love to share your edgy mildly racist opinions by shoehorning BLM into this.
rdiddly 5y ago
I'm sorry, my first thought is murder/coverup. Thought the same thing when it was Hunter Thompson and the 9/11 responders. I have no evidence. And suicide is plenty plausible. Just want that idea out there for some reason. It should at least occur to people.

103 points by AndrewBissell 5y ago

These officers faced BLM hostility on the left, as well as violence against them and accusations of being traitors from the right. The public that they're supposed to serve was spitting on them and demonizing them from both sides. Add a pandemic to the mix, and anybody's mental health would be flatlining. Suicide among some of them is tragic but not surprising. I don't know how effective counseling services are, but if they do anything, they should be made available to the Jan 6 officers. If anybody reading this is in a dark spot, the suicide lifeline is 800-273-8255, and it's available 24/7.

elygre 5y ago
I think I understand what you mean by “accusations of being traitors from the right”. However, I was unaware of “BLM hostility on the left”. Could you share some more information about this?
- exporectomy 5y ago
  Police in general were the main target of hate in BLM. Some were murdered in the name of BLM because all of them were seen as complicit in the black killing issues.
- cat_plus_plus 5y ago
  Just one of many lies Capitol Police specifically faced: https://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/us-elections-government/ny-trump-church-photo-black-lives-matter-protest-inspector-general-report-20210609-537e7ztrljb5bbn5mjecrto6qi-story.html https://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/us-elections-gover...
  - rob74 5y ago
    totally off topic, but as a European reader I'm getting the following message on that website: > Unfortunately, our website is currently unavailable in your country. We are engaged on the issue and committed to looking at options that support our full range of digital offerings to your market. We continue to identify technical compliance solutions that will provide all readers with our award-winning journalism. Come on guys, 3 years after GDPR you could at least change your text from "we are engaged and committed to looking at options" to "we don't really give a s***"!
    - Cockbrand 5y ago
      I agree! Here's a snapshot of the article: https://archive.is/xWaut https://archive.is/xWaut
    - Tenoke 5y ago
      I am from the EU and more like GDPR (assuming it's even that and not e.g. licensing like BBC Global) than not but I think it's totally fair in general for companies to not provide their services to places where the local laws don't suit them.
      - CRConrad 5y ago
        Sure. But then they can frigging say so, can't they? "Sorry, we ain't gonna" is one thing, whereas "Just a sec, your custom is important to us!", three years afterwards is just utter fucking bullshit. Companies are free to ignore my custom, but not to serve me bullshit.
    - mjevans 5y ago
      They really don't, and FFS, I refuse to ever agree to a cookie question on a site I do NOT create a sign-in for. I block those elements and disable javascript, etc. I'm saddened that 3 years later they still haven't given up trying to demand things I'm never giving them. Too many have given in to the Windows UAC / Popup 'just click yes' illness of security fatigue.
- neartheplain 5y ago
  The Democratic Party and BLM movement entertained calls for police abolition and defunding all summer. Three times as many officers were hospitalized defending the Portland federal courthouse compared to those defending the Capitol. BLM grafitti in Portland called for officers there to be defunded, abolished, and killed. The Democratic Party mayor of Portland banned city officers from helping defend the federal courthouse, and personally appeared at the siege to show solidarity with the rioters. I could list a hundred more examples.
  - okamiueru 5y ago
    From the list of examples, only the Portland grafitti suggesting cops be killed seems valid to me. Defunding police is something I'd assume cops could be very much for, assuming they understand the intention behind. It's isn't a "let's get rid of police" as much as it is "let's reduce the scope of police responsibility". This way, people who might have a mental or drug problem are met by health care professionals, rather than people with guns. If I were a cop, I'd be all for it.
    - legostormtroopr 5y ago
      A motto you have to explain is a bad motto. To a police officer "Defund the police" sounds a lot like "unemployment".
      - okamiueru 5y ago
        I think it is mostly hindered by an unwillingness to listen and/or understand, and not that it requires explanation (which, in of itself isn't necessarily a bad thing... explaining things to people seems par for the course when misinformation is high). If I'm well aware what it means by just following international news, while also not having the affected profession, and living on the other side of the world... you would think the onus should fall sliiiightly on the people directly involved for not understanding the motto, rather than it being a bad or convoluted one. The inspection required to understand it also doesn't do a whole lot of leaps either. "Defund the police!". "What, like completely?", "Nah, that would be insane. Just the part where they need to deal with shit they shouldn't be dealing with". "Ah, ok.". That said, I'm sure there are some who mean "fully". Probably a smaller percentage of people meaning it than people assuming others mean it.
- GaryTang 5y ago
  A multitude more deaths caused by BLM protests. It wasn’t the rosy portrayal the TV showed you. And many people are still living in fear, not knowing when a BLM protest might come burn down their home.
