In the aftermath of the deadly riots that shook the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 of last year, police officers came forward with harrowing accounts of the brutality they suffered that day. They were beaten with poles, sprayed with mace, dragged down stairs, stomped on, and tased by a mob of insurrectionists intent on breaching the Capitol.
With Capitol Police overwhelmed and the National Guard missing in action, D.C.’s Metropolitan Police Department found itself at the center of the chaos, providing much-needed reinforcements at the building. In a closed-door briefing in late January, D.C. Police Chief Robert Contee told a Congressional committee that 65 MPD officers were injured in the attack.
Today, many MPD officers say they’re still coping with the mental and emotional toll of Jan. 6, and a growing number are seeking justice through legal action. Just this week, MPD Officers Bobby Tabron and DeDivine K. Carter filed a lawsuit against former President Trump over his alleged incitement of the angry mob, citing “severe injuries” and “emotional distress.”
Per the lawsuit, Tabron, a 19-year MPD veteran, still suffers from insomnia and “nightmares and night terrors in which he is fighting for his life.” Meanwhile, Carter, a five-year MPD veteran, has “recurrent thoughts that haunt him” after getting punched, hit with poles, and sprayed with chemicals.
Local officials are also suing. In December, D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine filed a federal lawsuit against two far-right extremist groups that participated in the riots, noting that D.C. officers “continue to suffer physical and mental trauma.” Racine’s lawsuit was applauded by Michael Fanone, a former MPD officer who suffered a heart attack and concussion during the attacks, and has become a symbol of the trauma endured by police after testifying before Congress.
“Those of us who suffered physical and emotional harm trying to defend democracy will never forget,” Fanone said in a statement.
Since the attacks, MPD has been rocked by a string of suicides. Just two weeks after the riots, Officer Jeffrey Smith took his life after 12 years on the force. Within the next 6 months, two more MPD officers — Kyle DeFreytag and Gunther Hashida — had killed themselves. All three were among the officers who responded to the riots. According to the department, only two other MPD officers have died by suicide in the last decade: one in 2013 and one in 2017.
In response, MPD officials have boosted mental health resources at the department and publicly encouraged officers to pursue counseling. Some experts say the agency is ahead of the curve when it comes to addressing mental illness within its ranks/ However, lingering stigma and the absence of routine psychological evaluations may be leaving some officers to cope with their trauma alone.
Jan. 6 ‘probably the last straw’
For Evan Douglas, who resigned from MPD in March, Jan. 6 was a tipping point.
“That was probably the last straw for me,” he told WAMU/DCist.
When he started his shift with Civil Disturbance Unit 74 that day around 6 a.m., the sky was overcast and there was an overwhelming sense of calm near the White House on New York Avenue. But as the day went on, the crowds started filtering into downtown.
“I started seeing more and more people out on the streets, with the flags and the MAGA paraphernalia,” he said.
By early afternoon, he heard that several guns had been recovered from protesters, and that a large group was headed toward the Capitol. From that point on, the voices of his superiors over the radio were growing tenser by the minute. Eventually, the calls for backup started pouring in.
“And that’s when it was rocking and rolling,” said Douglas, declining to go into more detail.
He left MPD two months later, after having served on the force for five years.
While the Capitol insurrection stood out for its sheer scale and hypercharged political nature, it was just one of the many violent and potentially traumatizing incidents D.C. police officers responded to last year. In 2021, homicides in the District increased for the fourth year in a row to hit 227 killings – the highest number recorded since 2003. And there’s the added stress of the coronavirus pandemic, which has killed hundreds of police officers across the country while stretching first responders thin.
The MPD have also faced their share of criticism. In response to the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Black Lives Matter protests erupted around the country in the summer of 2020, including in D.C. The MPD have been criticized for aggressive tactics, including using pepper spray and “kettling” protesters.
Brett Parson, a retired MPD officer who serves as president of the D.C. chapter of Concerns of Police Survivors, told WAMU/DCist the recent string of suicides at MPD can’t directly be tied to the Jan. 6 riot.
“When you go from zero to three, of course it’s an uptick, but that doesn’t necessarily mean — in the scheme of the long term — anything other than three people killed themselves,” he said.
He said MPD has more resources and funding for mental health than most law enforcement agencies.
“The majority of the 18,000 police departments around the country have very few resources, if any, to help officers cope with depression, anxiety, suicidal ideation, and things like that,” said Parson, who consults for law enforcement agencies around the country.
A range of mental health resources
MPD officers have access to several department-run programs for mental health, including peer-support groups, a general wellness program and a chaplain’s counseling corps. As District employees, they also receive a standard benefits package that covers mental health counseling.
