String of law enforcement suicides rattles first responders and exposes gaps in state support

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After two officers he had worked with during a 20-year stint in the U.S. Marine Corps took their own lives, Dustin Schellenger researched what mental health resources were available to his friends, both of whom were local first responders when they died.

“The answer was— a whole lot of nothing,” said Schellenger, who lives in the Dallas area and directs the Texas Law Enforcement Peer Network, a state-funded program offering anonymous support to police officers across Texas.

That network came out of a growing understanding that Texas’ police officers, jailers and first responders face significant psychological pressure and minimal emotional support.

In a span of six weeks this year, four current and former Harris County Sheriff’s Office deputies died by suicide. The string of tragedies made national news and highlighted a problem Schellenger and other law enforcement veterans know deep in their bones: officers need help — even if they don’t ask for it.

Law enforcement officers are 54% more likely to die from suicide than people in other professions, according to a 2021 analysis published in the National Library of Medicine. And Texas led the country in the number of law enforcement officer suicides in 2022.

While state lawmakers attempted to address the issue by funding the Texas Law Enforcement Peer Network in 2021 and requiring officers to complete training on mental health, critical gaps remain.

Texas is among a handful of states that fund a peer-support program and requires law enforcement officers to complete a wellness course to maintain their license. But those programs are insufficient to mitigate officers’ stress because they don’t target workplace culture or proactively check in on officers who are exposed to violence every day, said Reuben Ramirez, the former assistant police chief for the Dallas Police Department and author of a book about how to create healthier cultures in first responder agencies.

“It’s an audacious request to ask these men and women to come forward if they’re struggling,” Ramirez said. “There’s 150 years worth of empirical data that says that if you come forward … that might not work out in your favor.”

Some law enforcement agencies, including the Harris County Sheriff’s Office, have created internal wellness units. Peer support specialists check in on officers after they deal with certain critical incidents and try to emphasize to officers that it’s OK to sometimes not be OK — an effort to chip away at decades of stigma against mental health.

But even those programs have funding shortages and coverage gaps. At HCSO, retired officers are one demographic that is top of mind for Dr. Thomas McNeese, who runs the agency’s Behavioral Health Division that was launched in 2020.

Retired officers are not typically checked on even though they are particularly vulnerable to mental health issues. They suddenly “lose their identity, their social connections, all these different things,” McNeese said, and they are suddenly confronted with an excess of time to process years of accumulated trauma.

Of the four Harris County officers who committed suicide recently, three were retired deputies: Long Nguyen died on Feb. 6, Maria Vasquez on March 16 and William Bozeman on March 19. HCSO Deputy Christina Kohler, who worked in the courts division, died on March 13. All four killed themselves in the same manner, according to the Harris County medical examiner.

The four suicides were not connected, McNeese said. The officers had worked in different divisions and may not have even known one another.

Their deaths occurred as the number of suicides among Texas law enforcement officers had been dropping since 2022’s high of at least 19, based on data collected by the nonprofit Blue HELP. But those statistics are incomplete, since law enforcement agencies are not required to collect data on suicides. Even an FBI database that tracks officer suicides is based only on data submitted voluntarily by agencies.

And suicides are not the only marker of mental health problems. Across the state, police departments, jails and the state prisons face a critical staffing shortage fueled by low retention rates.

“The main reason most jails can’t staff their buildings is because of the conditions they work in,” said Johnny Jaquess, president of the Texas Jail Association. “There’s an incredible amount of stress. We see humanity at its worst.”

The Texas Department of Criminal Justice has asked the Texas Legislature for $37.5 million for staff retention initiatives, including funding for employees to access mental health professionals to work through the aftermath of critical incidents such as inmate assaults in the agency’s roughly 100 state prisons. Since 2022, six TDCJ employees have committed suicide, according to data provided by the agency.

Lawmakers are also considering House Bill 2103, which would expand a mental health leave policy for jailers and correctional officers. Currently, the policy only applies to peace officers and telecommunicators.

Overcoming the tough guy mentality

Being mentally stable is important in any line of work, but it's mandatory for law enforcement officers. The Texas Commission on Law Enforcement, which sets rules for peace officer and jailer training, requires that officers complete a psychological evaluation before they can obtain their license.

Officers have been unlikely to ask for support out of fear of retaliation, whether through a demotion to desk duty or a revocation of their license, several law enforcement officers said.

“I come from the tough guy mentality,” Schellenger said. “That tough guy mentality is part of the reason my friends didn’t survive.”

In Harris County, McNeese says his team has made progress tackling this fear by proactively offering support to officers after they deal with critical incidents, including child abuse cases or homicides.

