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The tragic issue of officer suicide continues to challenge law enforcement agencies nationwide. In recent years, the focus on mental health support within the law enforcement community has intensified, leading to strategies like peer support programs and trauma-focused therapies. By understanding the contributing factors — such as accumulated trauma, organizational stress and personal challenges — agencies can develop comprehensive solutions that address the mental wellness of officers, from recruitment to retirement.
In this episode of the Policing Matters podcast, host Jim Dudley speaks with Matt Walsh, Deputy Executive Director of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE), who shares his vast experience on the topic of law enforcement suicide. Walsh discusses the groundbreaking data collection efforts by FDLE, which are shedding new light on the true scale of officer suicides. He also highlights FDLE’s proactive approaches, such as peer support programs and trauma-focused therapy, aimed at reducing the devastating impact of suicide in the law enforcement community.
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About our guest
Matt Walsh is a 27-year law enforcement professional. He is the FDLE Deputy Executive Director leading Public Safety Services (PSS) which includes, Capitol Police, Protective Operations Section (POS) Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS), Information and Technology (IT), High Tech Cyber, Targeted Violence Prevention Program (TVPP), and Officer Wellness.
He began his career at the Lee County Sheriff’s Office that included assignments to road patrol, auto theft detective, homicide detective, and SWAT operator. In 2003, Matt accepted a position with FDLE. Since then, he has worked and held leadership positions in Fort Myers, Jacksonville and now Tallahassee.
During his time with FDLE, Matt has investigated violent crime, homicide, public corruption and organized crime. Matt had assignments to the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force and the US Marshals Fugitive Task Force before promoting into leadership positions.
In 2020, Matt was appointed Interim Sheriff for the Clay County Sheriff’s Office by Governor DeSantis.
Matt has lectured and trained law enforcement members in the area of death and homicide, stress management, mental health and resiliency. Matt was a member of three suicide reduction focus groups, the Florida Delegation for the Governor’s Challenge to reduce/eliminate suicide among service members, veterans and their family members, the First Responder Suicide Reduction Task Force and the State of Florida Suicide Council. Matt was the founder of the FDLE Critical Incident Stress Management/Peer Support Team and has led interventions following the Pulse Nightclub attack, the Broward Airport Shooting, the Parkland School Shooting, the Sebring Mass Shooting, Pensacola NAS and other critical incidents.
Key takeaways
- Data accuracy is key: Accurate tracking of officer suicides, including those who have left the profession, is essential to understanding the full scope of the problem and shaping effective prevention strategies.
- Early intervention is crucial: A significant number of officer suicides occur within the first five years of service, highlighting the need for mental health support from the onset of an officer’s career.
- Peer support and trauma therapy matter: FDLE’s peer-driven support programs, combined with therapies like Accelerated Resolution Therapy (ART), are making a substantial impact, saving lives and restoring hope.
- Holistic mental health programs: Comprehensive wellness programs, including mandatory mental health check-ins, reduce stigma and encourage officers to seek help early, preventing long-term mental health issues.
- Expanding research to first responders: Research into the effects of trauma on officers’ mental health, including the role of Traumatic Brain Injuries (TBIs), is expanding, helping to address both psychological and physical health in law enforcement.
Resources
- Blue HELP
- FBI Suicide Prevention
- IACP Suicide Prevention Program
- Columbia Suicide Severity Rating Scale (C-SSRS)
- Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE)
- Cordico
- Peer support training
- Emotional Survival for Law Enforcement by Kevin M. Gilmartin
- What is the prevalence of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) in law enforcement?
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Episode transcript
Jim Dudley: We know the heartache that suicide brings in any situation, and it’s difficult for everyone involved. In the law enforcement profession, it’s especially heartbreaking. We know the value of peer support programs and evaluations and the importance of smashing the stigma. But can we break down the data and learn more about the “why” behind it? Maybe we can even explore steps to prevent these tragedies.
Our guest today is Matt Walsh from Florida. Matt is in his 27th year in law enforcement. He’s the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) Deputy Executive Director, leading Public Safety Services, which includes the Capitol Police, Protective Operations, Criminal Justice Information Services, Information and Technology, high-tech cyber targeting, violence prevention programs, and officer wellness. That last one is super important these days. He began his career at the Lee County Sheriff’s Office, where he held various roles, including Road Patrol, Auto Theft Detective, Homicide Detective, and SWAT Operator. In 2003, Matt accepted a position with FDLE and has worked in Sebring, Fort Myers, Jacksonville, and now Tallahassee. In 2020, Matt was appointed as Interim Sheriff of the Clay County Sheriff’s Office by Governor DeSantis.
