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Police Officer Jeffrey Smith, 35, died by suicide about one week after he and hundreds of other officers defended the U.S. Capitol from an insurgent mob. His wife, Erin Smith, wants her husband's death to be declared a line-of-duty death. (Jack Reznicki)
By
Peter Hermann
Feb. 12, 2021 at 6:00 a.m. MST
Engulfed in the crush of rioters storming the Capitol, D.C. police officer Jeffrey Smith sent his wife a text that spoke to the futility and fears of his mission.
?London has fallen,? the 35-year-old tapped on his phone at 2:38 p.m. on Jan. 6, knowing his wife would understand he was referencing a movie by that name about a plan to assassinate world leaders attending a funeral in Britain.
The text confirmed the frightening images Erin Smith was watching on live stream from the couple?s home in Virginia: The Capitol had been overrun.
Six minutes after Smith sent that text, a Capitol Police officer inside the building shot and killed a woman as she climbed through a smashed window next to the House chamber.
Smith, also inside the Capitol, didn?t hear the gunshot, but he did hear the frantic ?shots fired? call over his police radio. He later told Erin he panicked, afraid rioters had opened fire on police, and wondered whether he would die.
Around 5:35 p.m., Smith was still fighting to defend the building when a metal pole thrown by rioters struck his helmet and face shield. After working into the night, he visited the police medical clinic, was put on sick leave and, according to his wife, was sent home with pain medication.
In the days that followed, Erin said, her husband seemed in constant pain, unable to turn his head. He did not leave the house, even to walk their dog. He refused to talk to other people or watch television. She sometimes woke during the night to find him sitting up in bed or pacing.
?He wasn?t the same Jeff that left on the sixth. . . . I just tried to comfort him and let him know that I loved him,? she said. ?I told him I?d be there if he needed anything, that no matter what we?ll get through it. I tried to do the best I could.?
Smith returned to the police clinic for a follow-up appointment Jan. 14 and was ordered back to work, a decision his wife now questions. After a sleepless night, he set off the next afternoon for an overnight shift, taking the ham-and-turkey sandwiches, trail mix and cookies Erin had packed.
On his way to the District, Smith shot himself in the head.
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Police found him in his cherished Ford Mustang, which had rolled over and down an embankment along the George Washington Memorial Parkway, near a scenic overlook on the Potomac River.
He was the second police officer who had been at the riot to take his own life.
'Service and sacrifices'
For days, Smith?s wife in Virginia and his family in Illinois grieved privately.
That changed Jan. 26, when acting D.C. police chief Robert J. Contee III testified behind closed doors to a congressional committee, telling lawmakers about the ?service and sacrifices? of officers who died after having been at the siege.
Contee named three officers. One was Brian D. Sicknick, a Capitol Police officer who collapsed after engaging rioters and later died. Another was Howard Liebengood, 51, a Capitol officer who took his own life three days after the riot.
The third was Smith.
That two police officers had died by suicide after confronting rioters thrust the most private of acts into the national spotlight and made clear that the pain of Jan. 6 continued long after the day?s events had concluded, its impact reverberating through the lives removed from the Capitol grounds.
Now, families of both Smith and Liebengood ? who were buried in private ceremonies lacking the pageantry that accompanied Sicknick?s memorial service in the Capitol Rotunda ? want the deaths of their loved ones recognized as ?line of duty? deaths.
The suicides have also renewed attention on another troubling and often hidden issue: Police officers die by their own hands at rates greater than people in other occupations, according to a report compiled by the Police Executive Research Forum in 2019, after at least nine New York City police officers died by suicide that year. That report said officer suicides outpace deaths of law enforcement members killed in shootings and vehicular crashes.
Since George Floyd?s death at the hands of police in Minneapolis and the sometimes volatile demonstrations that followed in cities across the country, ?the occupation has been under tremendous scrutiny by the public,? said John Violanti, a research professor at the University of Buffalo School of Public Health and Health Professions.
?I think that officers are suffering from this,? said Violanti, who studies suicides by police officers. ?There?s a feeling of a huge lack of support, not only from the public but from administrations.?
Even before the Capitol riot, police officers in the District were exhausted after months of sustained demonstrations for racial, social and political justice, some of which turned violent. Later, there were more violent confrontations when right-wing extremists came to rally in support of President
About 850 D.C. police officers ? nearly a quarter of the force ? responded to the Capitol riot, and 65 were injured in hours of hand-to-hand combat. More than 70 Capitol Police officers were hurt.
Newly released audio from D.C. police at the riot shows how police were overwhelmed. ?Multiple Capitol injuries, multiple Capitol injuries,? one officer screamed over his radio. Later an officer shouted, ?We?re still taking rocks, bottles and pieces of flag and metal pole.? And an officer pleaded for help: ?We lost the line. We?ve lost the line. All MPD, pull back to the upper deck, ASAP.?
Officers were struck with poles, dragged down stairs and sprayed with bear spray. One suffered a heart attack. Another lost a finger, D.C. police said.
Rep. David N. Cicilline (D-R.I.), one of the House managers, said Thursday at Trump?s impeachment trial that rioters questioned officers? patriotism and loyalty, calling them Nazis, traitors and un-American ?for protecting us.?
?Several Capitol police officers have reportedly threatened self-harm in the days following the riot,? Cicilline said during the trial. ?And in one case, an officer voluntarily turned in her gun because she was afraid of what might happen.?
Contee knew the emotional toll would be devastating. One officer, he had recalled, told him the siege was scarier than two tours as a soldier in Iraq.
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The chief, who said he planned to make officer mental health a focus of his leadership, called on department counselors to hold group sessions, thinking officers would be seen quickly and that sharing their experiences might ease any concerns about getting help. More than 30 meetings were held, with individual follow-ups for some.
?We wanted to get to the most people in the least amount of time,? Contee said.
Smith?s family attorney said the officer did not attend any counseling sessions while he was on sick leave. He also said no one from the department reached out to Smith about attending.
An unbearable return
Smith, a car enthusiast who grew up in Illinois, moved to the D.C. area 12 years ago after graduating college with a degree in sociology, having spotted openings on the District?s police force.
He spent his career in the Second District, his latest beat roughly 40 square blocks east of the White House.
He met Erin, who works for an executive search firm, several years ago on the Internet; they shared a love for cars, a topic that dominated their initial conversations.
They married in 2019 and settled in Virginia.
He took careful care of his prized black 2015 Mustang and his Rottweiler-lab mix, which predated Erin. ?We always joked,? she said, ?it was the car, the dog and me.? Feb. 2 would have been their second anniversary.
He typically worked night shifts, and on Sundays Erin made it a ritual to drive into the District and share dinner with Smith on a bench on the Mall. Smith, in his uniform, never hesitated to give tourists directions, and he once sent Erin to her car to fetch jumper cables so he could restart a woman?s dead battery with his police cruiser.
Smith had worked many of the demonstrations that began over the summer, telling his wife a chunk of concrete thrown at officers once only narrowly missed his head. She said he talked about one of his friends injured on a protest line who felt he didn?t get adequate care.
But he mostly shielded his wife from the intimate and sometimes scary parts of his job.
?There were events that I?m sure happened that bothered him,? Erin said, but he didn?t want her to worry.
Hours after the siege at the Capitol had ended, Smith later told his wife, he found himself with other officers outside a hotel where insurgents were believed to be staying. Their orders were to arrest any who came outside, at that point breaking a citywide curfew imposed by the mayor to restore order.
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