Rules Are Meant To Be Broken. Right? No...Not This One

October has passed and along with it another Mental Health Awareness Month.  In 1990, Congress established the first full week as Mental Health Awareness Week in recognition of NAMI's (National Alliance on Mental Illness) work to raise awareness.  October 10 was dedicated by the World Health Organization as World Mental Health Day.  Who knew that?  Did anyone do anything special for those dates or time frames?  Volunteer?  Talk to a friend?  Reach out to a co-worker?  Stick a ribbon magnet on your car (sure, hope not).

Me?  What did I do, you ask?  Well, I had the distinct "pleasure" of attending a police suicide funeral on October 19.  Police Officer Thomas J. Bomba was a 13-year veteran of the Montgomery County Police.  More importantly, he was a husband and a father of two boys.  Six years on the county peer support team...one line of duty death and four police-related suicides.

I never met Officer Bomba, but I heard about him from mutual friends and as well as childhood mates.  He was one helluva a jokester, both on and off the job.  But as with most of us who cleverly use humor as a shield, there was suffering underneath.  TJ, as he was affectionately known by his co-workers, or, better yet, T-Bomb, by his childhood friends, was emotionally wrestling with personal issues at home.  Now, look...some will say that putting that out there is out of bounds.  I can respect that and my intent is not to highlight his intimate issues specifically, but to bring focus on the fact that police officers - those that respond to other individual's crises over and over - have their own.  I've said it before and I'll say it again...we are human, so we need to stay linked to one another.

So, what's the lesson?  There has to be one, right?  We simply cannot let TJ die without using his sacrifice as a call to arms.

OK.  Here's another instance where we need to be connected to our brethren.  If someone leaves the job, for whatever reason, particularly one that is not of their own determining, do you think that maybe there might be a need to remain united to that person, at the very least in a casual manner to ensure that they don't unexpectedly fall off the cliff?  I know an officer that had dedicated the better part of his entire human existence to the public safety profession who got forced out due to medical concerns.  Now, I'm not here to say whether those health concerns were legit or not.  I have no clue.  That's not the point of this diatribe as to how he was subsequently "taken care of".  The dude just devoted 30 plus years - yeah, that's right, thirty years - of his life to the profession, to the community, to that department, and...to the safety and welfare of those "brothers" and "sisters".  I was beside myself and simply disgusted at how the agency just discarded him like a bag of shit.  Unfuckingreal.  And a disgrace to the "think blue line", the law enforcement "family", or, quite frankly, whatever the fuck you wanna call it.  Just sickening the way that administration's "leadership" treated him.  At his core, regardless of what or how you thought of him as a police officer, he is a human being.  As any of us would demand and deserve, his departure warranted a respectful exit.

So, he is out.  Unceremoniously no longer a police officer and now, presumably, without an identity - which is a critical issue for many who leave the job and arguably a prominent factor in the rising tide of suicides within the law enforcement profession - and what do his brothers and sisters do?  Dick.  Nobody reaches out and, if they do, it's cursory; a simple interaction with the now stranded kin for a few weeks or a month or so.  And then "poof".  It's like he didn't exist.  Years and years of "bonds" broken in a virtual instant.

Now, many will argue that if he wanted to maintain those relationships, that severed officer had every opportunity to reach out and preserve those friendships.  But if you're saying that then you don't get what it feels like to be deserted.  It's like, when you're a kid, you go over to your buddy's house for years and then one day their parents no longer want you around and tell you to "get the hell out".  Are you going to walk back over and ask to be welcomed back into your friend's house?  Or, are you going to stand by, patiently...eagerly...and await his invite because you don't feel wanted in that revered place your friend calls "home"?

Discouraged individuals, whether chronically or acutely depressed, almost unconditionally, will NOT initiate contact, especially when they feel like they have been abandoned by someone - a friend - or by something - a profession, a "brotherhood".  It is absolutely up to those that remain within the "house" to preserve contact, to keep that unique bond alive and well so that the dispirited can still keep some semblance of that once family.

So, listen up "brothers" and "sisters"...Stand. The. Fuck. Up.  Get out of your own self-absorbed lives, if even for a half-hour breakfast gettogether, a quick phone call, or, hell, how about a goddamn text just to check-in and see how they're doing during their challenge to steady themselves.  And do it more than once, twice.

They deserve it.  For years and probably hundreds, if not thousands, of times during various routine and balls-to-the-wall calls for service you depended upon them to watch your six, protect your ass, or just flat-the-fuck-out save your life.  And now, the best you can "spare" them is a blow-off?  Abandonment...of trust.  Of friendship.  Of honor.