Welcome to Policing Matters, Matt Walsh.
Matt Walsh: Thanks, Jim. I really appreciate the time and appreciate Police1 for everything they do for the law enforcement community.
Jim: Yeah, thank you! I know you’ve written about this topic, and you’ve held a seminar just this past March 2024. You’ve studied the subject of suicide in law enforcement. What did your study look like?
Matt Walsh: Sure. I appreciate the opportunity to address this important topic. One of the things I oversee at FDLE is a lot of data. As you mentioned in your introduction, we maintain criminal justice information services and technology, as well as the Office of Professionalism, which maintains law enforcement certifications for corrections, probation and law enforcement. We also maintain the Medical Examiners Commission. So I asked our research team in professionalism, “Is there a way to accurately capture the number of suicides within the law enforcement community?”
There are many well-intended, excellent groups and nonprofits across the country trying to capture that data, but it’s very difficult because they often rely on agency or family reporting. It’s not scientifically rigorous data. So, I asked, “Can we accurately capture the number of deaths by suicide?” The team did a proof of concept for three years: 2021, 2022 and 2023. They captured suicides from active law enforcement, corrections and probation officers. In 2021, there were 14. In 2022, there were 12. In 2023, there were 10. To me — and to all of us — one is too many.
I then asked if there was a way to capture the data of non-active officers — those who are separated, retired, fired, or even arrested. The reasoning behind this was inspired by what the VA has done for the veteran population. We have active-duty service members and veterans. In my opinion, once someone is a law enforcement officer, they are always part of that community, even if they’ve been fired or arrested. We can look back at their life story and maybe find that they were fired or arrested because of previous traumas they suffered while on the job.
The team came back with data on active and non-active suicides. In 2021, the total number was 41. In 2022, it was 48. In 2023, it was 44. That’s roughly one suicide every eight days. It’s changing the landscape of how we look at suicide within the law enforcement community.
Of those who died by suicide, the majority were white men. The highest rates were in the 50 to 65 age range, as well as those aged 35 to 50. Most importantly, the years of service showed that a majority of suicides happened within the first five years of an officer’s career. We also track officer certifications and found that roughly 40% of officers leave the profession within the first five years. So, we see a clear intersection where we need to start building resilience at the very beginning of an officer’s career. We can’t wait until their first traumatic incident or until they have 10 years on the job. We need to provide support right from the start.
Jim: Absolutely. You make a lot of good points here. I appreciate it. Just in anticipation of our discussion today, I looked up Blue Help, the FBI’s website on suicide prevention, and IACP. All of them had slightly different numbers. One of my colleagues, Joel Shults, who writes for Police1, did a great article last year that touched on the difficulty of finding accurate data. Sometimes it can depend on how a death is declared or the unusual circumstances that may not lead back to suicide, not to mention the stigma.
The numbers you’ve presented — ranging from 10 to 12 suicides per year — then jump dramatically when you include retired officers or those who have left the profession. It’s tripled, if not quadrupled. You bring up great points. The early onset at the beginning of an officer’s career is one factor, but then you see the numbers rise for veteran officers dealing with accumulated trauma.
We often hear that police suicide is one of the highest among all professions. Is that true? Are you comparing law enforcement to other professions?
Matt: That’s a great question. To backtrack a little, in Florida, the number of suicides is triple or quadruple the amount being reported for active officers, compared to what some nonprofits capture. If we’re seeing this in Florida, imagine what the numbers might be if every state’s numbers tripled or quadrupled. It would completely change how we view and treat this epidemic.
You know, FDLE, we’re partnering with universities, specifically FSU, to research that and potentially be the agency to ask all the other states to report it to us, and we can look at it macro, across the country. But when it comes to the rates of suicide—so again, if we’re triple or quadruple, then does that change previous validated and peer-reviewed studies that show the law enforcement profession is out of 50—54% increase for suicide ideations or for suicides? And that is, again, from the smartest, most established researchers in the country who are reporting that. So, could it even be higher? I think it could be. But based on the peer-reviewed research previously done, yeah, law enforcement’s had a 54% increase for suicide.
