Data includes circumstances surrounding law enforcement suicides and suicide attempts, general locations, demographics, occupations, and the methods used.

“We aim to provide agencies with the means to understand and mitigate situations which could eventually lead to a death by suicide,” said Lora Klingensmith, a program manager in the FBI’s Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) Division, which manages the Bureau’s Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program.

This year, according to the LESDC, seven law enforcement agencies have reported nine suicides and three attempted suicides. All the suicide victims were males—seven were white, one was Black, and one was Hispanic or Latino. Firearms were used in seven suicides; two were listed as “other.” The collection does not collect information that identifies individuals.

As with crime statistics, the ideal is to have more agencies report to the LESDC so that a more representative picture emerges. Law enforcement agencies are not required to submit suicide information to the FBI; it’s voluntary. But the Law Enforcement Suicide Data Collection Act, passed in 2020, requires the attorney general and the FBI to report the suicide data annually to Congress. The FBI, which has a nearly century-long history of collecting data from law enforcement agencies, began collecting the information from agencies on January 1, 2022.

Agencies can submit information to the LESDC through an online portal with CJIS. The information categories include:

• Circumstances and events that occurred before each suicide or attempted suicide
• General location
• Demographic information
• Occupational category
• Method used

Rather than just meeting the annual reporting requirement, CJIS explored developing a more responsive model that could present data to the public as soon as it has been validated. The model follows similar evolutions in the FBI’s reporting of data on topics like hate crimes, the use of force, and law enforcement officers who are killed or wounded in the line of duty. These used to be reported annually. But with the online Crime Data Explorer, the Bureau has been able to release numbers on a more rolling basis.

“The effort now is to take all the data collections we have, including LESDC, and automate them in such a way that the data is validated in as real-time as possible,” said Edward Abraham, unit chief of the Crime and Law Enforcement Statistics Unit at CJIS. “It’s real-time in the sense that as soon as we receive it and validate it, it is going out.”

Producing a current and objective picture of law enforcement suicides may also help reduce the stigma around law enforcement seeking mental health help.

“This stigma has kept officers from getting the assistance they need,” CJIS writer Zach Lilly wrote in a report last year in the FBI’s Law Enforcement Bulletin. The report showed that law enforcement officers face a higher risk of death by suicide than of being killed in the line of duty.

As more agencies contribute data to the LESDC and the results are published, he continued, law enforcement personnel may be encouraged that the feelings they experience are common and should no longer be perceived as a weakness.

“An important step toward restoring mental health and well-being throughout law enforcement” Lilly wrote, “is collecting and publishing this data with the hope of reducing the stigma of seeking help.”