If Jan 6th was just a snuggle fest, why did four police officers that were there that day commit suicide later?

They were probably already prone to suicide and the Jan. 6 incident drove them over the edge.

Sounds plausible.

Too much snuggling.

@chyna that is why they committed suicide?

Maybe they felt they didn’t do enough to protect the Capitol that day. Just speculating, but it was a tragedy all round.

Did any of them leave a note? Had those four officers been badly injured?

We could speculate all day. If they already were feeling life wasn’t worth living, or life was very painful for them, going through that fear and abuse on Jan 6 could be the final straw for life not being worth it to them.

If they were Republicans or even worse QAnon sympathetic, maybe they were having a dissociative crisis. Too much mental stress knowing they were wrong. It would be like their own people (QAnons) against their own people (police).

Maybe they felt they didn’t do their jobs well.

Maybe a close friend or relative was killed that day.

Maybe what they witnessed was haunting them.

I agree with the answer that we don’t have enough information. Police Officer is one of those professions that has a high risk of suicide. It could be any number of reasons that set them off. Claiming their suicides as part of the “deadly” description for the J6 protests is political posturing.

As a survivor of a family member that committed suicide I can tell you it is usually not just one reason that led them to that choice. And it is not the first time they had that thought.

Anybody really think that Jan 6th had nothing to do with these four commiting suicide?
If it was just one or maybe two I might see it as something else, Jan 6th I believe had a huge part in these 4 taking their lives.

Well, considering how demoralized police have been over the past couple of years with the spit in their face attitude and defunding campaigns, coupled with the high attrition rates and mental health issues they face I’m not surprised. How would you feel if extremists went nuts on the capitol and you were helpless to do much about it. That could easily push some over that edge. Police have an alarmingly high suicide rate. That post deleted above, while spicy, was not a personal attack on anyone. It was just the truth.

I can’t ever see defunding the Police ,I can see a lot better training for them,because I agree it’s a huge thankless job with a ton of stress.

@SQUEEKY2 Me either. That whole defund thing was nuts, especially considering some local politicians actually did it to a degree. I have always though that police officers needed to be held to a higher standard, with more training and educational requirements. It needs to be hard to become one but they need to be compensated fairly as well. Many professions require 8+ years of schooling and additional training and/or experience. A GED and 4 months or so of police academy does not cut it in my opinion.

@SQUEEKY2 Do I think J6 had nothing to do with the suicides? I’m sure it did. But I’m not sure how big a part it was. Think about what you are saying. 2 of the cops killed themselves within 2 weeks of the protests. Any emotional damage from the protests would have had to be so severe that they would have been unable to continue working if that was the cause of their suicides. That would have been a HUGE part of the story and it was conspicuously absent. And as I said, most suicides have considered doing it many times before. Very few times is it one event that makes them suddenly want to kill themselves. So the short time from the event tells me there was far more to it.

And what was the trauma that set them off? That is something else that is only a matter of conjecture. It might be that they got so depressed by the turn of events following the election that they just gave up hope. It might be that they actually supported the views of the protesters and having to stop them resulted in their depression. It is all speculation.

The other 2 cops that committed suicide happened 8 months later. That’s a lot of time from the event that was supposedly “THE” cause of their suicide. Yes, it could brew that long but I don’t believe it is one simple event. I think it is many things.

@Blackwater_Park I’m all with you that cops need to be held to a higher standard. They have a very tough job and to do it right takes a lot of character.

But in the same vein, the media needs to stop trying to make any action they take against a black criminal as a racist thing. Jacob Blake was attacking his ex-wife with a knife and then turned to attack the cops. They shot him and did not kill him, yet the media claimed it was police brutality spurned on by their racism. The BLM protests that followed caused 10s of millions of dollars in damaged and ruined many, many lives. Yet the media doesn’t call that a problem. When cops are literally ambushed and executed the media doesn’t call that racist, they don’t call it blowback from radical groups, they don’t call it anything. It is a blip on the reporting. I believe that the media needs to be held to a much higher standard than they are and a much higher standard than even cops.

@seawulf575 I do agree, some of it is media frenzy. There are far too many people being shot in the back or shot while unarmed going on though. We certainly don’t have the best and brightest on the force at the moment. This anti-police angst has made that worse too. You would have to either have a huge heart or be a complete moron or psychopath to be a LEO right now.