Police Mental Barricade - Nicholas Ruggiero

Police Mental Barricade

By Nicholas Ruggiero

  • Release Date: 2020-07-08
  • Genre: Law
Score: 5
5
From 8 Ratings

Description

Police Mental Barricade: A survivor's guide to poor law enforcement leadership is a raw and unfiltered look into what is causing the growing epidemic of suicides within the profession. Last year Blue Help reported 228 (known) suicides within the law enforcement profession. This is compared to the 147 killed in the line of duty. We are losing more officers at their own hands they we are to deaths on the job. Why? Partially this is from poor leadership within the law enforcement profession and it needs to addressed in order to stop the epidemic.

Nick was a police officer for almost 20 years in two different agencies, Alexandria City Virginia and the New York City Police Department.

In Alexandria City, Nick held the position of Sergeant and supervised midnights, evenings, days, and ended his career in the Community Policing Unit. During Nick's time in the Community Policing unit he witnessed poor leadership decisions made from his command staff and fell victim to a hostile work environment for speaking up about the treatment of his troops.

In 2019, after the department refused to handle his hostile work environment claim he retired and went to work for the District of Columbia Police Department as the supervisor of background investigations and immediately knew he had made a mistake and asked to return to the Alexandria City Police Department.

As a punishment for leaving the agency Nick was stripped of his rank, pay, and put through countless retaliation to prove a point to other people thinking about leaving the agency.

After over a month of relentless harassment and retaliation Nick attempted to take his life. He didn't complete suicide but took his poor experiences and started the Roll Call Room podcast in October 2019 helping thousands of other officers struggling with PTSD and mental health issues.