Editor’s note: If you or someone you know is struggling or having thoughts of suicide, you are not alone — and help is always available. Call or text the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline to connect with a trained counselor, or chat online at 988lifeline.org. Whether you’re seeking support for yourself or someone you care about, please know that it’s never too late to reach out. You deserve help. You deserve hope. Someone is ready to listen.
By Keith Sargeant
nj.com
Chapter I. A silent epidemic
The sheriff did not share his secret with anyone.
He arrived at a Turkish restaurant in Clifton seemingly in good spirits on a chilly, overcast afternoon in January 2024.
Flanked by one of his deputies, Richard Berdnik sat at his usual table and ordered an appetizer and a water. The popular Passaic County Sheriff then posed for a photo with the owner of Toros — his de facto second headquarters — smiling for the image as he had countless times before in his 13 years in the elected post.
After a brief conversation, Berdnik excused himself to use the bathroom around 3:30 p.m.
A single gunshot reverberated through the restaurant a minute later.
“Everything we saw from (Berdnik) that day showed he was acting perfectly normal before tragedy struck,” said Leo McGuire, his friend and a former Bergen County Sheriff.
Except Berdnik, 64, had a plan. He wanted to die.
“We found out later that he cleaned out his desk before he went” to the restaurant, said a law enforcement source who requested anonymity due to the sensitive nature of the situation. “No one knew.”
All they knew was yet another brother in blue had been lost in New Jersey.
Berdnik’s very public suicide on Jan. 23, 2024 sent shockwaves through the tight-knit law enforcement community, another fallen officer who died before anyone recognized he was in crisis. Another loss in an alarming string of deaths involving current and former police officers in a national epidemic, an NJ Advance Media investigation found.
From 2016 to 2022, 1,287 law enforcement and corrections officers died by suicide in the U.S. , according to a report released last year by First HELP and CNA Corporation. Another 244 police officers died by suicide just in 2023 and 2024, according to Blue HELP, a Massachusetts -based nonprofit that tracks police suicides.
In New Jersey, 40 cops died by suicide from 2018 through 2024, according to Blue HELP. Mercer County alone has lost at least seven officers to suicide since 2013 — and three since 2020.
“Everywhere we look, we’re seeing it over and over again,” said Daniel Del Valle, a former Passaic County Sheriff’s officer who worked under Berdnik. Berdnik’s family did not respond to requests for comment. “It’s becoming a national crisis.”
But the disturbing statistics represent merely a fraction of law enforcement suicides. They often go unreported due to the stigma surrounding mental illness and to avoid innuendo amid rising anti-police sentiment. While national statistics indicate the crisis is plateauing, experts say the true number is actually soaring due to a rise in unreported suicides.
In fact, at least nine officer suicides have been kept private in New Jersey since October 2023 by their families and respective departments, according to interviews NJ Advance Media conducted with nearly three dozen current and former law enforcement officials and mental health experts. At least seven have been kept secret since Berdnik’s death, including five since Christmas 2024.
“They’re only scratching at the surface of how many officers are taking their lives,” said Stephanie Samuels, a Freehold-based psychotherapist who works exclusively with first responders.
In the past five years, the scrutiny and pressure law enforcement officers face have reached unprecedented proportions, according to experts. Tensions have soared in the wake of George Floyd’s murder by Minneapolis police and campaigns by far-left politicians to defund law enforcement.
Although police officials acknowledge reform was necessary — and still needed in some areas — cops now fear for their jobs and their safety at even the most routine calls. They must examine their every move through the prism of political calculation and optics as much as the law and community protection, they say.
And every call has the potential to leave them with hauntingly indelible images. An abused child. A grandmother struggling to breathe. The carnage of a bad car wreck or the grisly aftermath of a shooting.
Yet the safety nets designed to protect despondent officers often fall short and can even seem punitive, law enforcement professionals and mental health experts tell NJ Advance Media . Those protocols can work against cops seeking help, staining their reputations and isolating them due to stigma, internal politics and a police culture that weeds out perceived weakness.
