Jeffrey Smith was funny, Erin Smith told me. He was even-tempered and he could be silly. They dated for weeks before he told her he was a police officer; he wanted her to get to know him as him, before adding the baggage of a badge. He loved her, she joked, but first he loved Mr. Bossman (Boss), his enormous Rottweiler/Lab/Bernese Mountain Dog mutt and then his 2015 Mustang GT. After all, they were there first.
But love for her and love for life shone in Jeff’s dark eyes from dozens and dozens of pictures: pictures of them dating, pictures of him with coworkers, pictures of him on the DC beat he loved for 12 years, the wedding pictures he took with Erin. Less than two years after those wedding pictures, he took one more picture that changed everything. It was a selfie showing his tense eyes squinting through the plexiglas of a helmet with raised visor, dark bruises seeping beneath them.
Nine days later, on January 15, 2021, Jeff shot himself with his duty weapon on his way to work, while driving on the George Washington Memorial Parkway. It would have been his first day back after the riots at the Capitol. The selfie, time-stamped and geo-located, was key to several landmark decisions ruling his death by suicide as a line-of-duty occurrence.
When Jeff came home
Jeff didn’t work at the Capitol; Erin was pretty sure he hadn’t even been there since he was a boy. He worked for the DC Metropolitan Police Department, but when nearby officers need backup, you go, and he did. On January 6, 2021, he was deployed to the havoc at the Capitol and returned home in the dark hours of the next morning.
The man who came home to Erin on January 7 wasn’t the same man whose lunch she had packed the day before. He was battered and exhausted. He was in pain. He paced. He was withdrawn and quiet, refusing to interact even with his beloved Boss. He erupted into anger or tears without warning. Jeff had told Erin only that he’d “been hit” and that he’d spent hours in hand-to-hand combat. Erin told him that whatever was happening, they’d get through it.
Of course they would.
The broken system
Before coming home, he’d sought medical attention for the pain in his face and head at the city’s Police and Fire Clinic. All injured officers and firefighters from the District of Columbia were required to go there for treatment; if they went to an emergency department instead, they’d better be arriving in an ambulance. So Jeff complied and found overwhelmed providers, staffed only for the everyday wear and tear of risky jobs, struggling to tend to hundreds of wounded officers.
In a video interview with Erin and her attorney Dr. David P. Weber, Weber told me, “There were hundreds of officers injured all waiting for care, some bleeding and some with silent injuries like Jeff.” Jeff waited and waited. Eventually he and his pounding head and blackened eyes were sent away with directions to rest, take ibuprofen and check back later.
No one asked Jeff how he got hurt. No one evaluated him for concussion. No one said, “Come back in the morning so we can get a quick X-ray or CAT scan.” No one from the clinic saw him again until January 14, the day of his fitness-for-duty evaluation. He was pronounced fit to return to work and told to report the next day. He should be grateful, they said, that he was granted one more night instead of being ordered to go suit up right then. Oh, and keep taking ibuprofen for the pain.
No one came
Erin’s life was violently upended, when her husband’s life ended violently. DC MPD representatives came to her door (every cop’s wife’s nightmare) to notify her of Jeff’s death in a car wreck. Distraught, she called Jeff’s parents and confronted the horror of sudden widowhood. But then someone new from DC MPD arrived to correct that statement. No, they told her, Jeff killed himself, sorry for the miscommunication. Erin reached out once again to Jeff’s grieving parents and corrected her prior bombshell with this even worse one. It was hideous.
And that was it.
If a cop gets shot by a bad guy, he’s a hero. If a cop shoots himself, he’s a pariah. There was no elaborate funeral. There were no survivor benefits. The chief didn’t hand Erin a folded flag while reporters snapped pictures. He didn’t even visit her. No one called to warn her that her health insurance lapsed because Jeff wasn’t an employee anymore. The tech at CVS told her when she tried to fill a prescription 31 days after Jeff died. Her husband became a symbol no one wanted to talk about, an uncomfortable reminder of the costs of duty no one wants to confront. The association of his death with a fraught and controversial public disorder made an appalling situation even worse.
But Erin had questions and no one was answering them. Why would an officer with no history of depression or mental illness, who loved her, who loved his city and his job, who loved his dog, shoot himself on the way to work? What had happened to him in the time between packing his last sandwich, and hugging his bruised body when he finally came back through her door? Since Jeff could no longer defend himself, she would fight for him. Whoever had stolen her funny, kind husband would be identified and held accountable.
Erin was going to war, and her battlefield of choice was the halls of the Washington DC establishment.
