A Content Analysis of Police Suicide in the United States, Newspaper Articles: 1 January 1996-1 October 1998

Abstract

This study analyzed the content of newspaper articles reporting police suicides from 1 January 1996 through 1 October 1998. These articles were gathered from four databases: Newspaper Abstracts, New York Times, Data Times, and Westlaw (United States Newspapers). Over 200 local, regional, and national newspapers are included in these databases. The search terms were "police" and "suicide" in the first three databases and in Westlaw, the terms were defined as "police" and "suicide" in the same paragraph. Other variations such as "cop," "officer," "trooper," and "sheriff" were also inserted but provided no additional cases. A total of 19,255 articles were screened to determine appropriateness and 319 were found to be related specifically to police suicides. Within these reports, 82 unique cases were identified and these were studied to ascertain the similarities and differences when compared to existing literature on the subject. There was some support for the characteristics of the population representative of police suicide; however, the primary causal factors were contrary to those commonly cited. Job stress is reported as the primary causal factor in the majority of the literature, yet was reported in only three cases in this study. Moreover, criminal conduct and departmental violations were reported as the second major causation, behind relationship problems, but there is little information regarding this issue in other studies. Further, the majority of the cases where this was cited as the cause, sex offenses were the most commonly reported misconduct. Obviously, there are some limitations to any research regarding police suicide and this study has identified some areas clearly in need of further study.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Jul 27, 1999
Accession Number
ADA366237

Entities

People

  • William C. Cannon Jr.

Organizations

  • Air Force Institute of Technology

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Biomedical

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Air Force
  • Anxiety Disorders
  • Carbon Monoxide
  • Crime
  • Criminal Investigations
  • Criminals
  • Dielectric Gases
  • Employment
  • Health Services
  • Law Enforcement Officers
  • Medical Personnel
  • Mental Disorders
  • Personnel Management
  • Poisoning
  • Societies
  • Traumatic Stress Disorder
  • United States

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