As a result, vulnerable officers often conceal suicidal thoughts and depression, crippling anxiety, and alcohol and drug dependency, fearing they could lose their jobs, be denied promotions or shunned within their departments.
“There’s a huge stigma to seek help…” said Kevin Donaldson, a former Roseland cop who now hosts The Suffering Podcast, which addresses depression and suicide. “They don’t want to show any sign of weakness.”
Instead they suffer in silence.
Not much has changed in the 16 years since McGuire lost a Bergen County Sheriff’s officer to suicide, two weeks before he addressed the success of a suicide prevention program at a National Sheriffs’ Association convention.
“I stood in front of 50-plus sheriffs across the nation, choking back tears, and every one of them knew exactly where I was at,” he said. “I was not even aware that this individual officer was going through the psychological difficulties, and that was my responsibility.”
McGuire felt the same bitter emptiness when he learned about Berdnik’s death. A haunting final photo remains, showing his smiling friend with close cropped hair and a gray sweater at the Turkish restaurant just minutes before he took his own life.
“We’re taught to look for certain behavioral signs to detect whether someone is capable of committing heinous crimes,” McGuire said. “But there’s no one sign that tells you this person is contemplating suicide. You just never know.”
Chapter II. Chain of tragedy
The drug dens wore on Sgt. Daniel Pagnotta.
There were guns. Needles. Lost souls.
And kids. Kids living in filth and surrounded by bugs and drugs and weapons.
“I really can’t put a number on how many times Danny and I would walk through a door of a drug-infested home and see absolutely horrific conditions the children were living in,” said Lt. William Salhanick, an executive officer in the Trenton police’s patrol division.
“Drugs in cribs.”
Pagnotta saw it all. Over and over again in Trenton.
But he was a cop’s cop. The first to crack a joke. The first to playfully jab his colleagues. An officer who kept everyone around him smiling.
Pagnotta, 44, had served in units that targeted drugs and gangs, and he ran the Violent Crime Offenders unit in a 21-year career with the Trenton Police. The affable husband and father of two also supervised the department’s patrol officers.
Then, without warning, he was gone.
Pagnotta took his own life in July 2020 in a Plainsboro parking lot.
“He’s probably the last person you would think would do something like that,” said Steve Wilson, who came out of retirement a year after the suicide to lead the Trenton department.
Pagnotta’s death shook the police force in New Jersey’s capital city, leaving many of his colleagues searching for answers.
Why Danny? How could this happen?
Those questions cut especially deep for Wilson, who Pagnotta called his “work dad.” Pagnotta’s death didn’t make sense. It still doesn’t.
“I don’t think anyone really knows why,” said Wilson, a 30-year veteran of the department with salt-and-pepper hair and a thin, gray mustache.
But Pagnotta had witnessed unimaginable tragedy and anguish in Trenton, a city of 86,246 that has one of New Jersey’s highest violent crime rates. Searing images of brutality and suffering stuck with him. Murders. Abused kids. The shooting of two Trenton detectives, Edgar Rios and Jimmy Letts, in 2013.
“Danny was around for all of the really big, traumatic incidents,” Salhanick said. Pagnotta’s widow, Mollie, declined to comment. “The stuff you see in a typical day as a patrol officer in a city like Trenton, a lot of cops won’t see in an entire career.”
Pagnotta tried to make light of the depravity as a coping mechanism. The son of a retired Trenton cop “used to say, ‘None of this is real,’” said Salhanick, sitting beneath a laminated sign on a bulletin board that reads just that. “He’d be out in the streets seeing stuff that normal people can’t even comprehend.”
But Pagnotta’s suicide was merely one link in a chain of tragedy. His best friend, Matt Wallace, was a Ewing police officer who died by suicide in 2013. Pagnotta had also lost at least two Trenton colleagues to suicide.
They are among a cluster in Mercer County dating back a decade that includes officers from the bordering towns of Trenton (three), Hamilton (two) and Ewing (one). It also includes a Mercer County Sheriff’s officer. Not all have been publicly acknowledged.