Erin believed that Jeff’s death occurred in the line of duty, and intended to prove it and force change for other survivors facing the same circumstances. Then she intended to pursue accountability in the courts for whomever had harmed him.
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Uncovering the truth
She bore the moral and financial weight of the fight but she needed a champion to take the field with her, a fighter experienced in legal combat. She found that champion in attorney Dr. David P. Weber. Weber isn’t just any lawyer. He’s a certified fraud examiner who teaches fraud examiners, a former federal inspector general, a ground-breaking whistleblower, and an expert in government misconduct. Investigations and courtroom combat are his comfort zone and underdogs, especially law enforcement, are his specialty. As a former federal investigator, he examines every case meticulously, with special emphasis on the forensic evidence, no matter where it leads. “Everybody counts or nobody counts,” he said, quoting literary character Harry Bosch.
It wouldn’t be easy to prove that Jeff’s death was not in fact self-inflicted, but something much more complex. The first step was getting DC MPD to acknowledge that Jeff died in the line of duty, and they did in March 2022.
When Erin and Weber requested Jeff’s BWC footage, the department refused to release it, citing first an active investigation and then an “unwarranted invasion of the officer’s privacy.” It was a thin excuse, since the officer in question was dead and Erin had authority to petition for the footage on her husband’s behalf. Weber then issued a subpoena, forcing the release of the footage. The video showed Jeff being struck in the face, first with his own baton by an attacker wearing a distinctive red and white jacket, and by another assailant using a section of disassembled metal scaffolding.
That accounted for Jeff’s black eyes and pain, but the video revealed more. Jeff’s demeanor and actions changed visibly immediately after he was struck the first time. He fumbled with his helmet, turning it repeatedly as if he couldn’t find the front, before getting it back on his head. He had to set his baton down to keep trying; he couldn’t manage the coordination required to hold onto it and do more than one small task at a time. He needed to refasten his chin strap once the helmet was back on but he couldn’t snap it. He tried again and again until other officers noticed and approached him multiple times to ask if he needed help, and whether he was okay. These changes to fine motor control and orientation are known symptoms of post-concussive syndrome, a result of traumatic brain injury which is tied to suicide in reams of research.
A landmark ruling
An expert witness, Washington DC’s former medical examiner, examined Jeff’s medical and autopsy records and conducted a social history, verifying his physical injuries, including fractured suborbital cavities, and his utter lack of any history of mental distress until after he was attacked. With that evidence and with added pressure from supportive Congressional representatives, the District of Columbia Police and Firefighter Retirement and Relief Board issued an order that “the sole and direct cause” of Jeff’s death was not the final self-inflicted wound, but the injuries he suffered on January 6, 2021. The first obstacle was down. Erin’s survivor benefits were released; her health insurance was reinstated.
The next goal was accessing federal Public Safety Officer Benefits, allowable only to survivors of officers killed or disabled in the line of duty. Until this point, officers who died by suicide were disqualified and their survivors left adrift, no matter the conditions surrounding their deaths. For Jeff to be recognized, the qualification requirements would have to be changed by Congress.
Erin and Weber found powerful allies in Senators John Cornyn and Tammy Duckworth. With their help and broad bipartisan support, changes to PSOB requirements were signed into law in August of 2022. Jeff’s death by suicide met all the new conditions, designating it as a line of duty death once again, first in a local venue and now federally.
The selfie and the civil case
Now individual accountability for Jeff’s assailants was in sight. Before Erin could file suit on Jeff’s behalf, his attackers had to be identified and that was harder than it seemed. In the BWC footage, their faces were partially obscured by raised arms and weapons. Weber needed angles from other cameras besides Jeff’s bodycam, with clear views of the assailants’ faces, but there were 850 DC MPD officers at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, and they were all dressed exactly alike. Finding external footage of Jeff and his attackers in the chaos was going to be nearly impossible. And that’s where Jeff’s selfie came in.
Even the most skilled investigator has only so many hours in a day. The internet, however, overflows with users who spend unquantifiable time analyzing open source material, so Weber crowdsourced the search for pictures of the attackers. First, Jeff’s selfie was used to identify the time of day and his location at that time. Next, #teamJeff as the online sleuths called themselves, used that as a starting point to find pictures of Jeff in the mob. They identified details of his uniform that were used to find him in more stills and videos, which could be verified by his BWC with its ID number and time stamps. Eventually, they found faces and then names, and Erin’s civil suit was underway.