You know, law enforcement, we witness first — firsthand, and of course vicariously, but firsthand — about 180 critical incidents during our career. Over a 25-30-year career, the average citizen, they average about five. And our men and women who work in our profession, they suffer from different kinds of injuries. There’s physical — you know, broken finger, broken arm, bruise, black eye, sometimes being shot. Then the emotional, psychological, which is maybe a little more difficult to see. And then lastly, the spiritual or moral injury, which is losing faith, just losing your “why.”
So, yeah, because of those different kinds of injuries, the amount of critical incidents that we endure, for sure the suicide risk is heightened within the law enforcement population. There’s no doubt about that.
Jim Dudley: Yeah, and so, in looking at those numbers, and I mean, when you extrapolate to saying, “Wow, we’ve really jumped up more than we even realized,” is that unusual across America? Or are we — I hate to say, keeping pace — but are we on parity with the climbing national suicide rate? I think when we talk about the data collection there, we talk about the overdose epidemic and opioids and how many of those are unintentional, that we’re not counting the intentional ones. The intentional ones are just getting all packaged together with all of those. I mean, it seems like when we do studies about depression and ideation, that’s climbed over the last couple of decades.
Matt Walsh: It has, it has. And, you know, whether it’s the more access to 24-hour news coverage, to see the increased, or the perceived increased, numbers of mass events — whatever that might be — and then you add that on top of what our men and women are experiencing every day, then they go home and see it on the news. Is that kind of compounding that trauma cycle?
It sure could be. But anxiety, depression and PTSD are the three leading mental health diagnoses within the law enforcement population. And it’s the constant up and down. Kevin Gilmartin wrote a great book, “Emotional Survival for Law Enforcement.” He talks about the roller coaster, the constant up and down, and always being on or hypervigilant. That causes those increased symptoms.
Jim Dudley: Yeah, so are there commonalities — I mean, you do the best you can at gathering the data on the confirmed officer suicides. We talk about things like debt or anxiety, home issues, work issues. Have you separated those out to say that there’s an increase, or that there’s a higher number, whether they’re domestic or work or money-related?
Matt Walsh: Sure. Well, I think all of those are contributing factors, but I do want to go back to, you know, how does our suicide risk go up against other professions? And it’s a difficult one to explore because what are the accurate numbers? I think the most accurate numbers are the VA — they capture the data in the military, reports about 22 suicides per day. It’s astronomical. And then I found one study that looked at all first responders, so law enforcement, corrections — when I say law enforcement, that includes corrections — fire, EMS, and telecommunicators. And the study was between 2015 and 2017. During those years, first responder suicides were reported to be 676 or 1% of the total suicides in the country. But of the 676 suicides, 58% of those were law enforcement or corrections.
So when it’s kind of comparing, you try to compare like-type jobs. So, whether it’s law enforcement, fire, EMS, and then military is at the top tier. We’re only right behind military with the number of suicides. Fire was reported at 21%. So, we’re close to 60% of the suicides in the first responder population being law enforcement. Again, those numbers are based on verified peer-reviewed data, but you have to wonder how accurate it could be depending on how they were capturing that data.
But yeah, the commonalities between all those professions, whether it’s military, law enforcement, corrections, fire, EMS, is trauma. It’s witnessing, experiencing it, being victims of it, being victims of crimes. But that’s the common theme, the trauma, and then the contributing factors that you just talked about. The rate of divorce is super high. Money issues, risky behaviors, the increased use of alcohol or some other kind of medications to numb — to push down all that trauma — all that adds to what I call a stress X continuum.
And that is, if we begin our career with high trust and low stress, well, those two intersect within five years, and that’s where you should be. That’s where you’re at your best. But trauma builds and builds, kind of like filling up a bucket of water and never pouring it out. And then, ultimately, the law enforcement person can have such high stress and such low trust in themselves, in their organization, in the community they serve, and the community they live in, that they become helpless and hopeless. And that’s where relationships suffer. That’s where budgets play a part in it. That’s where the increased use of alcohol and medications comes in.
If we have somebody that’s so stressed and has zero trust, then they are at increased risk for suicide ideation. You have helplessness, hopelessness, and then if the connection is worthlessness — if that’s the third one — then the chance of suicide increases exponentially. And if we have people like that, we need to do interventions immediately. And that’s what FDLE is addressing.
