By DAVID NOONAN Daily News Staff Writer

Last Dec. 4, city Police Officer Michael Lynch, 32, of the 113th Precinct, committed suicide on Long Island after a night of drinking with fellow officers.

Before he shot himself in the head with his service revolver, Nassau County police said, the five-year veteran left the scene of a drunken driving incident in which he collided with three cars.

Five days later, rookie officer Michael Browne, 24, of the 13th Precinct, was charged with vehicular homicide and drunken driving after a one-car accident in New Jersey that killed his girlfriend.

In early February, Police Academy recruit Robert Dzubak, 26, was arrested on drunken driving charges after driving the wrong way onto a Harlem River Drive exit ramp and colliding head-on with a car driven by an off-duty detective.

Though drinking has been recognized for decades as a problem by the Police Department, and up-to-date counseling and rehabilitation programs are in place, alcohol abuse still plagues the 40,000-member department.

Four years after a drunken rampage by New York City cops in Washington triggered renewed efforts to address the issue, troubling incidents continue to occur regularly, testifying to both the size and the complexity of the problem.

"In my experience, the level of the problem hasn't varied at all in the last few years," said William Genet, a 30-year veteran of the force who leads the Membership Assistance Program (MAP), a union-sponsored volunteer support organization that helps troubled cops.

What is equally clear is that the department's state-of-the art alcohol program is not working. Too many cops who need help are refusing to enter the department's alcohol counseling program voluntarily.

"The guys just don't trust that it's going to stay confidential," one veteran cop said.

Police brass acknowledge this.

"No matter what you do, there are going to be officers out there that do not trust the system," said Michael Markman, police chief of personnel. "What we try to do is encourage people to come forth, to convince them that it is confidential, and it's not career-threatening.

"What is career-threatening is when you don't resolve your drinking problem and then you get in trouble."

Genet thinks that part of the problem is that the department's program primarily functions in a crisis mode.

"They usually wind up dealing with things in a reactionary manner, which, unfortunately, law enforcement tends to do with many things, not dealing with a problem until it reaches its peak."

Though exact figures are not available, Markman said that most cops enter the department's program after an incident of some kind or through "identification by a supervisor."

Besides fear of stigmatization, the element of denial inherent in alcoholism also plays a role.

"There are very few people that wake up in the morning and say, 'You know, I have a drinking problem.' That's not the way they come in," Markman said.

If the rate of alcoholism among the general population is one in 10, experts think it may be double that among police officers.

Ellen Kirschman, a clinical psychologist who has been working with cops and their families for 20 years, said cop culture "really values drinking as a way of blowing off steam, and there's a lot of steam in the job, obviously."

Kirschman, however, does not think there's a cause-and-effect relationship between police work and alcohol abuse.

"[But] cops see more bad crap in the first three years of their career than the rest of us will probably see in an entire lifetime," she said.

Kirschman recalled the case of a young cop who found an elderly suicide victim sitting in her living room with a family slide show still going on.

"What do you do when you're 21 or 22, and you see that, and you haven't got a great deal of life experience, and your coping skills are still being formed?" she asked. "Alcohol is a really quick, easy, legal, available thing to have."

Cops also think they are supposed to solve problems, not have them.

"Seeking help is seen as a sign of weakness in the macho male cop environment," she said. "I tell them to take at least as good care of yourself as you do of your gun. And they don't."

MAP, which was created by the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association in 1995 after 21 cop suicides in just two years, specifically was designed to overcome the key weakness of the department's program — cops' natural suspicion of and lack of trust in the system.

"My belief was — and it's proved itself out so far — is that the best way to do that is to get other cops to volunteer," Genet said. "Because a cop will trust another cop."

Operated by the five police unions, MAP has the support of the Police Department, but is completely independent and works strictly on a self-referral basis. Neither friends nor superiors can make referrals. Cops who want help simply call an 800 number, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year.

MAP cases are completely confidential and generate no department paper work. The program cannot help cops who have any kind of legal action or departmental action against them.