“Initially, an officer may not have made eye contact because they didn’t want to act like they knew us,” McNeese said. “Now, they come up and say ‘hey, Doc, they’ve really helped me.' That wouldn’t have happened years ago.”

Under state law, officers’ participation in peer support cannot serve as the basis for revocation, suspension or denial of a license.

The Texas Law Enforcement Peer Network allows officers to find anonymous support from officers outside their own agency. Officers can download a free, secure app and then connect via phone or text with a peer hundreds of miles away in another region of Texas. About 900 trained peer support officers are currently active, according to Schellenger, who has been the director of the program since its inception.

The average response time is less than 5 minutes. Officers also can get connected to clinicians who have been screened for cultural competency and understand the particular stresses facing law enforcement officers.

“We want to make sure that when the cop has the courage to ask for help they can get the help they need,” Schellenger said.

About 2,400 officers in Texas have downloaded the app since December 2024, according to a report to the Legislature. That number has increased to about 4,000 since then, Schellenger said, but is still a small fraction of Texas’ 82,000 licensed peace officers and 24,500 jailers.

“We will bend over backwards to help, but a lot of times our message isn’t reaching,” Schellenger said, adding that he often meets officers who have never heard of the program.

The initiative was created with a $2.5 million legislative appropriation. A representative from TCOLE, which operates the program through a contract with the University of North Texas at Dallas, said funding to expand or increase marketing of the program hasn’t been requested from the Legislature.

Sen. Royce West, D-Dallas, is carrying a bill that would require TCOLE to also run a peer support program for telecommunicators, who are not supported through the app. Schellenger said he backs the proposed legislation and also would like to see a similar expansion to retired officers — though he likely would need more money to operate them.

Funding gaps

In the Collin County Sheriff’s Office, an internal peer support program was launched after a law enforcement officer died from COVID-19 a few years ago, said Tami McCullough, who runs the program. It operates similarly to the statewide program, offering peer-to-peer conversations and steering those who need more help to psychologists or other mental help hotlines.

McCullough said she needs more money to offer in-depth training to officers who volunteer as peer support officers. Those peers are tasked with helping jailers as young as 18 years old deal with the emotional aftermath of inmate violence, mental illness and self-harm.

“We have to take care of our peer support officers, as well,” McCullough said. “They are going through their own stress on top of taking on this monumental task of taking on other people’s stress.”

Faced with other challenges, such as a shortage of bed space for the state’s growing jail population, “the county isn’t going to fund us,” McCullough said. “So we just kind of limp along and do what we can do.”

In 2023, Gov. Greg Abbott signed House Bill 3858, which required the Health and Human Services Commission to establish and administer a grant program to help law enforcement agencies create a peace officer wellness program. Lawmakers did not fund the program, however, and nothing came of it.

The budget for the upcoming biennium includes a $3 million allocation for a peace officer wellness program that would be housed within the governor’s office. Law enforcement officers are hopeful it will get Abbott’s approval. Abbott did not respond to an inquiry about whether he supports the program.

That funding also could help large agencies like HCSO reach more officers. Currently, wellness checks are targeted to officers who deal with “critical incidents.” But routine visits can be equally traumatic, said Ramirez, the former Dallas assistant police chief.

“The most difficult part of our jobs is not bullets, it’s not the bad guys,” Ramirez said. “It’s the proximity we stand to other people’s grief, other people’s tragedies, other people’s sadness.”

After several Dallas police officers were arrested on drunken driving or public intoxication charges between 2021 and 2022, Ramirez was tasked with assessing the state of wellness in the department. What he found was not good, he said. Officers did not trust peer support, and proactive checks on officers’ mental health were absent.

“The most difficult part is the sound of screaming mothers at homicide scenes, the contorted bodies at car crashes and seeing what metal glass and asphalt can do to a human body,” Ramirez said he learned through his assessment. “We don’t have anything in place to support our men and women when they go to fatalities or to suicides or car crashes — those are titled routine calls.”

Ramirez helped launch a wellness unit in Dallas County and retired in December. Since then, he has helped other agencies of varying sizes implement a similar program he has named Checkpoints. The program seeks to flip the script on officer wellness, proactively calling officers after routine calls instead of waiting for them to ask for help.

He said he hopes to see Texas law enforcement agencies lead the country on making that proactive model the norm.

“We should just assume that the cumulative effect of exposure to [trauma] will have a negative consequence if not mitigated,” he said. “Our men and women deserve a preventative strategy.”

For 24/7 mental health support in English or Spanish, call the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s free help line at 800-662-4357. You can also reach a trained crisis counselor through the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline by calling or texting 988.

Disclosure: University of North Texas has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

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