Police Suicides Revisited

ABSTRACT: Between January 1, 1934 and January 1, 1940, 91 New York City policemen committed suicide. Dr. Paul Friedman, in the only previously published account describing this special group, speculated that the high suicide rate for those years was due, in part, to the turbulence caused by changes in New York City's political administration attendant to Tammany Hall's fall from political hegemony as a result of the 1933 election of Fiorello H. La Guardia. The purpose of this paper is to reexamine the original police files and case histories, now residing in the Zilboorg-Friedman Archives, and to offer new comments and speculations concerning these police suicides. Involved in this examination will be (a) the use of the “psychological autopsy” in assessing several equivocal deaths; (b) the use of statistical techniques to analyze both previously unpublished archival material and recently acquired police suicide data from other cities in America and England; and (c) a discussion of the impact of Tammany Hall politics on the police department, including an assessment of the effects of the La Guardia election in 1933.