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perfect place to continue the ongoing conversation.
“Everyone thinks you have to keep quiet about suicide, but
when you come to an event like this, you can see it’s more than just
you that has personal experiences with suicide,” enlightened
Pacucci. “The event gets bigger every year, and it’s great because
the awareness gets out and more and more people get involved.”
As law enforcement officers continue to attend the annual outing they send the message to their Local members that this is a
cause they need to support.
“Until you’re entrenched in this you don’t know what an epidemic this is,” challenged Pellegrino.
Suicide is the tenth-leading cause of death in the U.S. and the
fourth-leading cause of death for adults between the ages of 15 and
64 years, and the movement to combat this national crisis is growing.
The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention is leading the
effort through these lifesaving walks; in the past 10 years, the number of Walks has grown from 24 to 350, and the number of participants across the country is expected to surpass 200,000 in 2015.
Cop 2 Cop, spearheading the effort in New Jersey, has conducted
more than 65,000 calls and averted crises for 215 cops in its 15
years of existence, providing 19 rescues this year alone.
Starting the conversation is what the Out of the Darkness Walk
and Cop 2 Cop aim to accomplish. Individuals end their life for a
vast amount of reasons but one commonality is that they couldn’t
– or wouldn’t – talk about their problems. Or perhaps they didn’t
know where to turn.
“The biggest thing we’ve seen so far since starting (the program)
The family of Middlesex County Corrections Local 152 member Larry Lyons
walks in his honor.
is that more and more officers are aware of our existence,”
explained retired Newark officer and licensed social worker for
Cop 2 Cop Joe Orgo. “I think (law enforc [Y[