“I don’t think you’re ever going to get an exact number on (police suicides) because let’s face it … some people don’t want to report it as that,” said Luke Sciallo, vice president of the New Jersey State Policemen’s Benevolent Association, the state’s largest law enforcement union. “You get the same (pension) benefit either way.”
And while the system to help cops is ”not punitive,” it is “broken,” adds Sciallo, coordinator of the PBA’s peer response team.
A cop will confront an average of 178 critical incidents in their career, a May 2024 Police Chief Magazine survey found. The average person will endure just two or three in their lifetime.
It’s part of the staggering responsibility to protect communities and uphold the law while under intense scrutiny. The job has always demanded handling the worst society has to offer. But even mundane shifts can involve trauma.
As a result, police suicides have become horrifyingly routine, studies show. Officers have a 54% higher suicide risk than the general public — even in an unprecedented mental health crisis exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic — because of job-related stress and access to firearms, according to a 2021 study by the National Library of Medicine .
Yet the phenomenon remains underreported, despite the sobering statistics. In many cases, families and fellow officers choose to keep suicides private.
They will even label them as accidental deaths, police sources say. In some cases, it’s about protecting benefits such as life insurance, according to officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity. In others, it’s an attempt to limit the scrutiny and rumors that often follow an officer’s death.
Was there a looming scandal? Was he about to be fired? Indicted?
“There’s such shame, such guilt. And there’s blame,” said Melissa Swailes, whose husband, David, a Los Angeles Police officer, died by suicide in 2016 after suffering symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.
And cops often fall victim to their own culture and self-mythology.
“‘I don’t need help because I’m the person that comes to save other people.’ They put that burden on themselves,” said Wilson, who carried his own trauma — finding the bodies of three severely burned children in a 1994 Trenton fire. “A lot of police officers carry that (Superman) S on their chest.”
But later, some are crushed by the weight of it.
Chapter III. Harder than ever
Sgt. Scott Hussey weaves his police SUV through the narrow streets of south Trenton , hoping for the best but fearing the worst. He’s two hours into a 12-hour shift and sees a full moon on the horizon.
“Here in Trenton , you never know what you’re going to get,” the 33-year-old Robbinsville native says as he stops at a red light on a chilly evening. “Sometimes you’re expecting the world to fall apart, and you get absolutely nothing. Other times it seems like it’s going to be pretty chill, and you get your butt handed to you on a silver platter.”
Suddenly, a call comes over the radio. A disorderly person possibly with a handgun.
“Looks like it’s going to be one of those nights,” Hussey says while turning on his lights and siren.
He guns it, navigating the congested streets at nearly double the 25-mph speed limit.
“Once the lights go on, your adrenaline kicks in,” the fourth-year Trenton cop says. “Any feelings of nervousness kind of get suppressed.”
In an attempt to understand what police experience in a routine shift, NJ Advance Media was granted a ride-along in November with Trenton cops. During a 3 p.m. to 3 a.m. shift, 24 officers responded to 148 calls.
NJ Advance Media witnessed nearly a dozen of them. They included four drug overdoses, a domestic dispute, a string of car accidents and a 1 a.m. break-in at a hair salon.
But they also involved four men with “machine guns” carjacking a woman’s white Ford Explorer and that report of a disorderly person with a gun, which Hussey responds to just after dusk.
A woman’s teenage son fought with another Trenton Central High School student and it turned serious, she tells a Spanish-speaking officer who serves as an interpreter.
“The kid showed off a handgun” in the school parking lot, the mom says. Her son and two of his friends corroborate the story. Just then, a young man fitting the description of the alleged gun-wielding student turns the corner onto their East State Street block.
Four Trenton officers order him to stop and keep his hands out of his pockets. The young man says the threat was a misunderstanding, and no arrests are made.
By the end of that night, Trenton’s 247-person force will have responded to 111,750 calls through the first 320 days of 2024 — an average of 349 per day. That same month, it was slammed in a scathing federal report, accusing the department of routinely using excessive force and conducting searches and arrests without reasonable suspicion or probable cause. However, no formal sanctions were issued.