  - altacc 5y ago
    As with many things, the perception of BLM, and associated fear, is based on how the media portrays it and what they give attention to. People living in fear of BLM mostly have that false fear instilled in them by the media, especially the right wing media. The overwhelming majority of BLM protests in the US are completely peaceful. Where protests have turned violent it is often initiated by police action and is typically both small scale and very localized. The definition of "violent" demonstration includes blocking roads, which many people wouldn't consider actually violent or destructive. However some people think BLM is an immediate threat to themselves & their property. To be clear, BLM is certainly not the only example of an incorrectly perceived event/movement/whatever. This happens every day and across the spectrum of politics, geography, etc... Human nature is not perfect and neither is the environment we're living in, so perfect understanding of complex & large scale systems is impossible. https://acleddata.com/2021/05/25/a-year-of-racial-justice-protests-key-trends-in-demonstrations-supporting-the-blm-movement/ https://acleddata.com/2021/05/25/a-year-of-racial-justice-pr...
  - the_why_of_y 5y ago
    Here is what we have found based on the 7,305 events we’ve collected. The overall levels of violence and property destruction were low, and most of the violence that did take place was, in fact, directed against the BLM protesters. First, police made arrests in 5% of the protest events, with over 8,500 reported arrests (or possibly more). Police used tear gas or related chemical substances in 2.5% of these events. Protesters or bystanders were reported injured in 1.6 percent of the protests. In total, at least three Black Lives Matter protesters and one other person were killed while protesting in Omaha, Austin and Kenosha, Wis. One anti-fascist protester killed a far-right group member during a confrontation in Portland, Ore.; law enforcement killed the alleged assailant several days later. Police were reported injured in 1% of the protests. A law enforcement officer killed in California was allegedly shot by supporters of the far-right “boogaloo” movement, not anti-racism protesters. The killings in the line of duty of other law enforcement officers during this period were not related to the protests. Only 3.7% of the protests involved property damage or vandalism. Some portion of these involved neither police nor protesters, but people engaging in vandalism or looting alongside the protests. In short, our data suggest that 96.3% of events involved no property damage or police injuries, and in 97.7% of events, no injuries were reported among participants, bystanders or police. These figures should correct the narrative that the protests were overtaken by rioting and vandalism or violence. Such claims are false. Incidents in which there was protester violence or property destruction should be regarded as exceptional – and not representative of the uprising as a whole. In many instances, police reportedly began or escalated the violence, but some observers nevertheless blame the protesters. https://www.radcliffe.harvard.edu/news-and-ideas/black-lives-matter-protesters-were-overwhelmingly-peaceful-our-research-finds https://www.radcliffe.harvard.edu/news-and-ideas/black-lives...
mjevans 5y ago
Some communities have also been disproportionately persecuted by the police for, a very long time. Maybe it's a legacy of slavery and later segregation. Maybe it's a lack of unifying national spirit (the melting pot of cultural assimilation and a desire to be a small spice in a greater whole) which might have just been wishful thinking on the part of history book authors. I suspect most of the non-anarchist who feel that way would agree with my take that "defund" might be better expressed as RE-form. Re-form the Police in a de-militarized way. Structure community interaction so they are helpful, rather than penalizing. (E.G. more like Japanese neighborhood branches.) Split out social and mental health crisis, maybe with domestic violence response teams that include a mix of branches. Also, for mental health, make it easier to get interventions earlier, before assault with a deadly weapon leads to regrettable and unavoidably bad sets of outcomes.
- horrified 5y ago
  "Some communities have also been disproportionately persecuted by the police for, a very long time." Are you friggin' serious? It's OK if a police officer commits suicide, because some other people harassed some other people before?
  - mjevans 5y ago
    Not what I said. Please do not put words like that in anyone's mouth.
    - horrified 5y ago
      I don't see how it is not what you said. What point were you trying to make?
      - yetihehe 5y ago
        He says where violence comes from. It's not justifying violence, it's saying why it exists and what area should be looked in for solution.
the-dude 5y ago
Maybe his cat died. Or his girlfriend left him. Or he has been depressed all his life. Or he was diagnosed with a terminal disease.
jzb 5y ago
Trying to lay any of this on BLM is bullshit. This is directly tied to the attack on the Capitol by Trump traitors.
arkitaip 5y ago
Exactly how were they targeted by BLM?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- josteink 5y ago
  You mean, aside from police being the main target of BLM ever since the George Floyd incident?
rorykoehler 5y ago
It pretty obvious police protect capital not people. Sure many of the police officers didn't realise this until it was too late and they had committed but I think that would have a bigger detriment on their mental health than being vilified by fringe groups.
GoodJokes 5y ago
That you start off with shoehorning legit BLM protest against police brutality into this tells us everything we need to know.

