More than 715 police officers have taken their own lives since 2021, a body count the establishment press attributes to "mental health stigma" while ignoring the progressive prosecutors, defund campaigns, and relentless demonization of law enforcement driving the epidemic.

The numbers come from Blue H.E.L.P., a nonprofit that tracks police suicides, and observers say they are likely severely underreported. At least 26 of those deaths were in New Jersey alone. Yet NJ.com, which reported the figures, framed the crisis almost entirely as a funding problem — a call line needs more money — while burying the political context that has officers at the end of their ropes in the first place.

Cop2Cop, a New Jersey-based crisis line that pairs active officers with retired cops who've lived the job, has had its funding frozen at $400,000 since its founding in 2000. A bill to increase that to $900,000 didn't make it into the budget signed by Gov. Mikie Sherrill in June. State Sen. Linda Greenstein, the bill's sponsor, called the amount "very small" given the stakes. She's right about that. But a quarter-century of flat funding from both parties is a bipartisan failure, and no one in the press is asking why the same political class that lectures about mental health can't find a fraction of a percent of the state budget for the cops they expect to answer every 911 call.

Anthony Woodson, a retired East Orange deputy chief who served in Vietnam, told NJ.com about finding his best friend — a fellow officer — dead by suicide in 2007. "I was so used to going from crime scene to crime scene," Woodson said. "But when you see someone you love and care for, it's different."

Woodson survived his darkness through Cop2Cop. The program wants to expand its 24/7 call center, add more retired officers, and grow its academy trainings and post-incident debriefings. All of that requires money the state hasn't been willing to provide.

Meanwhile, the institutional message to cops couldn't be clearer: you're on your own. In Los Angeles, LAPD Officer Daniel Flores faces 16 felony counts — and up to 13 years in prison — for secretly recording colleagues making racist, homophobic, and sexist comments. Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman condemned the recorded remarks but said "one cannot simply choose to break the law because one wants to pursue a personal agenda." Flores's attorney, Alan Jackson, said the charges send a chilling message to police employees and the broader community. The New York Times reported the charges matter-of-factly; what it didn't explore is what it means for officer morale when a cop who tries to expose bigotry in the ranks gets prosecuted more aggressively than the bigots themselves.

NJ.com noted that officers fear admitting mental health struggles could cost them their livelihoods. That fear is real — but it's compounded by a political climate that treats cops as the problem, starves their support systems, and prosecutes the ones who try to hold colleagues accountable. The war on cops has a body count. The press just won't call it what it is.