City Council committee OKs extending benefits to families of first responders committing suicide

CPD vehicles lined up to begin a procession to the Cook County medical examiner’s office after an officer committed suicide in the department’s Homan Square facility in July 2020. (Manny Ramos/Sun-Times)

In the last five years alone, 13 Chicago Police Department officers have taken their own lives. 

First-responders are more likely to die by suicide than “any other means of death in the line of duty,” according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control.