The other thing is contributing factors that have just started to be looked at within the last year or so within the law enforcement community: traumatic brain injuries (TBIs), mild traumatic brain injuries. I did some research years ago on it, and 70% or more of the officers I sent a survey to — and the ones that responded — they self-identified multiple concussive hits to the head or subconcussive hits to the head, whether it’s from military service, sports, police service, SWAT service. And then we have to be concerned. Is it just not psychological? Is it physical? Are our brains changing, much like a football player’s brain or a military person’s brain? And chronic traumatic encephalopathy — does that contribute to suicide? And I would suggest it is. It certainly is. It’s not proven yet, but Boston University, they’ve opened up their study to first responder brains, and now they’ll start looking to see if law enforcement and fire personnel are suffering from early-onset or late-stage chronic traumatic encephalopathy at the time of their death.
Jim Dudley: Yeah, I was going to ask you about CTE because I think the NFL, it took them, you know, quite a few retired player suicides before they really looked into the causal factors. And you just, you know, riffed on what a law enforcement officer endures over the course of their career. I don’t know if comparing police and fire is the same as far as job performance and effects and things like that because they really are quite different. I think the public sees police and fire as the same, but they’re really not to anybody who knows the jobs.
But what about comparing to someone like an ER nurse or an ER doc who just sees constant pain and suffering, screaming, people dying, literally at their hands? What about those professions? Any parallel factors there where that witnessed trauma over and over again has contributed, or are their numbers relatively low?
Matt Walsh: That’s a great point. I haven’t dug into the ER world, but anecdotally, just during COVID, there was reported a big increase in suicide among nurses and doctors because they were overwhelmed with the death and the dying, and having people die before they could even treat them. You know, you want to talk about feelings of helplessness. I can only imagine how the ER docs, nurses, and technicians that worked in the ER during those times, what they had to endure.
The biggest thing is helplessness and hopelessness, right? We talked about that a little bit ago, but those two factors weigh heavily when we discuss suicide. So, I would imagine that, yes, their rates of suicide, particularly in COVID, increased. I know that. But the rates of suicide outside of that? I would say that it could be, or at least the ideation — not maybe dying by suicide, but suicide ideation — would be there. And I wonder if they have relationship problems or alcohol problems or medication problems as well. Anecdotally, I’d say yeah, sure they would.
Jim Dudley: Yeah, and I would — I mean, just thinking about a cop — you not only have all the things that come at you from the profession, responding to calls, taking people into custody, using force on people, watching people in these awful situations — but then they have the external. Cops are human, right? They’ve got the external home life, financial, drug, alcohol, even some mental health issues. And then you have within organizational stress — and we’ve talked about that here — and you just hit on it, about that feeling of helplessness.
So, there’s that feeling about going to a call and only having so much physical control of a situation, but then, I mean, in 2020, what a confluence of negative effects on law enforcement: COVID, acting as the enforcer for COVID restrictions, and then the George Floyd incident, and then the defund, and all of that — all hitting at once. And we saw, after January 6, we saw a spike in that. You know, in that microcosm of the response to January 6, we saw a spate of suicides after that. Are we tracking post-incident recovery? Are we doing anything different there?
Matt Walsh: Yeah, so for FDLE, we are — you know, we’re fortunate to be in Florida and have the support from our legislature as far as the way we approach law enforcement. And, you know, during COVID, or during the defund movement, we’ve had solid support from our leaders here in the state of Florida. But it doesn’t change the fact that the outside influences, and again, the total coverage, what that does to the mental health of our men and women.
So, what we’ve done under Commissioner Glass, what he’s asked me to do — and I’m a cause of organizational stress, I’m number two for the state of Florida — and I know that when I task something to the people who work for me, I’m creating that organizational stress. I’m also responsible to make sure I do the best I can to help them mitigate that, to help them to identify it. I spoke to the leadership team this morning, and I talked about the pressure and the stress to always perform and perform admirably in our core values of service, integrity, respect and quality, and acknowledge, “Hey listen, your job is hard, and I’m a cause of stress, but here’s what we can do to deal with that stress.”
