The death of an off-duty Chicago police detective found Friday in his Mount Greenwood home has been ruled a suicide.
About noon Friday, the 59-year-old man was found inside a home in the 3900 block of West 104th Street, according to Chicago police. He was unresponsive, with a gunshot wound to the head, police said, and was pronounced dead at the scene.
Autopsy results released over the weekend ruled his death a suicide, according to the Cook County medical examiner’s office.
“I ask that you keep his family, loved ones and all those who worked alongside him in your thoughts as they process his unfathomable loss,” Police Supt. Larry Snelling wrote in a message to department members.
The detective was assigned to the Area 2 Division, which covers most of the South Side, according to Snelling’s note.
At least three members of the Chicago Police Department died by suicide last year.
They include a 29-year-old officer who was found inside a West Loop residence in May with a gunshot wound to the head, according to police.
Also, a month earlier, Celal Cenker Surgit, 54, who spent nearly 20 years with the department, was found dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound inside his West Ridge home, according to police and the medical examiner’s office.
Details were not available on last year’s third suicide in the ranks.
The department has struggled in recent years to provide adequate mental health resources for officers, according to a city inspector general report released at the end of 2022.
Between 2016 and 2023, 31 department employees died by suicide. In 2022 alone, seven Chicago cops took their own lives — three of them within a single month that summer and three more within a week that December.
The department currently has 21 counselors providing mental health services to its more than 11,600 members, nearing closer to its goal of assigning one counselor to each of its 22 police districts.
Counseling can be found through the department’s Employee Assistance Program which provides free, confidential services to all active and retired members of the Chicago Police Department, as well as their families.