The cumulative stress of policing has public safety consequences for law enforcement officers, too

Joseph William Holsopple was pronounced dead on Sept. 27, 2020, at a hospital in the city where he was born, Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio. Cause of death: alcoholism. Marital status: divorced. Age: 48.

He graduated high school in Akron, Ohio, in 1990and joined the Springfield Township Police Department in 2000. Over the years, Holsopple married, had two children and bought a house. But his life began to unravel, and in January 2018 he was fired from the department for showing up to work intoxicated and failing a breathalyzer test.

Confidential notes, disciplinary records and letters from fellow officers expressed concern over Holsopple’s alcohol use and the possibility he might have been suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder related to a 2015 death in which he and two other officers used physical force and a Taser on a 24-year-old man. In that encounter, Holsopple forearmed the man in the back of the neck and kept him pinned face down.

The problems that began to develop affected his decision-making and made him a liability in the field, according to his peers.

One officer, in a confidential 2017 memo to the chief, said Holsopple had been reluctant to help other officers trying to detain a suspect. He said Holsopple told him that when he saw the other officers struggling with and shocking the man, “he had a flashback to his recent Taser incident where the suspect subsequently died.”

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