And the several things that FDLE has done — years ago, we formed a standardized peer team. It started with 20 of us, and now it’s around 85. And, you know, some other things that we’re doing — we’re looking at different programs that we’ve implemented. One is called the Post-Critical Incident Seminar, modeled after South Carolina Law Enforcement Division (SLED). It is a two-and-a-half to three-day retreat for the law enforcement person and their partner — whoever that partner is in their life: spouse, boyfriend, girlfriend, partner at work, buddy down the street, you know, whoever it might be.
And we have them come, and it’s a peer-driven retreat. So, that’s the most important part. It is people just like them who have experienced stuff just like them — peer-driven, small group led. They’re also given psychotherapy, and we use a trauma therapy called Accelerated Resolution Therapy, which is designed for trauma. And what’s great about it is the cop, or the corrections or probation officer, doesn’t have to talk about it if they don’t want to. And that’s unique, because a lot of us, we don’t like to talk about our crap, right?
And then we give them psychoeducation and collaborative care. We’ve held two so far, in March and May. The next one’s in October. And the comments we get, you know, the de-identified feedback — because everything is protected by HIPAA, but that’s also important, and I’ll talk about that in peer support here in Florida as well — but they gave permission to use some of their quotes, and, you know, the quotes are like, “This saved my life,” or, “It saved my marriage,” or, “I’m happy again. I want to live again.” Two-and-a-half days, and we are making that kind of impact. And then we have follow-ups with them. Our team does follow-ups, our clinicians do follow-ups, refer them to other clinicians or therapists.
But confidentiality is the biggest thing. And again, we’re lucky to be in Florida. Not all the states are fortunate like this, but our peer teams, as long as they have official peer training, then the peer team is given the same level of confidentiality as a therapist is given. So, men and women can feel safe, and they know that they are protected by law. And then you have the clinicians and the therapists in there, and it just kind of brings everything together.
The other thing we’re doing is making sure we have good therapists. You know, I’ve done research. I have a master’s in social work, so I’ve done psychotherapy with the veteran and law enforcement population. What I’ve seen is that we don’t have enough culturally competent clinicians to treat us, because we are different. You mentioned, you know, people compare us to fire all the time. And fire has a very difficult job, but we are vastly different.
Therapists sometimes have a hard time listening to the stories we have, and we actually end up traumatizing them. So, a lot of cops will walk out on their therapist because we don’t want to inflict this on anybody else. So, what we’ve done is partnered with — we have a team, and we teach a law enforcement culture for CEUs, continuing education units, for therapists. We’ve had one so far, very successful. It’s a two-day class. The first day is really the therapist just learning about law enforcement. And the best way to learn about law enforcement is to listen to law enforcement.
So, they listen to me and the clinical director, who is a licensed clinical social worker, and we do a block on that stress X continuum I talked to you about. And then we have another seasoned special agent who had a career before tell his story. Then another one tells his story, and then the last one tells his story. We’re all cops, but with different experiences. So, the clinicians, the therapists, can have a better understanding about our culture.
And then the next day, we put them in real-life, as close to real-life scenarios as we can, whether it’s a shoot/don’t shoot simulator. So, they have to make a decision, and they kind of get that adrenaline dump. And then they are staged within a scene where bad things happen. It’s not real life, but it’s as close to real life as we can make it. And then we spend time with the therapists and talk to them about what they experienced, how they feel it went, and then we encourage them to do ride-alongs — not one ride-along, many ride-alongs with their local agencies — so they can see the men and women in uniform in their marked car, doing the job.
By doing that, we are creating competent therapists to better treat us. So, that’s the other thing FDLE is doing to kind of change the spectrum. You know, standardizing training across the state. The model we use is from the International Critical Incident Stress Foundation, and we are providing peer training free of cost to agencies who would like to send their people. So, we’re scaling up a statewide peer team so if there’s a small agency that doesn’t have the resources, we can bring the resources to them and help them through the worst of their days.
So, those are some of the things that FDLE is doing, whether it’s on the research side or the practical application side. We’re trying to take a holistic approach to addressing the mental health challenges within our community.
Jim Dudley: We talked about contributing factors, we talked about preparing the therapists for what they’re about to encounter, the difference between law enforcement officers and other professions. What works in prevention, Matt? Are there any best practices out there nationwide? Are there apps that work? We talk about peer support — I’ve had some awesome chaplains, like Jared Altic from Kansas City, and the National Chaplain Association. What’s working? What’s making an impact?
