IN A TALE OF TWO LAPD CAPTAINS, ONE LIVES, ONE DIES.

Byline: BETH BARRETT

Staff Writer

Nick Salicos and Richard Meraz stood together for years as captains at the Los Angeles Police Department's Rampart Division.

Then they stood together in the public spotlight as the division was roiled by revelations of abuse in the late 1990s.

Finally, they stood together as friends bonded by the emotional scars of the ordeal.

But on May 27, 2002, Meraz got a call just before midnight: Salicos was dead of an overdose of alcohol and prescription drugs.

"I literally broke down when they told me. ... I was shocked, dismayed, emotional. It was devastating to me."

Why one captain lived and the other committed suicide is something that has puzzled Meraz -- now a 63-year-old captain at Central Division -- ever since.

Meraz said he knew Salicos was obsessed by the public humiliation and enraged at being at the center of an internal investigation into Rampart, where officers stole narcotics, planted evidence and beat suspects.

"Every time I talked to Nick Salicos, he was angry and frustrated."

Salicos is among nearly two dozen LAPD officers who have committed suicide in the past decade, up slightly from the previous 10 years and nearly double the number killed in the line of duty, according to department data.

450 a year

Nationwide, about 450 active and retired law enforcement and corrections officers commit suicide each year -- nearly three times the number killed on duty, according to the nonprofit National POLICE Suicide Foundation.

The foundation's estimate of 60 suicides for each 100,000 officers is nearly triple what most researchers say, but foundation officials say families are more forthcoming with them.

"It's the best-kept secret in this country," said Robert E. Douglas, executive director of the foundation, based in Pasadena, Md. "Suicide is devastating to deal with."

The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department said none of its deputies has committed suicide since it launched a prevention program in 2002.

But the California Highway Patrol lost eight of its 7,200 officers to suicide last year, five times the national average for law enforcement.

While the statistics are alarming, experts disagree about whether suicide rates among law enforcement officers are higher than the general population.

A study of New York City police officers conducted from 1977 to 1996 found a suicide rate of 14.9 per 100,000, compared with 18.3 per 100,000 residents.

"The good news was the suicide rate wasn't excessively high, in the sense there were reports police officers had suicide rates several times that of the general population," said Dr. Peter Marzuk, professor of psychiatry at the Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City.

"The study showed there wasn't an epidemic."

But the bad news was that officers -- who had steady jobs and had been screened for psychological fitness -- had about the same suicide rate as the general population, which includes the mentally ill and unemployed.

"The same level as the general population might mean a slight elevation (for police suicide)," Marzuk said.

But Douglas says the foundation believes the rate is significantly higher. It collects data on about 450 suicides a year of active and retired officers.

He said a 1998 informal survey of 500 officers found 98 percent said they would consider suicide under particularly stressful circumstances, such as the loss of a child or spouse.

"They see the control of their life slipping away from them," he said. "They have the mindset of a warrior ... Instead of compromising your position, you'd go ahead and check out."

Sitting at home

Meraz got a 20-day suspension for his role in the Rampart scandal -- supervisorial failures in investigating a jailhouse beating. Salicos opted to retire.

Meraz said his decision to remain with the LAPD may have spurred his emotional recovery.

"Nick sat at home stewing, whereas I came to work every day, put my uniform on and came in through the front door. When we had a command staff meeting, I sat in the front row. I looked my chief dead in the eye.

"When you leave the department, you can't fight it anymore. You can't deal with it. You can't face it head on."

Meraz said he learned a hard lesson: Taking responsibility for your own self-esteem can be liberating.

But Meraz acknowledges that a police culture that combines great stress with the need for self-control can make it hard for officers to express their feelings.

"They don't know how to cope."

Author Ellen Kirschman -- whose book "I Love a Cop" has been a staple for police psychologists -- said law enforcement suicides most frequently are driven by relationship failures, fueled by alcohol and facilitated by easy access to guns.

"It's more apt to have something to do with (their) rigidity ... All their eggs are in one basket, their self-esteem," Kirshman said. "They can become very brittle, they need to be in control."

Lost friends

Retired LAPD Deputy Chief Frank Piersol lost two of his closest friends and fellow officers to suicide: former adjutant Robert McCrary, who shot himself in the chest in November 1992; and Dennis Walter, who had retired to Salmon, Idaho, and did the same a year later.

"When I think back, was there anything I could have done -- maybe even at the expense of the friendship -- that could have prevented these things from occurring? The answer is yes," said Piersol, 62.

"That question haunts me to this moment. It's something that doesn't go away. Now, they went away, but the thoughts don't go away."

McCrary and Walter shared military backgrounds and a talent for police work. They also shared bouts of hard drinking, marital problems and career difficulties.

Piersol said he regrets that he and other officers enabled the men. Even when McCrary lost his badge after an evening of partying, no one confronted him about his drinking problem.

"We thought we were doing him a favor ... We thought we were kind of keeping him out of trouble, keeping him out of the formal discipline process and that we were helping him."

Piersol said he was forced to re-evaluate that in 1992 when he got a midnight call from the command center that began, "Commander, you might want to sit down."

McCrary, 51, had shot himself in the chest with his service revolver in his Upland home.

His son Rob McCrary, now a Pomona Police Department detective, was 21 at the time.

McCrary said he knew his father, a Vietnam veteran and alcoholic with marital troubles, had become increasingly frustrated at not being promoted to LAPD lieutenant.

But Rob said he still admired his father and his death left him with some invaluable lessons about dealing with stress.

"He didn't know how to relax. He didn't know how to deal with stuff," he said. Rob said he doesn't drink, and now makes sure to take regular family vacations and talk to his wife, who is also a police officer.

In November 1993, Walter killed himself.

Piersol wore his uniform when he gave Walter's eulogy. The two had started their careers together, belting out the song "We Belong Together" from the Box Tops as they drove the Arroyo Seco on their way to their jobs in Highland Park.

"We were just the best of friends ... young, happy guys on the department who couldn't wait to get to that station and get to work."

But as Piersol rose through the ranks, Walter never got above detective. He battled alcoholism, personal and professional problems.

Piersol, who retired in 1998, said he now remembers the clues -- the morning water glasses filled with bourbon, the distressed phone calls -- and how his friend hid his problems behind a meticulous uniform and hours of physical training.

Piersol also was the captain at Rampart Division before Salicos retired and died of a drug overdose in the midst of a police-abuse scandal at the station.

Longtime colleague Meraz gave the eulogy at Salicos' funeral and said he's now at peace with his friend.

"For me, the process is reflecting back on the relationship I had with him. The bottom line is, 'I couldn't have stopped this."'

In the eulogy that June day in 2002, Meraz said Salicos cared deeply about the LAPD but also needed a human connection -- one that sometimes is forgotten when police put on their work-a-day armor.

"No matter how strong or indifferent we may want others to see us, there is a deep part in all of us that yearns to be understood.

"That conceals an emotional pain that lingers and requires another person's awareness through words, presence or acknowledgment, but so often goes unsaid, unnoticed, or untouched."

beth.barrett(at)dailynews.com

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SOURCE: Excerpted from Ellen Kirschman's book "I Love a Cop: What Police Families Need to Know"

Gregg Miller/Staff Artist