thundergolfer 5y ago

This sounds alarming, like something that could be called a mental health crisis in the DC police. How many police responded on Jan 6, maybe five hundred? 4/500 in seven months would be a terrible rate.

cat_plus_plus 5y ago

Well, yeah, police was endlessly demonized and underfunded in the past decade. There are a few bad apples, but that doesn't justify group guilt and neglect. Rioters should have never been able to attack Capitol OR government buildings in Seattle/Portland. Not saying that Jan 6 was not a bigger threat to the union of those events, although vast majority of rioters were simple hooligans with no credible plans to gain or hold power.

zimpenfish 5y ago
> police was endlessly demonized and underfunded in the past decade. https://cfo.dc.gov/sites/default/files/dc/sites/ocfo/publication/attachments/fa_mpd_chapter_2021m.pdf https://cfo.dc.gov/sites/default/files/dc/sites/ocfo/publica... suggests that the DC police have had a stable budget since at least 2018. https://ibo.nyc.ny.us/RevenueSpending/nypd.html https://ibo.nyc.ny.us/RevenueSpending/nypd.html suggests that NYPD have had an increasing budget since 1980. https://www.injusticewatch.org/data/2020/chicago-has-nearly-tripled-per-capita-police-spending-since-1964-data-show/ https://www.injusticewatch.org/data/2020/chicago-has-nearly-... suggests that Chicago PD have had an increasing budget since 1964. Do you have some sources for the "underfunded in the past decade"?
- formerly_proven 5y ago
  You can have stable or even increasing budgets and still be underfunded. Not saying this is necessarily the case here, just that it's definitely possible to pull that off.
  - Splognosticus 5y ago
    It's not the case as far as I can tell--the DC Metro PD reports show crime there is dropping steadily over time[1]. There's a lot of factors that go into why crime rates change, but suffice to say that if the police weren't funded properly they wouldn't be able to handle the workload. [1] https://mpdc.dc.gov/page/district-crime-data-glance https://mpdc.dc.gov/page/district-crime-data-glance
- 5y ago

transfire 5y ago

WTF? Is this for real? People don't go about killing themselves so readily -- no matter how much they are being ridiculed. Whenever I read about suicides like this I strongly suspect murder and a cover up.

shapefrog 5y ago
Sounds like a paid crisis actor. No doubt when you do some reasarch into the person in question you will struggle to find they actually exist and what little information there is about them will have strong connections to the so called 'spherical earth' propaganda cabal. That and radical liberal marxist communist satanic pedo restaurateurs.

wudangmonk 5y ago

I guess I'm a cynic at heart since my mind went directly to this being somehow related to harrasment by their peers rather than being depressed about the public not appreciating them.

LightG 5y ago
Could easily be both, compounded with personal problems. Who really knows. Sad state of affairs either way.
- nelsonfavedra 5y ago
  Or it could be "suicide." After all, there's four of them now, and a fifth one of "stroke," so what are the odds? As you said, who knows. https://edition.cnn.com/2021/08/02/politics/dc-metropolitan-police-officer-suicide-january-6-capitol-riot/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2021/08/02/politics/dc-metropolitan-...
  - drno123 5y ago
    This was my thought as well. Perhaps they got orders to shoot at unarmed people, wanted to testify about it, and were silenced?
    - AndrewBissell 5y ago
      Or orders to let agents provocateurs push things up to a certain point.

ALittleLight 5y ago

From a little light Googling I don't see that any police officers connected to the 100+ nights of rioting and protests in Portland killed themselves. Why would one event result in so many suicides while the other didn't?

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
loopz 5y ago
Because of the treason of storming a democratic process, and then lying about it? It makes you question who you're working for, when half of politicians are behaving in such shameful manner without reprecussions and justice. These police officers were physically assaulted and had no way of knowing wether they'd come out of it alive or dead. Some people were even searching for politicians to murder, and officers had no way to be able to guarantee for people's safety (ie. doing their real job). It was an extremely volatile and uncontrollable situation, a bet from the curtains behind, that could've gone either way. Expectation is another attempt in a few years, as happened between 1930 and 1940. I wish this warning is unnecessary!
- dead-snake 5y ago
  BlueAnon-level delusion.
  - ikerdanzel 5y ago
    Yup can see you admit it.
- hef19898 5y ago
  Yes, January 6th is more like the Beer Hall Putsch. And we all know that that was only the beginning of Hitler's political career. Not sure if that is the right comparison, history is not repeating itself in that way. But having a failed, rather embarrassingly, coup attempt is no guarantee there won't be another one. Or a power grab abusing existing, legitimate democratic processes. The first time the NSDAP won was through a fully legitimate election. First order of the day was a new election that was everything but democratic, so.