Matt Walsh: So, we talked about the PCIS, and we’re modeling after South Carolina. And what we hear every time is, the small groups, the peer support, is the most valuable aspect to that retreat. So, I would suggest that peer support is a huge component, but it has to be the right peers — the ones that I can look across at, or they can look across at, and see someone who’s just like them.
And chaplains. So, we’re forming a chaplain program, a statewide chaplain program, for FDLE to be used by other agencies. And the chaplain, they can address that spiritual or moral injury — the search for “why,” or the loss of your “why,” or loss of faith. Most of us, I would suggest, I don’t have statistics, but most of us were brought up in a service-minded family, and we were called to serve. So, the spiritual aspect or moral aspect is there. And if you lose that, that can be some of the hardest things to get back. So, chaplain programs are very important to address that need.
And again, I said holistic, so it’s got to be a multifaceted approach, and it’s not a one-stop shop, one-fix, because things work differently for different people.
You know, as far as best practices, being from a mental health background myself — my wife’s a psychotherapist — you know, we’ve talked for years. Again, I’m in my 27th year, and it’s probably my third or fourth year on the job. My wife said, “Why aren’t you guys seeing somebody every year?” You know, we go for our physicals. We go to check our heart, our blood pressure. We’re not going for the checkup from the neck up because of the stigma. So, if you make those checkups mandatory, and yet, I know maybe the unions will put negative comments somewhere, but if it’s a mandatory wellness visit that’s holistic, to include your body and your mind, it removes any stigma. You know, we require our cyber agents who go after the worst of the worst with child sexual abuse material (CSAM), they have to see a clinician twice a year. It’s part of the gig. And I don’t know what happens in those sessions, and I don’t need to know, I’m not supposed to know. But I have heard from some of the members who have said it’s the best thing they’ve ever done, that they enjoy it. And they may not even talk about work. They may talk about family stuff, because like you said earlier, we’re human. We have a whole bunch of other stuff going on other than this job.
So, mandatory annual checks are important because it removes any and all stigma. It normalizes the visit. And we need to normalize mental health. We need to normalize talking to people, whether it’s through peers, whether it’s through hiring therapists to be embedded within the agency — normalize it. Instead of saying, “Oh, that’s a shrink, I’m scared of them,” when all they’re there for is to support us. They’re there to help us build resiliency. And we need to do that, like I said earlier, from the very beginning. They need to use evidence-based trauma therapy like ART. And the closer in time we get the involved member in whatever incident it is that’s distressing, in front of a therapist who’s competent and uses an evidence-based trauma modality, the quicker that incident is cleared up, and they build resiliency.
Because what happens is, you know, we all talk about PTSD. PTSD is talked about, probably misdiagnosed more often than it should be because people say, “I have PTSD.” No, you probably have post-traumatic stress. It’s not the disorder. But what can happen is, if we’re always in a fight-or-flight response, the amygdala, we’re always hypervigilant, it hijacks our brain. We cannot think properly. We cannot make proper decisions or make proper decision-making skills, or if we have TBIs. So, that’s the importance of integrating competent therapists within an agency.
You know, we hear about the success stories of the co-responder model — therapists and cops go to a mental health call, and it’s been hugely successful. We need to look in and take care of our people inside the agency, so they can be better prepared to take care of the people on the outside, the citizens that we serve, the ones we swear an oath to protect. And part of that is the holistic view of bringing a therapist in.
You know, the last thing I want to talk about is what the federal government has done for us and the veterans between World War I and World War II. You know, after World War I, the federal government established basically what the VA was, and then it evolved up and through and continues to evolve after World War II because there was a need to take care of our veterans.
Well, maybe the federal government needs to start thinking and preparing the First Responder Health Administration and pay back the men and women who put their lives on the line every day, who suffer injuries, physical, psychological and spiritual, and thank them for their service to the country. Maybe we need to get to that.
Jim Dudley: Yeah, hopefully we do. A couple of things you just said there — one, about the peer support program, I totally am invested. I’ve been a peer support member myself and been aligned with our San Francisco police program. I’m glad you qualified it with, you know, the right people and the right structure because there have been studies that show some negative effects from peer support groups post-incident. And then when you talk about the annual check-ins, I believe in those as well. I like the fact that if they’re scheduled, and they’re on the calendar, everybody goes through them. It is regular, it is routine, and then you go in there for your 30 minutes, hour, talk about whatever — maybe sports, maybe gardening, or biking, or tennis, or golf, whatever. You have that check-in.