But Parson said the department’s most unique resource is the Metropolitan Police Employee Assistance Program (MPEAP), a free mental health clinic jointly funded by the department and the D.C. chapter of the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP).
MPEAP operates from a townhouse in Capitol Hill, where it employs four full-time therapists who specialize in issues commonly affecting police officers, like post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, job-related stress and alcoholism.
The clinic has been operated since 1988 by Dr. Beverly Anderson, a nationally renowned expert on police trauma. It is considered independent from the MPD, a unique arrangement that Parson says has helped grant more privacy to officers who seek counseling.
“[Dr. Beverly Anderson] does not work for the D.C. government,” said Parson. “Her contract is with the Fraternal Order of Police, so police officers trust that more than they do the D.C. government or D.C. police department.”
A 1990 agreement between MPD and the union established that “any records maintained on members who participate in MPEAP shall be regarded as confidential.” Parson said the clinic only alerts department officials in extreme cases, like if an officer tells a counselor they want to hurt themselves, or if they are showing up to work intoxicated. “It’s very, very rare,” he said.
Still, having an abundance of mental health resources doesn’t guarantee officers will use them, and Parson said the MPD has room to improve on participation rates.
“No agency is perfect,” he said. “And to the extent that they can improve upon monitoring officers’ mental health, and providing ways to check in with officers on a regular basis – I would love to see more of that.”
Stigma and shame still prevail
Experts agree that while the culture around mental health has improved in U.S. law enforcement agencies, there’s still a toxic notion that people who seek mental health treatment aren’t fit to serve.
“There’s still a lot of shame, a lot of stigma involved with seeking mental health treatment, even among civilians, but it’s ratcheted up with law enforcement,” Risdon Slate, a professor of criminology at Florida Southern College, told WAMU/DCist.
Slate said the taboo around mental health – which is particularly prevalent among male officers – ties back to what he calls “John Wayne syndrome.”
“The ‘John Wayne syndrome’ is basically the stiff upper lip. You never let anybody see weakness,” he said. “It’s just this kind of tough guy attitude and mentality that is presented, even though internally people may be falling apart.”
In the 1980s, before launching a career in academia, Slate worked as the assistant warden of a now-defunct maximum security prison in South Carolina – a job he describes as “very stressful.” There, he witnessed the execution of two inmates, leaving him with long lasting trauma.
“For three months, we rehearsed putting a correctional officer about the size of the condemned inmate in the electric chair, and doing everything but hitting the juice,” he said.
After leaving the prison for a job as a federal probation officer, he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Fearing repercussions at his job, he tried to hide his condition from colleagues and superiors for months.
But eventually, he broke into a manic episode at work. After that, he was given a choice: leave or get fired. He resigned, but the experience left him scarred, and it took years before he started opening up about his mental illness.
“I was embarrassed. I was ashamed,” Slate said.
Today, he’s the co-author of a 1,000-page textbook called “The Criminalization of Mental Illness: Crisis and Opportunity for the Justice System,” and he travels the country training police officials to better understand mental illness.
“What traditionally has happened in law enforcement agencies is when somebody talks about a particular mental health problem, they get put on what’s called the bow-and-arrow squadron,” he said. “They get their service revolver taken away from them, and they’re given a desk job.”
That kind of punitive approach can keep officers from seeking help. He noted that how a department approaches mental health depends heavily on its leadership.
MPD veterans say D.C. Police Chief Robert Contee’s arrival at the helm last year sparked a cultural shift on mental health. Contee has cultivated a softer image than his predecessor, Peter Newsham. Newsham left his post last year to head up the much smaller Prince William County Police Department, as he faced increasing tensions from detractors in the city.
After Jan. 6, Contee sat down with Anderson, of MPEAP, for an on-camera “debrief” about the attack, opening up about his own experience that day. Roughly 4,000 officers –– almost the entire force –– tuned in to watch the session, which aired in a live broadcast.
“In order to fight against compassion fatigue and to have officers who can serve our community with empathy, we must work to support the well-being of the whole person for all of our members,” Contee said during the session.
Ward 6 Councilmember Charles Allen, who oversees the police department as chair of the D.C. Council’s Committee on the Judiciary and Public Safety, commended Contee for the appearance and praised the chief’s “leadership” on mental health issues.
“He really put himself out there and made himself vulnerable to talk about it and work his way through it with a camera on,” Allen told WAMU/DCist.
‘Unaddressed’ trauma
In May, MPD announced the hiring of a new full-time director to coordinate and increase officer participation in the agency’s various mental health programs. The D.C. Council added roughly half a million dollars to MPD’s FY 2022 budget to fund the position, along with $850,000 in grants to improve wellness resources at D.C. agencies.