The suit was unprecedented, Weber told me, the first reported intentional tort suit in DC’s US district court. The judge separated the suits against each assailant, doubling Erin’s burden of time, emotional strain, and expense. The case against the first assailant (the second remains to be heard) used the “substantial factor” test, Weber said, with the baton strike to Jeff’s face as the first of a “cascading series of events” culminating in his death.
The question posed to the jury after presenting all the available evidence and expert testimony was, “Did the Defendant assault or batter Officer Jeffrey Smith?” The research establishing ties between brain trauma and suicide was clear, and the time-stamped selfie established that Jeff’s initial brain injury happened when he was battered by the defendant.
For a third time, Jeffery Smith’s injuries on January 6, 2021 were declared a line of duty occurrence. Erin was awarded damages of $500,000 but more importantly, the defendant was publicly held to account for Jeff’s and Erin’s pain, suffering and loss of consortium.
Justice, fairness and the future fight
Dr. Weber made clear that the fight wasn’t fair. “Even the new qualifications in the PSOB accepting suicide as a line of duty death in specific situations are things that the families of other officers are not required to prove. The research is clear: brain injuries may lead to suicide. Jeffrey Smith’s death has been three times declared a line-of-duty death. His name needs to be on that wall,” he said. He meant the National Law Enforcement Memorial in Washington DC, where the names of fallen officers are inscribed each year in a solemn ceremony.
Weber has a point. If an officer dies of a heart attack or stroke within 24 hours of a “nonroutine stressful or strenuous physical activity while on duty”, or even departmental physical fitness testing, then that officer’s name is memorialized on the wall. Officer Brian Sicknick’s name is on the memorial; he died of a stroke on January 7, 2021, after working the riots. His death was ruled to be of natural causes and also in the line of duty. He even lay in state in the Capitol before a funeral with full honors. Neither Weber nor Erin begrudge those honors for an officer who served honorably. They simply want it noted that no one requires an investigation into the officer’s lifestyle or prior state of health when they die of a heart attack or stroke. Erin had to prove that Jeff was not mentally ill, that their marriage was sound and that he was not under investigation for wrongdoing, as well as proving that his injuries led to his death. If his death had been caused by one of those socially acceptable illnesses rather than post-concussive syndrome and traumatic brain injury, she would never have been asked any of those things.
The NLEOMF board of directors voted to “consider” certain cases of suicide for inclusion on the wall in March, 2024, with the first cases to be weighed for inscription in May of this year, looking back to cases starting in 2019. Jeff’s name is still not on that wall. “The process to consider and evaluate cases that involve death by suicide continues,” an NLEOMF spokesperson told Police1. “We currently don’t have any updates to share on any specific case, including Officer Jeffrey Smith.”
The next battle
Erin isn’t done. Neither is Weber. They are considering the judge’s dismissal of the wrongful death portion of the suit against Jeff’s assailants, and it remains pending as of this writing. The suit against the other assailant has not yet come to court.
Erin’s first goal was to find out what happened to Jeff. Her next goal is to ensure that no one else has to fight this fight. “No widow should have to take on the investigation of why her husband died. All agencies should investigate every suicide, no matter what. Jeff’s death has been ruled a line of duty death, but no one wants to admit it, not police departments, not charities. I don’t want anyone else to ever have to go through this again, or face it alone.”
Potentially thousands of officers battle post-concussive syndrome from TBIs, often without knowing it. They “get their bell rung,” absorb repeated strikes to the head in fights or falls, are exposed to blasts from flash-bangs, and then come home when their shift is over, just like Jeff did. Those injuries, Erin said, must be documented and understood, even when they are invisible and silent. “Brain injuries may lead to suicide, and agencies need to understand that not all suicides are what they seem to be,” she said. “And when they are investigated and found to be related to brain trauma, line-of-duty benefits need to be provided to survivors.”
Erin’s has had one precedent-setting success in the courts. While she girds for the next round, she will keep fighting until Jeff’s name is on the memorial wall in Washington DC and until Congress finally displays the plaque they ordered years ago honoring the officers who served at the Capitol. It’s a brutal battle, but worth it. Jeff is worth it. Erin’s battle isn’t just for Jeff- it’s for every officer whose injury goes unseen, and every family left behind to fight alone. And she’s not done yet.
Next steps for law enforcement agencies
- Treat all officer suicides as potentially duty-related and investigate accordingly
- Train supervisors to recognize symptoms of post-concussive syndrome
- Ensure injured officers receive timely, appropriate medical evaluation — including for brain injury
- Push for equitable survivor benefits in cases of trauma-related suicide