But, you know, I’m thinking about cops. Cops are different animals altogether, right? And there’s that expectation that you go in under, you know, the old Maxwell Smart — I just lost a bunch of viewers there who don’t know who I’m talking about — but the old “Get Smart” character and the cone of silence. You and me, cone of silence. Nobody else could hear us, right? But cops have that defensive mechanism, where we don’t divulge everything. We hold back that important information, or we shield ourselves with comedy or laughter or a sense of humor, that sometimes is a dark sense of humor. So, can we get past that? How do we get past that?
Matt Walsh: Sure, and it’s a great question. We still have people that work with me who say, “I don’t trust it.” And I say, “I know. I know you don’t.” But the way we get past it is by having a discussion like this, like we’re having right now, to have trainings to help clinicians become culturally competent, having post-critical incident seminars, where the best marketing is that people have been through it, who have benefited from it, and then they go back to their brothers and sisters and say, “You don’t understand how good that was.” It’s the same thing I’ve seen with our CSAM agents who go see the clinician. They talk to each other. They may not talk to me or talk to anybody in command, but they talk to each other and say how good it is, and that’s the marketing.
So, it’s still an uphill battle because cops are afraid that if they share their darkest secrets, that it gets back to the agency. Now, in therapy, there’s something called informed consent. So, that’s when confidentiality can or has to be broken because the clinician is a mandatory reporter, much like we are. And that’s if you’re homicidal, suicidal, a threat to kids, vulnerable adults, or the elderly. That’s it. Those five. Aside from that, everything is secret. There’s confidentiality. And I’ll suggest this: even if someone’s suicidal, the most important thing is to get them help. They don’t lose their job. And in other areas, unless they committed a crime — if they’ve killed somebody, or, you know, one of the other vulnerable adults, elderly, or kids — unless there’s a crime, it doesn’t mean they lose their job. It means they need help.
So, it is an uphill battle, but the way we do that is by doing what we’re doing. And it scales on its own. It’s a top-down approach as well. You know, if I’m not buying into it as the number two in the state of Florida, how can I expect the people below me, or under my chain of command — how can I expect them to buy into it if I say, “That’s a bunch of nothing, but you do it because you have to”? They’re not going to buy into it.
So, practice like you play. Practice what you preach. So, at every post-critical incident seminar, I’m there. At every clinician training, I’m there. I’m there representing Commissioner Glass, representing the Florida legislature, because they’re backing it. I’m saying, “This is what we’re doing for you.” And being okay with being vulnerable — that’s a very difficult thing for us — and being okay with that, leaning into that discomfort, and showing, “Listen, this is very hard. This is a hard job. It’s a hard career. You likely would never trade it for anything else because it’s what you were called to do. But just because you were called to do it doesn’t mean you need to suffer. It doesn’t mean you need to suffer in silence. It doesn’t mean you need to struggle with whatever issues you may be having. We are here to support you. We are here to take care of you, to make sure you, in turn, are best to serve the people you swore to protect.”
Jim Dudley: Sure. Hey, respectful of your time, I want to wrap up by asking you my final question about pre-testing law enforcement applicants. I mean, you said something early on in the show that I didn’t realize, and that was that in five years, 40% of people leave the profession. I mean, recruiting is tough enough. Retention is hard. We’re losing 40% in their first five years. Are we doing enough in our psych evals? I mean, with recruiting being so tough, are we deteriorating the strength of our psych evals so that we get the best people, resilient people, people that aren’t going to break down on us? I mean, for their own good, we want strong people.
Matt Walsh: Yeah, I think that’s a great question. And I think from what I’ve seen, hiring people and watching the psych evals, our psych evaluation process is still very good. It is catching people who may not be qualified to do this job. It is identifying some people that need extra help. It’s also identifying great people. So, I think the psych evals are still valid, and they’re excellent.
