PBA president Patrick Lynch. Getty Images
As the ranks of the NYPD reel from the latest spate of cop suicides, the police union head has a message to officers who may be struggling too: “Don’t f—king do it.”
“If you’re on the edge and contemplating suicide, don’t f—king do it, come on,” Patrolman’s Benevolent Association president Patrick Lynch bluntly said in a video posted Thursday. “It solves nothing and leaves devastation behind you. Just don’t do it.”
Lynch’s comments come just a day after officer Robert Echeverria, 56, fatally shot himself in the head inside his Queens home — the ninth city cop to take his own life so far this year.
“Good friends, both on and off the job, feel betrayed and abandoned by you — some of them struggle under the same exact burdens as you. You are robbing them of their hope. Never let them believe that this is the answer, because it’s not,” Lynch continued.
The spate of suicides this summer has sparked a conversation about the mental health care of officers in the city and led for calls for an increased support system.
Lynch also echoed those calls, asking politicians to provide better health benefits and accommodations for those who need help.
“We need to have a conversation… about what happens after we kill ourselves after we make that decision,” Lynch said. “There’s devastation our family is destroyed it can never be made whole.”