aaron695 5y ago

"More than a dozen US Capitol Police officers are under internal investigation for allegedly helping rioters" https://edition.cnn.com/2021/01/13/politics/capitol-insurrection-insider-help/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2021/01/13/politics/capitol-insurrec... Perhaps the relentless attacks from the media and some members of congress could be part of it. I do suspect this is covid related if it's not a statistical anomaly / incorrect pattern finding. It's messed with everyone's heads and we are going to see that coming out with certain sub-groups before others.

john579 5y ago

They were blackmailed to testify the script and then suicided.

encryptluks2 5y ago

Were there suicide notes that even indicated it was even due to the Jan 6 attack? I think we've determined that many police officers are not the most emotionally stable individuals, with families of police officers experiencing up to a 40% increase in domestic violence. Maybe this is just another political ploy to try to find a correlation when there isn't even one.

benmmurphy 5y ago

Is this a normal rate of suicide in these circumstances? Is there anything to indicate that these are instead murders in order to hide something?

mcherm 5y ago
> Is this a normal rate of suicide in these circumstances? Absolutely not. For real numbers: > For 2019, the [Blue HELP] calculated the officer suicide rate at 22.4 per 100,000 population.[1] ...and that is an annual rate. > Is there anything to indicate that these are instead murders in order to hide something? No, there is nothing to indicate that. [1] https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/jun/24/facebook-posts/no-police-officer-not-job-highest-rate-suicide/ https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/jun/24/facebook-p...
- Splognosticus 5y ago
  > No, there is nothing to indicate that. Agreed. I'm noticing this idea floated throughout this thread and it's extremely alarming. There's nothing to suggest that any of the officers died under suspicious circumstances, nobody ever supplies any evidence supporting that theory, they're "just asking questions." After years of watching as ostensibly reasonable people get mired in ever-increasingly insane conspiracy theories I'm incredibly worried to see them introduced to an already dangerously volatile situation. The Jan 6 riots wouldn't have even happened if not for the pervasiveness of the lie that the election was stolen. I really, really wish people would think more carefully before speaking this way.
AndrewBissell 5y ago
> Is there anything to indicate that these are instead murders in order to hide something? The huge number of instigators of the riot and leadership in some of the organizations who turned out to be FBI "informants" does call for some sideways glances.

cycomanic 5y ago

Does anyone else find the formulation "died by suicide" a bit weird? Is that commonly used? Compared to "committed suicide" it seems to me that it is supposed to associate a passive action, as if something happened to them. Just to make sure, I absolutely deplore the people storming the capitol and by no means support any of their causes. However I find this type of corporate speak often troublesome, especially if it's being used in connection with law enforcement and military actions.

BoxOfRain 5y ago
I think it's because the term "commit suicide" implies a moral judgement, in the past Western notions of suicide were actually pretty barbaric. To accuse someone of trying to commit suicide would have been a fairly serious accusation, in fact in the past in some jurisdictions suicide could mean that your estate went to the government instead of your family as suicide was seen as an offence against God and the Crown. Nowadays we tend to recognise it for the complicated set of behaviours that it actually is, modern notions of mental health and other factors that can contribute to suicide are often no longer seen as personal (and sinful) moral failures on the part of the suicidal person. To "commit" something usually implies that wrongdoing has taken place, for example as a thief or arsonist commits theft or arson. Since suicide is often the result of severe mental health issues, intolerable trauma, or other factors that have nothing to do with a person's moral conduct the verb "commit" is often seen as inappropriate in modern discussion.
- cycomanic 5y ago
  Thanks for educating me, while I was aware of the strong judgements against suicide (in particular based on religious justifications), I did not connect that to the use of language. Maybe I was jumping to conclusions too quickly.
  - BoxOfRain 5y ago
    No worries! As far as I'm aware it's a fairly recent innovation in language, it'd be harsh to judge people for using the older terminology especially as top-down language changes like this are often fairly controversial.

neartheplain 5y ago

An apparent former D.C. police officer has posted their thoughts on this suicide, and the mood among Capitol and MPD police generally, in the Washington D.C. subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/washingtondc/comments/owl3ru/third_police_officer_who_responded_to_the_us/h7he9oh/ https://www.reddit.com/r/washingtondc/comments/owl3ru/third_...

prossercj 5y ago

The opening session of the house committee investigating the attack contains first-hand accounts from officers. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HutK2vVFqLM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HutK2vVFqLM

GoodJokes 5y ago

I think it’s funny this hasn’t been flagged as having nothing to do with hackernews. I guess lots of you love to share your edgy mildly racist opinions by shoehorning BLM into this.

rdiddly 5y ago

I'm sorry, my first thought is murder/coverup. Thought the same thing when it was Hunter Thompson and the 9/11 responders. I have no evidence. And suicide is plenty plausible. Just want that idea out there for some reason. It should at least occur to people.