by Dick Augusta

 

I’d had an excellent career for 12 years on the California Highway Patrol.  All that  ended one fateful night when I was gunned down by armed felons on a "Routine Stop".  The vehicle had three occupants I only later learned had been on a 'Crime Spree' of robberies and murders.  While speaking to the driver, one of the male occupants in the back seat shot me point blank from about three feet.  The bullet ripped into my body, puncturing my left kidney and sticking to my spine, knocking me to the pavement.  I knew I was going to die, but drew my service revolver and started firing at his assailants, despite the intense pain and loss of blood.  I was intent on "taking one of them with me".  The assailants fled in their vehicle, and I struggled to my feet and laid on the seat of the patrol car, elevating my feet so I wouldn't go into shock.  In  minutes,an ambulance had me on the way to the hospital.

     

A Catholic Priest was summoned and administered 'Last Rites' prior to emergency surgery.

    

I had many weeks in the hospital to think how close that  ‘Routine Stop’ had come to being a one way trip to the cemetery, or worse, a lifetime pass to a wheelchair. 

 

It took a year to heal from the bullet wound, and I then realized I needed psychotherapy to overcome the trauma. 

    

Still, I found I wasn’t able to continue my career after such a traumatic bullet wound injury—few can.  I tried, but found myself on the edge of “drawing down” at the slightest provocation.  I feared I would do harm to someone innocent.  My nerves were on edge constantly.  I found myself facing retirement.

    

Nothing, however, prepared me for what was next—the sense of loss and the crushing "aloneness" an officer feels when he is severely injured on the job, retired, and forgotten.  He or she is initially subjected to a wave of sympathy and support, media coverage--and then sent away with a half pension...and forgotten.

    

I made attempts to approach our Academy, both with letters and in-person requests,  to relate my unique story for cadets from my personal experience so they could learn.  I was given a smile and the usual feeble excuses. I was naive enough to think that my so-called "Family" would welcome me with a kind reception, but the 'young' staff there ignored my interest and offer.  It was puzzling to me,as I think that very few of them...if any, have ever experienced receiving a serious bullet wound and living to tell about it...a rarity.

    

It's no small wonder that the suicide rate for medically retired officers is the 'highest' for all Law Enforcement.  They are the "walking dead", shuffled off to annual BBQ's; cold receptions at CHP Offices; and a brief obituary in the Association paper.  Sadly, I learned how true these words are:  "Courage is a fragile thing, and history doesn't linger for too long anywhere."

    

I’m left with a lasting depression from the fateful night that I gave my ALL for the Department and the citizens of California, and most of the young troops don't know or even, worse, care...until it happens to them.

 

 

THE IMPACT OF DISABILITY RETIREMENT

 

Dick Augusta was fortunate to have survived a shooting that ruptured his kidney and lodged near his spine.  His reactions to a relatively sudden retirement and his feelings of abandonment, however, are not that unusual.  To this day, 30 years later, Dick has trouble sleeping.  At the slightest sound, even a car door closing down the street, he is upright and alert, looking for danger.  Awakened thusly many nights, he is unable to return to sleep.  He has extra outside floodlights for a feeling of security and leaves lights on in the house while he sleeps. 

Acutely unsettling are these “untimely” retirements for injuries for which officers find themselves stripped of their badge and sent off with a 50% salary.  While generally tax-free, such pensions soon slide behind the cost of living and, depending on the injury and the officer’s age, retirees may find employment limited.  Penalties on their Social Security, which strip away another 50% of their earnings, frustrate them and create even greater financial hardships.

 

The United States Department of Commerce reports that 56 percent of all retiring police officers leave on disability retirements.

 

Regardless of the severity of their injury, many disabled retirees reluctantly admit to feeling shame in the presence of other officers who “made it” through a “full career” with some injuries of their own.  Worse, if they had the misfortune of being retired on a stress related injury, such as PTSD, they feel regarded, as one commenter said, “like the crazy aunt in the basement.” Some drink.  Others lose relationships or engage in reckless behaviors.  Some isolate and slide into depression.  Average life expectancies are low, for officers.  Many, as the figures show, choose to simply end it early.  What is that telling us?  That we have successfully put a band aid on their wounds, until we could sweep them away, retired, forgotten and eventually suicidal.

  

In fact, the suicide rate for retired cops is frightening, and far higher than that of active duty officers.  For medically retired officers (which includes those retired on PTSD) the suicide rate is even more shameful.  The California Association of Highway Patrolmen reports (unverified) that, where the national suicide rate for the general population is 10.1 per 100,000, it jumps to 33.5 for retired officers.  For medically retired officers, they report, the suicide rate is an inexcusable 2,621 per 100,000.

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Violanti reports that an increased risk of disease and death is common among police retirees, high among the causes being cancers of the colon and liver.  Another of his studies showed an average life span of 64.3 years, considerably lower than the average for males in the United States--76 years of age.

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Many of these are officers who finished their careers with undiagnosed trauma, who carry along with their physical pain the deep scars associated with a lifetime of emotional wounding.  For many retirees, there is a lack of understanding of what they have truly been through—they have been drilled to believe that posttraumatic stress only occurs as the result of “One Big Incident.”  Conveniently left out by “helpers” along the way was that PTSD also happens from a lifetime of repeat traumas (cumulative PTSD) that begin to eat at and rob the spirit, resulting in decades of “soul wounding” that most assuredly can leave an officer severely harmed.

 

RETIREMENT IN GENERAL

 

Few departments recognize the tremendous impact retirement has on an officer.  From practically the first day in the academy, however, a cadet can tell you roughly when they will retire.  At varying times during their careers, they will maintain a focus on that approximate date, which will become more and more concrete as they grow closer to it. 

 

It has been suggested, however, that one of the most vulnerable times for a police officer is that period nearing retirement and the first year or two after.  Before the date comes uncertainty—the uniform will be hung up for the last time.  More pressing may be financial fears, depending on pension arrangements and individual debts.