He Killed Himself After the Jan. 6 Riot. Did He Die in the Line of Duty?
Source: New York Times
He Killed Himself After the Jan. 6 Riot. Did He Die in the Line of Duty?
Jeffrey Smith, a police officer who confronted a mob in the Capitol, later shot himself. His widow blames the riot, and is asking for full death benefits.
By Shaila Dewan
July 29, 2021
Updated 9:37 p.m. ET
Jeffrey Smith, a 12-year veteran patrolman, was one of hundreds of Metropolitan Police Department officers deployed on Jan. 6 to defend the Capitol from a violent mob. He was hit in the head with a metal pole during the melee and afterward, his wife said, he seemed to slip into a deep depression.
He was ordered back to work eight days later, but he never made it. In his car on the George Washington Parkway on the way to his shift, he shot himself with his service weapon, becoming the second officer to take his own life in the wake of the riot.
On Friday, his widow, Erin Smith, will petition the Police and Firefighters’ Retirement and Relief Board to designate her husband’s suicide as a death in the line of duty, a designation that comes with vastly greater financial benefits and, she says, more dignity. But the odds are decidedly against her.
Unlike in the military, which commonly awards benefits to families of soldiers who take their own lives, police suicides are not considered line-of-duty deaths — in fact, the law generally forbids that designation. The families of officers who kill themselves say the rules represent an outdated approach that recognizes the physical dangers of policing but not the mental ones.
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Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/29/us/police-suicides-capitol-riot.html
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