GILES COUNTY, Va. (WDBJ) - The Giles County Sheriff’s Office lost Deputy Wes Bradley to suicide February 2025.
These tragedies are far too common among law enforcement. The Virginia Law Enforcement Assistance Program (VALEAP) said officers are two times more likely to die by suicide than be killed in the line of duty.
“There are times when people will experience a traumatic event and just be stuck on that event. We offer a three-day seminar that teaches life skills, they get to meet other officers, deputies, and communications officers who are struggling in a similar way. A big part of this is being able to normalize what we’re experiencing so we don’t feel like we’re freaks, we don’t feel as though we’re the only ones going through this particular response. That really does lend to the healing that we’re able to do in a group setting,” said Kit Cummings, VALEAP Managing Director.
VALEAP is a nonprofit made up of former law enforcement officers who work with mental health professionals to provide support to officers in crisis across the state.
“We frequently come in, in the moment, and provide peer support services, try to help normalize the trauma that comes after a critical event, and give people tips and tricks to move past these events so they don’t become stuck with the trauma they’ve experienced,” said Cummings.
The Giles County Sheriff’s Office works with VALEAP to help its officers work through traumatic experiences.
“Whether it’s a fatality of a car wreck or it’s some type of shooting that we’ve responded to, it’s our policy, it’s our procedure to have our deputies that were exposed to that sit-down and do a critical incident debrief with Kit and his team,” said Giles County Chief Deputy Scott Moye. “They’ve been very good to work with, as a matter of fact, they’re usually here within hours of an incident happening.”
Moye said there are mental health resources available to officers, and the key is guiding them to those resources. He said another key is for officers to support one another, which has helped Giles County Deputies after losing one of their own in February.
“One of the biggest things we have here is family. We’re a huge family, and I think you’ll see that in most law enforcement agencies across the state. Especially in smaller communities and smaller agencies, you become really tight-knit and you lean on each other to get through those times,” said Moye.
Both Moye and Giles County Sheriff Morgan Millirons were Virginia Tech police officers during the shooting on campus in 2007. Moye said that experience shaped the Sheriff’s Department’s focus on peer-to-peer counseling.
“It’s very important that you have someone to talk to after tragic events, and not just events that include your own deputies. There are a lot of things that deputies and law enforcement officers across the country see every day that they carry with them for the rest of their lives. So having a chance to talk to a peer counselor, someone who has walked the same walk you’ve walked, and being able to express how you’re feeling, and what you’re doing as a path forward is really important,” he said.
Moye said the biggest thing to keep in mind is that you never know what someone is dealing with, so you should always be kind.
“There are times when we judge each other harshly, not just law enforcement but all citizens. I think having a little more patience and understanding would go a long way toward improving folks’ mental health and getting people the help that they need,” he said.
Blue H.E.L.P. tracks officer suicides around the country. It said there were 150 officer suicides reported to it in the U.S. in 2024 and 36 so far this year. However, those are only the numbers reported to Blue H.E.L.P. by the officers’ families so the actual number is higher.
VALEAP said law enforcement officers experience around 20 times more traumatic events than the average person.
“With law enforcement professionals, it can be one right after another, after another. It’s easy to kind of get stuck in that almost full-time trauma,” said Cummings.
Cummings said a big key is letting officers know they aren’t alone and it’s a good thing to ask for help.
“Cops are taught not to ask for help. They are taught to just move past a traumatic event, ‘Hey this is what you signed up for’ You just go on to the next one. That’s not really a realistic approach. We do find ourselves caught up in trauma. We do find ourselves hung up in the things that we do. So just like GPS, we know where we’re going, we know where we want to be, but sometimes we need a little bit of help to get there,” he said.
Cummings said some police departments in the state have created peer support networks with specially trained counselors. He said this is something VALEAP supports and will help train peer counselors for.
“We want to see a day where our work becomes out of date, where we’re no longer necessary. We want everybody to be trained to do the type of work that we do or to experience the type of work that we offer so that it’s not such a special event. We all would fall into a more caring pattern in the wake of trauma and have this work become more natural by having the supports built into each local law enforcement agency,” said Cummings.
Cummings stressed that if you or someone you know is struggling, you should call the 988 crisis hotline immediately.
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