You know, the question is, can we do more? And, you know, the research I’ve done and through my career, a lot of cops get into this job, have a history of adverse childhood experiences, or ACEs. And, you know, there’s a whole scale you can take. I know the Cordico app, which we have here in FDLE, it has the ACEs scale. So, you can self-identify where you would be on that adverse childhood experiences scale. So, could we integrate that maybe into a psych session? Not to disqualify them, but to make them aware. Awareness is one of the biggest things to build resiliency, and then getting to acceptance. So, to help them make them aware and provide those services so the ACEs don’t negatively affect their future decision-making — I think that’s maybe something to explore.
And then traumatic brain injuries again — having a traumatic brain injury or concussion doesn’t disqualify anybody from this profession. But does it help us identify a treatment or a way to address it?
You know, going back to the psych evals, we keep them. They’re great. Can we do more? Maybe. Or do we do more after we get them in? Is there an onboarding process with the therapists to say, “All right, let’s explore this. It doesn’t disqualify you, but we’re going to help you build resiliency so we keep you longer than five years, so you’re not thinking about suicide within the five years, or ever.” So, as a profession, as a community, there’s more we can do to build resiliency. But the psych evals, I still think, do their job. They do a great job.
Jim Dudley: Yeah, there’s a great site on the BJA, the Bureau of Justice Assistance, that talks about suicide studies, and it would be awesome if they could come up with a template so that every agency could make a longitudinal study to show from when someone enters the profession and some baseline psych eval and then check on them every year, or two years, or quarterly, whatever. And then see where we start to maybe erode a little bit and need some renewed confidence.
I’m glad you mentioned ACEs, the adverse childhood experiences, and how sometimes we tamp all of that down, right? If we’re taking the test in our 20s or even 30s, something that we experienced way early in our childhood, we may have completely erased from our frontal lobe. And so, we’re beyond that, we think. But it’s still there. And it creeps up on you. And we’ve had, speaking of Cordico, we’ve had Dr. David Black — who was awesome. And we did a short series on how you’re affected by sleep, by alcohol, by stress, by fitness, all of those things. But we didn’t talk about ACEs. And maybe we should go back and explore that.
Matt Walsh: And I’ve talked to Dr. Black before, and the guy is a forefront leader in this kind of mental health psychology in the law enforcement community. I think that would certainly be a great thing to explore as far as ACEs. And you talk about what can we do beginning, middle, or career to identify suicide ideation.
The other thing that I do with my peer team — I do it with my Capitol Police — is train them on the Columbia Suicide Severity Rating Scale (C-SSRS). And you don’t have to be a clinician to administer it. It’s this little card, and you can use it — it’s a little pocket card you put in your vest — and it asks a series of six questions, and it walks you through. It’s screening somebody for suicide ideation. So, you can do it to yourself, you could do it to the person you’re responding to a mental health call for, you could do it to your partner, you could do it — you know, you could administer it. And then it helps you screen to see if someone is at suicide risk. But it’s the Columbia Suicide Severity Rating Scale, and I think it’s a great tool to have for every officer, whether it’s for themselves, their partners, or for somebody in the community.
Jim Dudley: That’s a great tool. I’m going to add that to our already extensive list of links that we have. We’ve got one from the BJA, the Bureau of Justice Assistance, on suicide prevention; IACP’s suicide consortium; FBI suicide data; Blue HELP; the article that I referenced by my colleague, Joel Shults. I want to thank you for the time that you spent, and I want to thank you for the work that you’re doing on this really important issue of identifying suicide, prevention of suicide, and helping our law enforcement officers who are just doing a hero’s job for America today. Thank you so much, Matt Walsh, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement Deputy Executive Director, leading Public Safety Services. Thanks so much.
Matt Walsh: Thanks, Jim. And again, thank you to Police1, Gordon Graham, the whole team that’s willing to advocate on the law enforcement community’s behalf. Truly appreciate the time. Thank you for giving me the time, and I wish you the best of luck in the future.
Jim Dudley: Thanks so much. And to our listeners, check out the links below. I’ll also list you a link to the work that Matt Walsh is doing in Florida. If you’re nearby, maybe you can check out one of the seminars that he puts on. Three days — I think it takes at least three days to get cops to start talking about what’s really bugging them. So, I hope you get a chance to attend one. All right, let me know what you think. Drop me a line at policingmatters@police1.com. And let me know what you think about what Matt Walsh is doing in Florida. If you have a similar program or a best practice happening near you, let me know. Drop me a line, policingmatters@police1.com. All right, take good care, stay well, and hope to talk to you again real soon.
