Editorial: Support police by giving room to grieve

If you want to know the toll that a line-of-duty shooting can take, look at the pictures of McKeesport police Chief Adam Alfer.

On Monday, he stood alongside other officials making statements and giving information about the death of one of his own, Officer Sean Sluganski, and the injury of another, Officer Charles Thomas Jr.

Alfer had the shell-shocked look of someone soldiering on despite the sudden and unexpected upturn of his world.

And it is. First responders of all kinds are trained to accept that death and injury will be a part of the job. It is something they could find at every car crash, every domestic disturbance, every house fire, every overdose.

That is hard enough to process. Observation of suffering is draining and leaves scars, even if it is detached.

But first responders — and police officers in particular — also carry the knowledge that doing the job can put them in a very specific kind of danger. Their lives and the lives of their co-workers are always at risk.

Southwestern Pennsylvania has seen more than a few of those line-of-duty homicides. Just last month, the first officer killed in the country in 2023 was Brackenridge police Chief Justin McIntire. He was, by a margin of just 15 minutes, the second homicide of the year in Allegheny County.

There are usually years to blunt the trauma between one such killing and the next. New Kensington’s Officer Brian Shaw’s death was in 2017. Lower Burrell police Officer Derek Kotecki died in 2011. The triple homicide of Pittsburgh officers Eric Kelly, Stephen Mayhle and Paul Sciullo II was in 2009. State police Cpl. Joseph Pokorny Jr., was shot in 2005.

This was a matter of weeks. Police departments that had been covering Brackenridge’s shifts to allow officers time to grieve are now called to grieve again themselves.

And they do so at a time when departments are shorthanded. They do so when homicides and gun violence are on the rise. They do so when there is ongoing struggle over how to handle reforms within departments. It also comes amid more criticism of police in the wake of the killing of Tyre Nichols in Memphis.

But it should also emphasize an often underprioritized fact: First responders like police need more support for mental and emotional health concerns such as depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress.

Police officers do hard jobs that can require a certain disconnection in the moment. That doesn’t mean they are robots. They still need to find ways to handle the mental assaults, particularly with losses like Sluganski and McIntire.

Until we can find solutions to the staffing shortages, gun crimes and reform issues, it will be hard for them to find that breathing — and grieving — room.