But I get it.  We all have our own shit to deal with, right?  Of course, we do.  But tell me, please, how it makes any sense whatsoever to expend blood, sweat, and tears for people you don't even know and then not even the time of day for ones you called your brother for years?  Do the right thing.  Helping one another doesn't always have to mean talking about inner feelings, holding hands, giving hugs, or shedding tears with one another.  Helping out a brother or a sister can be - and will almost assuredly be - as simple as hooking up for lunch every once in a while, heading out to a game, or even that 21st century preferred method of "connecting"...the dreaded text.  Speaking from some very personal experience, it does not matter what you do, JUST DO SOMETHING...for the love of God and for the simple fact of treating another human being with a sense of decency.  And do it several times, not just the token once or even twice.  Golden rule, right?  You could help someone from starting down the path of despair, which sometimes can lead to the road TJ was on.

And for those of you that need a refresher...Matthew 7:12 "Therefore, whatever you want men to do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets."

He Has a Name. It's Chris.

Chris.  Or Jose, depending upon your relationship with him.  His God given name is Jose Christopher Trujillo-Daza.

They all have a name.  It's Mark.  And Martin.

These are the three men who I will be riding for beginning this Friday in the 2019 Police Unity Tour with Chapter IV.  This is my ninth Tour and, since 2015, I have been participating in it to honor police-related suicides.  This is contrary to the original intent of the Tour.  The Police Unity Tour was started in 1997 by two New Jersey police officers to bring awareness and honor to those public servants that had been killed in the line of duty.  The problem?  Each year, more law enforcement officers take their own lives than are killed in the line of duty.  According to the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund (the Tour is the Memorial's primary supporter), there was 150 line of duty deaths (LODDs) in 2018.  In that same year, Blue H.E.L.P. recorded165 suicides.  To date, NLEOMF lists 40 LODDs and Blue H.E.L.P. reports 76 suicides.

Seventy-fucking-six.

No way.  This is not happening.  It can't.  That is simply unacceptable.  Period.  And that's why I have been riding for these individuals...to raise awareness - to provoke ACTION - as to what is happening to those that help others.  The stigma of seeking help that engulfs our first responder professions (and military) is killing us.  Literally.

I have had the tremendous honor to talk to Chris' family and friends.  What an amazing young man he was.  He was loved.  Chris was a First Class Petty Officer assigned to Port Security Unit 313 out of Coast Guard District 13.  PSUs are deployable units that provide force protection and security to forward operating naval bases and are almost exclusively staffed by reservists.  Chris was a boat driver, a boatswain mate, for the unit.  When fellow Coasties talk about him they use words like honorable, respectful, dependable, intelligent, and likable.  How I wouldn't beg for a member like Chris to be on my team.

And his family adored him.  His older brother, Paul, told me that their hero, their leader, was Chris.  Paul looked up to his little brother.  They both went to aircraft mechanic school and then worked together for six years.  Chris dreamt of one day becoming a police officer and, presumably, used his duties and responsibilities with the Coast Guard to hone his leadership skills and officer safety tactics.  He loved serving.  His community.  His country.

Chris loved his mom.  Tragically, six months prior to his suicide, his mother lost her battle to cancer.  Paul knows that her loss took a heavy hit to Chris.  But, with this stigma strangling public safety professions, he was reluctant to seek out help.  So, we lost him.  (Many times, a traumatic catalyst like the loss of a family member sets a loved one into an abyss.  Keep that in mind if you know someone who has experienced such a loss.  It could be a trigger.)

And we lost Mark.  A beloved 43-year old police officer in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.  A father, a brother, a friend, a son.

And Martin.  A dedicated sergeant with the New Jersey State Police.  A husband, a father, a son.

This shit has got to stop.  It simply has to.

So, I ride for these three...and all the others.  My journey to honor them starts on Friday.  All participants in the Tour wear an "honor band", which is an engraved metal band with the officer's name, agency, and end of watch date.  We wear this band as a way to remember the loss during tough times on our ride.  It reminds us that our "tough time" is nothing - nothing - compared to the challenges and struggles that the families, loved ones, friends and other survivors go through each and every day since their loss.

But police-related suicides do not get the same honor.  They must, however.  I mean, it's on The Wall (the Memorial)...

 "It is not how these officers died that made them heroes, it is how they lived."

- Vivian Eney Cross, Survivor
(husband, SGT Christopher Eney, EOW: 24 August 1984)

So, I ride...again...for heroes like Mark.  Martin.

And Chris.