Lanterna Rally

Author: Nicholas Ruggiero

Publisher: Bookbaby

Published: 2020-09-02

Total Pages: 114

ISBN-13: 9781098322526

"Police Mental Barricade" is a raw, unfiltered look into the epidemic of suicides within law enforcement. Last year Blue Help alone reported 228 known suicides within the law enforcement profession. On the other hand, last year 147 officers were killed in the line of duty. We are losing more officers at their own hands than we are on the job. Why? The problem stems from poor leadership within the law enforcement profession. This is an epidemic, and "Police Mental Barricade" is the beginning of a search for a cure. 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. When the Roll Call Room podcast hit 25,000 listeners, the Chief of Police attempted to make Nick shut the podcast down. When Nick refused and scored top of the list for the upcoming Lieutenant process (as a police officer) the department investigated him for an incident a year prior and prior to his re-hire. Knowing that Nick was on probation, the department concluded their investigation six days before the end of Nick's probation so he would not have grievance rights. Rather than be forced out of the department, Nick retired and left the agency. Since leaving the agency, Nick has been harassed and bullied by Alexandria City Police command staff on social media through the Roll Call Room podcast. Nick wrote, "Police Mental Health Barricade: A survivor's guide to poor law enforcement leadership" to help others going through the same thing. Leaders are very scarce in our profession right now and more than ever positional equity leaders have no place leading us through these tough times. This book will take you through taking medication for PTSD, poor leadership, promotions, positional equity leaders, and how we fix our amazing profession. This book is meant to help "Stop the Stigma"