Police – Chicago Officer in ‘Grave’ Condition After Possible Suicide Attempt: ‘Heart-Breaking’

A Chicago Police Department (CPD) officer was in “grave” condition after possibly trying to commit suicide on Saturday, the news coming as the department grappled with recent loss.

The off-duty sergeant suffered a reported self-inflicted gunshot wound, according to the Chicago Sun-Times. 

The officer was transported to Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn, police spokesman Tom Ahern said. However, authorities did not report more information about what happened.

“Only a day earlier, Officer Durand Lee, 42, was found dead inside his home on the Near South Side, officials said. The Cook County medical examiner’s office ruled his death a suicide on Saturday,” the Sun-Times report continued, adding that another officer who recently died by suicide was identified as 29-year-old Officer Patricia Swank.

“It’s very heart-breaking to know that an officer was under so much stress, so depressed that they felt that their only way out is to take their life,” Jamay Nellum-Fane, a retired CPD officer, told ABC 7 Chicago over the weekend:

The stress of the job has pushed many to their limits.

“Days off being canceled, and then we have to be real. The stress that our officers are under responding to calls, person with a gun, person shot, domestic battery, child abuse, criminal sexual assault,” Nellum-Fane continued.

Over a dozen suicides were reported within the department since 2018, the Sun-Times article said, adding, “A 2017 Justice Department report found the department’s suicide rate was 60% higher than the nationwide average for officers.”

In December, Chicago Alderman Raymond Lopez (D) accused Mayor Lori Lightfoot (D) of placing the lives of officers in “danger” as crime plagued the city.

Lopez stated:

Mayor Lightfoot said last week that our safety is her number one priority, but her policies that not only impact my safety, but the safety of our brave men and women who are on the front line of law enforcement, have been contradictory to those words.

She has left many of our police districts without officers, forced many of them that have a beat assigned to them to go to their job without a partner, and often times puts their lives in danger. We’ve seen in Chicago how dangerous it can be when early this year, officer Ella French was murdered in what was considered a route traffic stop.

Meanwhile, approximately 28 individuals were shot, one fatally, over last weekend in Lightfoot’s Chicago, Breitbart News reported July 11.