But without regular mental health check-ups, Allen said MPD will continue to rely on officers self-reporting any potential mental health needs. The department requires that new recruits submit to a polygraph examination and a combined physical and mental evaluation, but like most police agencies, it doesn’t mandate mental health evaluations beyond the hiring process.
“We’ve built a system that is reliant on someone raising their hand to say ‘I need some help,’” said Allen.
Without regular check-ups, officers are left to decide whether or not they need counseling, and many who are suffering go untreated. In a 2020 survey of more than 400 officers of the Dallas Police Department, more than a quarter of respondents screened positive for mental illness symptoms, but only a fraction of those who did (17%) reported seeking mental health services within the last year.
The study – the first to assess mental illness at a major urban police department – concluded that regular mental health check-ups “may be needed in law enforcement agencies to systematically identify and refer officers to mental health care services.”
“If we wait on people until they’re in crisis, and we’re waiting for them to raise their hand to identify their own crisis, we will always be in a game of trying to catch up, we’ll never be able to get in front of it,” said Allen.
In April, the D.C. Police Reform Commission, a panel of experts appointed in 2020 to examine policing practices in the District, highlighted the risks of leaving police trauma “unaddressed” for officers. That may affect not only the officer, but also the public.
“Policing often induces trauma which, particularly if left unaddressed, can adversely affect officers and their families, and influence how officers treat community members,” the commission wrote in a report to the D.C. Council.
‘Policing doesn’t prepare you for that’
Ronald Hampton, a retired MPD officer and the former executive director of the National Black Police Association, said awareness around mental health has significantly improved at MPD over the last two decades.
From 1971 to 1994, Hampton served as a community officer in MPD’s Third District, an area that extends from Logan Circle to Mt. Pleasant. When he started off, the District’s overall crime rate was more than twice what it is today. In his last five years on the job, D.C.’s crack-cocaine epidemic fueled a surge in violent crime that peaked at 482 homicides in 1991 — more than twice last year’s total.
He said that back then, officers “had to grin and bear it,” because mental health simply “wasn’t part of the conversation” at MPD. Acknowledging any trauma or mental illness was considered a sign of weakness, he explained, and officers who consulted therapists ran the risk of being labeled “crazy.”
“It was a time when police got involved in a shooting, and then they would just come to work the next day,” he said.
Riots weren’t uncommon in D.C. during Hampton’s time on the force. In May of 1991, police clashed with Latino protesters in Mt. Pleasant for three consecutive nights after an officer shot and critically injured a Salvadoran man who was drinking in public. Around twenty police vehicles were destroyed in the riots and several officers were rushed to the hospital, according to the Washington Post.
Hampton was on patrol in Mt. Pleasant during the riots. But he said nothing in his more than two decades on the force compares to the violence officers experienced during the Capitol insurrection.
“I don’t think there’s ever been an experience that we’ve had that was equal to what we saw on [Jan. 6],” he said.
He said MPD should investigate the string of officer suicides that followed Jan. 6, and use their findings to reassess the agency’s protocols on mental health.
“I want to know,” he said, and then paused. “What were the circumstances or the situations that these individuals confronted that they could not get over and ultimately ended up using their life?”
As experts have pointed out, there is no single cause of suicide, but a traumatizing experience can often act as a “precipitating event.” The widow of Capitol Police officer Howard Liebengood has called on officials to designate her husband’s death as “in the line of duty.”
MPD did not answer several inquiries from WAMU/DCist about whether the department is investigating the suicides.
After turning in his MPD badge, Evan Douglas took a fellowship with the D.C. Justice Lab to research policing issues and criminal justice reform.
He was lucky not to be injured in the insurrection, although the “sheer violence” of that day — like seeing colleagues collapse after being struck by bricks and other objects — continues to haunt him.
“Even if you don’t think that Jan. 6 is bothering you, I think it’s sticking with everyone who was there that day in some way, shape or form,” said Douglas.
He’s now looking for a new job after completing a master’s in Criminology at George Washington University. Last year, he developed an educational workshop on empathy that was officially incorporated into MPD’s training curriculum. Still, he said no amount of training could have prepared officers for Jan. 6.
“Policing doesn’t prepare you for that,” he said.
Douglas agreed with Allen that the MPD should implement annual mental health screenings. He said officers experience a lot of trauma during their careers, so their mental health shouldn’t be expected to remain as it was on training day.
“Make it a requirement for everyone who does this work to take care of themselves,” he said. “Because people are definitely suffering in silence.”