Ironically, Hussey’s final call of the night — a drug overdose — draws him to the site where he was attacked as a rookie. He tells me how he tore the ACL and MCL in his knee during the violent 2021 altercation, requiring “months of surgeries and pain” and nine months of rehab.
Hussey arrives at the call and finds a woman passed out in an apartment building stairwell. EMTs revive her.
“Nights like these,” he says on the way back to headquarters, “we are dealing with people on their worst days.”
And they handle the ugly incidents the rest of society prefers to ignore. The raw, uncensored scenes that most people never see.
Overdoses. Domestic violence. Death.
“There’s no dignity in death,” said Donaldson, the former cop turned podcaster. “There’s no John Wayne moment. There’s no last words.
“They’ve probably gone to the bathroom in their pants.”
Then the family arrives.
“They come in screaming, crying. They just lost someone they’re never going to see again,” Donaldson said.
And then cops move on to the next call, the next case, the next shift, before transitioning back to being a husband or wife, a dad or mom.
No police academy instructor can prepare recruits for that. Nor can they equip them to stand at a murder scene, staring down at children’s toys, knowing the trauma the kids who owned them experienced.
Officers are at elevated risk for suicide because of the environments in which they work, their culture and stress, according to a 2021 study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention .
Since the 2020 Floyd murder, police departments have had to reckon with the legacy of bias within their ranks, the use of unnecessary force and decades of contentious relations with minority communities. Demands for accountability have ushered in stricter use-of-force policies and enhanced anti-bias training, measures that advocates — and even law enforcement officials — say are long overdue.
“The composition of every police department is different now because of the George Floyd incident — and it should be,” said Harrison Det . Sgt. Bobby Crudele . “Unfortunately, it kind of made people think that this was the normal way of police doing business.”
And it’s made the job more stressful.
New Jersey now requires its 40,500 police officers to be licensed by the Police Training Commission . The Police Licensure Act, signed by Gov. Phil Murphy in 2022, holds officers to strict standards and best practices training.
The additional scrutiny is magnified by activists pressing to cut funding and a wave of self-appointed “auditors” and “cop watchers” who instigate altercations hoping their videos go viral.
“You are held to a very particular standard, which I agree with, because it makes you a better cop,” said McGuire, a police officer for 20 years before serving as Bergen County Sheriff in the 2000s. “But it also is leading to more stressors on the job.”
“Dinosaurs like myself, we talk about it, like, ‘Hey, I couldn’t be a cop today. No freaking way,’” he added. “It’s absolutely much more difficult because of the level of scrutiny.”
And it takes a toll.
Chapter IV. Help or hurt?
Edward Nortrup was minutes from home, where an afternoon playdate awaited with his 15-month-old daughter.
But the Roselle Park police officer was spiraling, drowning in job stress and marital problems, according to his brother, John. Shortly after noon on Jan. 19, 2020 , Nortrup lost control of his 2019 Nissan Pathfinder and hit two parked cars.
His SUV rolled on its side and stopped near the Matawan police station. Nortrup — who told a first responder he had been drinking before the crash — then shot himself as they attempted to remove him from the wreck, according to authorities.
He was only 39.
“You’re always going to wonder why,” John Nortrup said. “You’ll never get an answer for it, even though you’re always searching for one.
“It’s always there. There is no resolution.”
Nortrup’s death is another example of help coming too late for officers — if it comes at all. And when it does come, it’s often inadequate, law enforcement and mental health experts say.
“I just really believe everything that we’re doing is probably 5% of what needs to be done,” said Del Valle, who is now publisher of The Blue Magazine, which covers the legal, tactical and political issues impacting police officers. “There will always be suicides because the system will never be prepared to help the cop out.
“You’re given a position that says, ‘You have to be fit. You have to be mentally fit. And if you’re not, then obviously you cannot have this position.’ So then, why would the cop ever speak up when his mental health is depreciating?”
