This book is intended for use by law enforcement practitioners, researchers, therapists, and police organizational policymakers and examines the problem of police suicides from a national perspective. This book is divided into eight chapters that examine the multi-dimensional aspects of police suicides. Chapter 1 examines police suicide rates and the continued controversy surrounding this area of research, while chapter 2 presents two in-depth analyses of national police suicide rates. Chapter 3 describes a conceptual model of the career span of a police officer and the trauma within that span that may exacerbate conditions for suicide, while chapter 4 examines factors that may help to protect police officers from suicide. Chapter 5 presents one law enforcement officer's own experience with being 'on the edge' of suicide, while chapter 6 presents innovative approaches to police suicide prevention. Chapter 7 presents seven actual cases that describe the effects of police suicide on the survivors and the difficulties they may face following the incident, while chapter 8 presents a description and critical analysis of current programs for police suicide prevention. Index