Sir Mark Rowley QPM

Silence Between Sirens is a suicide-prevention cause for people who serve on the front line of the UK’s emergency services. Our goal is simple: no one in the emergency services should die by suicide. We exist to make it safe to speak up early, so that no one reaches breaking point alone.

We are writing to you, and to chief constables across England and Wales, because, on recording, policing has gone further than any other service. Chief constables agreed mandatory, consistent recording of police suicides in April 2026. That decision matters, and we would like to help make it count in every force. We have also written to the Prime Minister, asking for the same commitment across every emergency service.

We both served in the Met. Hannah Cooper founded the cause after 16 years in uniform. Richard Goold served as a frontline response officer in Peckham, South London. We know from the inside what the job asks of people.

The cause is growing quickly. More than 12,000 frontline emergency services workers engage regularly with our content across our social channels. This summer we trained 44 blue light workers in Mental Health First Aid and suicide prevention, and supported 40 officers after the loss of a colleague.

What the job carries

Around 170,000 police officers serve across the UK. Oscar Kilo, the National Police Wellbeing Service, estimates that a police officer in the UK is likely to encounter 400 to 600 traumatic events across a career, against three or four for the average civilian in a lifetime. In Policing: The Job and The Life (2019), 90% of police officers and staff reported exposure to trauma at work. Of those, one in five reported symptoms consistent with PTSD or complex PTSD. Over two thirds of those affected were unaware of it.

The harm rarely comes from a single incident. It builds, shift after shift, carried quietly in the silence between incidents and taken home to families. Some people reach a point where suicide feels like the only way out. It is not. These deaths are preventable, and there are moments along the way when someone can be reached.

What the evidence shows

In the 2026 National Police Workforce and Wellbeing Survey, 45% of the workforce report regular burnout because of their job, and 63% of colleagues in incident response, the teams who answer emergency calls, report often or always feeling burnt out. More than a third (35%) said that worry about their reputation or career made it difficult to access health and wellbeing support. Among police officers, the figure was 43%. In Mind’s 2019 survey, only around one in four police, fire and ambulance staff had received induction training on looking after their own mental health.

In January 2026, the Police Federation of England and Wales said more than 100 police officers and staff died by suicide between 2022 and 2025, at least 70 of them serving officers, and that its figures are likely to be a significant undercount. In September 2026 it reported that 47 of 75 officer suicides it recorded between 2022 and 2025 (62.7%) involved officers who were under misconduct or criminal investigation at the time, and that every officer suicide reported to Federation welfare networks so far in 2026, 13 in total, involved an officer under investigation. That is an association, not a cause. It points to a moment when support matters most.

Much of this is within your reach. Support from colleagues makes a measurable difference. A University of Cambridge study (2022) found that 7% of officers who could always rely on their colleagues showed symptoms of complex PTSD, against 12% across policing. More widely, an international review (2017) found that, across protective and emergency services, suicide prevention programmes were associated with an approximate halving in suicide rates.

The gap

Policing has moved this year, and we welcome it. In April, chief constables agreed mandatory, consistent recording of police suicides, although no national figure has been published yet. In July, the Home Office announced £2.4 million to expand mental health support for police officers and staff in England and Wales. What is still missing is support that reaches people early, before they are struggling, rather than once harm has been done. That is where we believe we can help.

What we are offering

Before Breaking Point, for your recruits, at no cost. A two-hour early-support session during foundation training. It covers what good mental health looks like, how the job will affect people, recognising the slow slide from coping to struggling, and speaking up early. It is delivered by our facilitators, who have lived experience of the job and its toll, and we return to the same recruits between six and twelve months later.

The evidence for starting early is promising. In a UK trial of 570 student paramedics, resilience training before frontline work cut the odds of PTSD or major depression a year later by 75 to 80%. It is a single trial, but it points in one direction. Learning also fades without a refresher. In an independent evaluation for Mind (2018), the share of recruits who said they understood ways to build resilience rose from 48% to 93% after training, then fell to 71% two to four months later. That is why we return. We would measure what recruits know and how confident they feel about speaking up, before the session, straight after it and when we return, and share the results with you, whatever they show.

What we are asking

1. One hour with you and your wellbeing and learning leads. We would use it to share Before Breaking Point and what we are learning from the LifeLine Crew. Both are being developed by colleagues from across the emergency services, with lived and living experience of everything we set out to support. We would come ready to agree whether a pilot with a 2027 intake is right for the Met.

2. A clear standard of support for anyone under investigation. No officer or member of staff should receive misconduct papers and be left alone with them. The National Police Chiefs’ Council has committed to a national standard for welfare support for staff under investigation, and the Police Federation reports that approximately 39 of 43 forces now have a welfare or risk assessment process in place. The NHS has already made this shift. A nurse died by suicide following an investigation and disciplinary process; an independent inquiry found he had been “treated very poorly, to the extent that his mental health was severely impacted”. In 2019, NHS Improvement wrote to every NHS trust that “concern for the health and welfare of people involved in investigation and disciplinary procedures should be paramount and continually assessed”, and that serious harm to anyone in the process should be treated as a “never event”. We ask the Met not to wait, and to make sure that, as a minimum:

↳ the service of papers is planned: in person or through the officer's Federation or union representative where possible, with a welfare officer identified beforehand, a check on wellbeing at the point of service, and care over timing, so that no one receives papers at the end of a shift or before rest days without support in place;

↳ a trained welfare officer, independent of the investigation and ideally chosen with the person, stays in regular contact from the start to the outcome and beyond;

↳ occupational health and psychological support are offered from the outset, not only on request;

↳ risk is reassessed at each pressure point - service of papers, suspension or restriction, interview and outcome - and whenever circumstances change;

↳ anyone suspended or restricted stays connected to colleagues and support, with support numbers to hand if their phone is seized;

↳ updates are meaningful, and investigations conclude without avoidable delay;

↳ support continues after the outcome, including for anyone leaving the service, and families know what help is available, with the person's consent. We would welcome the chance to help your professional standards and wellbeing teams shape this, drawing on lessons from policing, fire and rescue, and the NHS.

3. Your voice on recording, nationally. Recording will only change things if it is consistent, published and acted on. That needs national leadership through the National Police Chiefs’ Council and the Chief Medical Officer for policing, and government backing across every emergency service. We ask you to make sure the Met reports every death, including anyone under investigation, and to add your voice to the case for a published national figure.

We do not claim to have every answer. We do bring lived experience, a growing community across every service and materials ready to share. If Before Breaking Point is not right for the Met, we would value knowing why, so that we can make it better. The people who police London run towards danger on everyone’s behalf, and we owe them support long before crisis. We would welcome an hour with you at your earliest convenience.