Officers also worry about whispers in the squad room. Being ostracized by colleagues. And retribution from superiors.
Those concerns take on outsize proportions when you can be labeled unfit for duty.
“You want to open up, but there’s a stigma to talking about it,” said Mike Gonzalez , an Elizabeth juvenile division detective who endured his own mental health crisis, prompted by a family tragedy and job stress. “There’s consequences for opening up about it.”
“A lot of times it seeps out…” he added. “You’re putting yourself in jeopardy.”
Especially when help often feels like punishment, cops say.
Depressed? The bosses will take your guns. Drinking too much as a coping mechanism? You could be blacklisted. Suffering from anxiety? The whispers might spread, and soon the whole squad room will know.
Or worse.
The brass might force you out.
“No matter how much we’re throwing against the walls — whether it’s hotlines, or organizations like Blue HELP and wellness apps on their phones — we’re still not seeing a reduction in suicide rates the way we should,” said Samuels, the Freehold psychotherapist who also works for CopLine, a 24-hour confidential hotline for law enforcement officers in distress. “So it’s pretty obvious that the job has gotten more challenging and stressful.”
A lack of funding is one problem, experts say. Many departments don’t have resources for a dedicated therapist or other support. Some do, but line up resources only after a crisis has emerged, officers say.
Another problem is the state’s new licensing program. Law enforcement officials contend it went too far and can be used as a weapon against cops. It further inhibits fragile officers from seeking help — fearing they could lose their license or be stained as unreliable for the rest of their careers, they say.
And some departments’ insurance carriers do more harm than good even when officers do seek help, according to Lt. John T. Harbourt , Trenton police’s chief resiliency officer. He is responsible for connecting officers with help when they need it, part of a 2019 state mandate requiring every law enforcement agency to designate a resiliency officer.
A Trenton cop needed help after being involved in two critical incidents in a year, according to Harbourt. The shattered officer surrendered their service weapon and began seeing a clinician Harbourt recommended who specializes in treating law enforcement. After starting therapy, they began to improve.
But then the department’s workers’ compensation carrier insisted the vulnerable officer see one of its approved doctors. Despite being in crisis, they had to wait nearly a month without help before finally being connected with a new therapist. The new clinician then mandated Zoom sessions — not in-person meetings — that lasted only 20 minutes.
Getting nothing out of the new arrangement, the officer feigned improvement to return to work, according to Harbourt.
“What service have we provided that officer?” he asked. “The system has failed.”
But maybe the biggest problem is police leadership.
Some view a cop with depression, anxiety or emotional issues as someone to root out instead of help, according to law enforcement officials.
Short-staffing and a decline in new recruits in some departments only aggravates the situation.
“We see a lot. Sometimes, we see too much,” said Jose Medina, a former Piscataway police sergeant who runs a specialized training and consulting firm. He lost a close colleague in 2011 who took his own life. “We have to educate the leaders, make them understand that cops can get better if they know they have 1,000% support from their administrations.
“If they were not being penalized for doing their job and having a crisis, you would see less” suicides.
In a statement, the state Attorney General’s office said in part, “To ensure the health and safety of the community, those who serve must also be healthy and fully supported.
“Attorney General Matthew J. Platkin is prioritizing giving law enforcement, as well as those within the Department of Law and Public Safety, appropriate resources to respond to and address the difficult situations they face, while providing stigma-free support and resources without fear of negative consequences in the workplace.”
But more needs to be done, according to William Mazur, a retired deputy chief with the Atlantic City Police who now specializes in wellness initiatives for Acadia Healthcare.
Some call for sweeping action. They say departments must create an environment where seeking help will not mean humiliation or the end of a career.
“You’ll see police who have no problem chasing somebody with a gun,” Mazur said, “but to actually speak with a therapist and to admit that, ‘Hey, the things I’m dealing with on the job bother me and keep me up at night,’ that’s more fearful for them.”
But others want to take officers’ mental health completely out of the hands of police leadership.