MAP is staffed by 170 peer support officers, volunteer cops who have been screened and trained for the work.

The program, however, does not provide counseling itself.

"We're the gateway to the right kind of help," Genet said. The program's primary function is to put officers in touch with therapists and rehabilitation centers when necessary.

MAP received more than 1,000 calls in 1998, its third year of operation, covering a variety of problems, from possible suicides to marital problems. That's a fourfold increase from its first year. Of the 450 cases referred to professional help last year, about 10% were alcohol cases.

The key is to get cops to come in before their problem attracts the attention of the department.

"Our goal is to get the word out there that you have an alternative to the department services," Genet said. "You can come forward early, before the suicide stage, before you start getting brutality charges or criminal charges or you get in some kind of jam."

Markman is a strong supporter of MAP.

"I don't care how they come in," he said, "as long as they come in."

MAP's goal is to "change the thinking" about alcoholism in the police culture. "That's where the problem is," Genet said.

"Cops are thinking all wrong, about themselves and how to deal with life. They're dealing with life as cops. No, you deal with your job as cops and do a good job. But you don't deal with your life as a cop.

"When they come out of a critical incident, they're in rough shape. Where do they go with it? They go to the bar, and they just talk to other cops because they're the only ones that understand. And they joke about it, and they have the black humor, and they do all the things they do in an unhealthy manner.

"Not only does it not go away, it gets worse. It festers, and they close down more and more. And the so-called imaginary blue wall is truly a blue wall, because they truly believe they are isolated from society, and they can't go anywhere. They don't go home because they don't want to infect their family with it. So where do they go? The local gin mill."

Unfortunately, MAP does not reflect the extent of the problem — nor does it provide any easy answers to its central mystery: Why cops drink.

Philip Bonifacio, a professor of psychology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice has a theory that the three basic properties of alcohol — it creates euphoria at low levels, sedation at moderate levels and anesthesia at high levels — makes it the ideal substance for cops.

"A cop would drink at low levels to get a buzz after work, because it may prolong the high of the job," he explained. "If he's been through something that has been stressful, and he's been not pleasantly high but agitated, then he might take in more alcohol, because at moderate levels of intake you will chill out.

"So it seems to me that cops will drink more than a few to sedate themselves, tranquilize themselves. And the third reason cops drink is for anesthesia. Cops will get loaded because they've been through something painful and the pain is unbearable."

Markman is not convinced that stress plays such an important role in cops' drinking.

"I would just think there's more functions to go to," he said. "And the hours are different. Anybody that works shift hours probably has more opportunities to indulge. If you're working 8 to 4 there's a better chance you're going to go home. If you're working 4 to 12, and the family's asleep, it's easy enough to stop off someplace.

"But I don't think it's the stress — there are a lot of stressful jobs."

Billy Moore (not his real name), a MAP peer-support officer with more than 15 years on the force, knows what it means to be an alcoholic cop.

"I had potential," Moore said. "A good arrest record, awards, citations. Then alcohol came in and took away any hope that I had. It turned everything gray. I was a zero, I disappeared on patrol, I was carried. The guys protect you, stay loyal to you, but you're like their tragic half-brother."

Sober now as a result of his own efforts and Alcoholics Anonymous, Moore has seen others follow the same path.

"I've seen cops who never drank before they came on this job, and they got into the whole culture and started drinking," Moore said. "They got into working the four-to-fours — they end their tour at midnight, then go to the bar until 4 a.m. They got the camaraderie, the lure of the cop bar, the lure of the sense of protection, the sense of us-them."

His belief in MAP as the solution to the drinking problem is based on his understanding of the average cop's mind.

"As much as this disease taps into the cop culture, the solution taps into the cop culture as well," he said. "I have never met such a talented group of people as cops in terms of their ability to get into it with another person. You draw from that. You use the most noble, most positive side of police work to deal with the most detestable, negative side of police work."

Original Publication Date: 04/18/1999