Policemen Suicides

Patrolman Fred Stirnweiss walked to the front of his Bronx home one day last week, popped his head in an open window, and called to his wife Rose:

"Look what I'm going to do!"

Rose got to the window in time to see her husband pull out his service revolver, shoot himself in the head.

Officer Stirnweiss was the 95th New York City patrolman to kill himself in the last six years. In the New York City police force of 18,178, the suicide rate is five times higher than the rate in the general population. To find out why, Manhattan's State-chartered "Committee for the Study of Suicide, Inc.," headed by Dr. Gregory Zilboorg, in the past six months has interviewed every available friend and relative of the dead policemen. The committee has so far offered no explanation for the suicides, asserts that police in other large U. S. cities also have a high suicide rate.

Also working on the problem is the social welfare bureau of the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association, run by a policeman, Psychologist William McDonald. Most cops kill themselves, says the bureau, because of: 1) debts and duns; 2) drinking; 3) domestic difficulties; 4) harsh discipline; 5) a handy revolver. By calling off loan sharks, and talking over family troubles "cop to cop," the bureau claims to have saved many a blue-uniformed life.

Two years ago at a captains' dinner, Commissioner Valentine shot a question straight from the shoulder: "What makes you men so jittery? What are you afraid of?" From a nearby table came a sibilant whisper: "The speaker." To police his police, Commissioner Valentine has a special "shoo-fly" (confidential) squad. Since he went into office in September 1934 he has dismissed some 300 men, officially rebuked 3,000, fined 8,000. Most suicides, think the cops, are crushed between the Commissioner's sea-green honesty and granite discipline and the temptations that beset a Manhattan cop: the numbers games, horse betting, floating crap games, houses of prostitution, which all press money on the police for protection.

A typical suicide was Patrolman Max Finkelstein, who won fame as the leader of a squad of Jewish policemen assigned by Mayor LaGuardia in 1938 to guard Manhattan's Nazi consulate. After a spotless record of 29 years, Captain Finkelstein last fortnight asked for retirement, was told that he would be required to face charges of accepting irregular bail bonds.

Rather than do so, he shot himself.

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