“I’m a big believer that (any program) has to be clandestine from the department because anything tied to the department is going to breed hesitancy…” Donaldson said. “Here’s how I sell it to police departments: You spend all this money training a guy, don’t you want to keep him for 25 years? Or do you want him to retire early after he sees something?
“It’s your choice.”
Chapter V. Grief to action
The gunshots rang out on the morning of Oct. 3, 2002.
A 25-year-old woman vacuuming her minivan at a Virginia gas station had been hit. It turned out to be the latest in a string of attacks by the Beltway Snipers.
Anastasia Pytal, a police officer and volunteer emergency medical technician, was the first to arrive.
“She died when I was working on her,” Pytal said.
Pytal would be rocked by the trauma. She stored a series of snapshots from the ghastly scene in her mind — sounds and smells and visuals of death. They would eventually overwhelm her as she became convinced she should’ve done more to save the young woman.
Pytal soon realized “there wasn’t a lot of support for officers involved in critical incidents” and decided to go back to school. She earned her doctorate in psychology while continuing to work as a police officer.
These days, the Little Falls -based psychotherapist specializes in helping cops and their spouses combat depression and anxiety. She is among a handful of therapists specializing in the unique needs of those on society’s front lines.
“I see a lot of officers suffering in silence,” said Pytal, a founding member of Survivors of Blue Suicide . “I’m certainly concerned about the suicide numbers. I feel like law enforcement is the most deserving and yet underserved population when it comes to mental health.”
Mike DePalma is among the officers who have benefited from Pytal’s counseling after he was diagnosed with PTSD.
“Honestly, her therapy saved my life,” said the retired Hoboken police officer and U.S. Army veteran. “There should be 50 of her.”
DePalma served two years in Iraq in the mid-2000s as a commander in the 101st Airborne. He returned home in 2007 and became a cop — not exactly “a stress-free profession,” he joked.
“A lot of people have a misconception that, ‘Hey, you’re a cop, you should be equipped to deal with watching people die,’” DePalma said. “But I can tell you, whether it’s war or some of the experiences we’ve been through as cops, it has an effect.”
Some police leaders do offer proactive solutions to protect their officers.
The Long Branch police occupy a second-floor office in the city’s downtown to use as a resiliency room. It includes reclining couches, a salt lamp and the calming tones of a tabletop water fountain. The room is designed to allow officers to reset after intense calls far from prying eyes at headquarters.
The state PBA established a peer support team to chip away at the stigma of mental health support in law enforcement.
And in Elizabeth, proactive measures have already made a difference, according to Chief Giacomo Sacca.
“At the time of a crisis, you’re not going to go thumb through the Yellow Pages to find a psychologist to send your employees to,” he said. “There has to be a full community approach within the police department that not only you’re safe here, you’re protected here and we’re going to get you help here.”
Sacca was in a meeting last year when he got a phone call from one of his cops who was struggling with family problems and anxiety.
The chief called the department’s resiliency officers, Sgt. Jason Luis and Det. Walter Piza and went to his employee. The cop spent a few months in therapy before returning to the job.
“I don’t know what would’ve happened if we didn’t have the tools in place to help officers deal with the stress and mental health issues they’re facing on the job,” said Sacca, a 29-year veteran of the 365-person Elizabeth Police.
“I could have had a suicide, right?”
More often than not, there are recognizable signs that an officer needs help, according to Pytal.
But “there are some suicides that people never saw coming,” she said.
Like Berdnik.
He was one of at least three former colleagues of Del Valle’s to have taken their lives in the past seven years.
Since retiring, Del Valle has dedicated himself to preventing others.
“I work 14 hours a day dissecting everything,” he said. “I put my family second, and my job is first right now.”
One fallen officer in particular haunts him.
Not long before the officer killed himself, Del Valle recognized the man was in crisis. He called someone to warn them to keep an eye on the officer.
Feeling he did his job, he moved on to other matters. Then the officer died by suicide.
“We can’t just act like we care for an hour,” Del Valle said. “We actually have to consistently, on a daily basis, help people. And this is how we’re trying to save lives now.”
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