The Impact of Jan. 6 on Officer Howie Liebengood
The seasoned Capitol police officer tragically ended his life just three days following the riot. His family firmly believes they know the true cause of his death.
TroibNews 
Three days had passed since the riot, and still, Capitol Police Officer Howie Liebengood’s brother and sister had not spoken to him. Although they knew he had escaped physical injury, their concerns were rooted in the psychological toll the attack might have taken on him. They were eager to connect and hear his voice.
On the evening of January 9, Howie finally had a moment to call his younger brother, John Liebengood, while driving home from Capitol Hill. John included their younger sister, Anne Winters, in the conversation, and they talked about Howie’s well-being. Howie described the last few days as exhausting, with shifts lasting over 14 hours and only a few hours of sleep each night. To John and Anne, he sounded despondent.
“I’m done,” Howie declared. “I’m quitting.”
After 15 years on the force, 51-year-old Howie had decided to retire. He explained that he planned to work through the upcoming inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden, not wanting to burden his fellow officers, who were equally depleted by the Capitol crisis. “I can’t do that to them,” Howie said.
For John and Anne, this news was an immense relief. They had long felt that Howie’s service on the Capitol Police was detrimental to his health and had urged him to resign repeatedly, only to be met with his refusal. Now, though, he was ready to move on—perhaps the best news he had shared with them in 15 years.
After hanging up, Anne turned to her teenage sons and expressed her relief. “He’s going to quit,” she said. “He’s OK.”
Upon returning home to northern Virginia, Howie found his wife, Dr. Serena Liebengood, waiting for him. After a dinner he barely touched, he shared his plans to leave the department. Howie expressed a desire to move to Indiana, where his father was born and where the family still owned farmland. Serena wasn’t certain he was serious about moving, and recognizing his exhaustion, she suggested he get some rest.
Before heading upstairs, however, Serena checked in with Howie about how he was feeling and whether he had any thoughts of self-harm. She was attuned to his emotional state, aware of the intense stress he had endured in recent days. For a moment, Howie hesitated but then admitted that he had briefly considered hurting himself earlier that evening. Yet, he assured her, he was fine now.
As Howie went to bed, Serena remained awake. Shortly after 10:45 p.m., she heard a loud noise from upstairs, assuming Howie must have fallen. When she went to check, she found his lifeless body; he had used his service weapon to end his life.
Howie Liebengood was the second Capitol Police officer to die following the January 6 attack and the first of what would ultimately become four officers who responded to the riot and later committed suicide in the days, weeks, and months afterward.
The public reaction to his passing showed respect and honor. Senate staffers created a memorial outside the Russell Senate Office Building, adorned with photographs, flowers, and an American flag—an area Howie had guarded for many years. Later, in 2022, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi honored him with a Congressional Gold Medal, and in 2023, President Biden awarded him the Presidential Citizens Medal.
Yet, the chaos surrounding the insurrection and the ensuing partisan conflict obscured not only Howie Liebengood's life but also the factors leading to his death. The details surrounding his passing—he had been on duty during the riot but hadn’t directly faced violence—became lost amid the political strife. Some on the left condemned the attack, merging both the deaths of Trump supporters and law enforcement officers into one statistic, while some on the right attempted to downplay the violence, insinuating that Howie and the other officers who took their lives were part of a far-left conspiracy.
Now, as the fourth anniversary of January 6 approaches—and with the figure who incited the insurrection returning to the White House to consider pardoning many of the rioters—Howie’s family is sharing a comprehensive account of his life and the battle they undertook to ensure his death was recognized as a tragic consequence of his role. It’s a narrative about a man devoted to protecting an institution he loved since childhood, only to witness its political climate become increasingly toxic and the demands of his job unbearable. For Serena, Howie’s challenges stemmed from the daily pressures faced by law enforcement officers. While John and Anne agreed on that point, they believed his struggles were intertwined with a personal narrative filled with grief and familial legacy. “A very large part of it is the personal story and the grief that he carried,” John Liebengood remarked, “and the family legacy that he felt tied to.”
In their own grief, Howie’s family—Serena, John, and Anne—committed to honoring his life while working to ensure no other family experienced a similar tragedy. Over the months that followed, they uncovered a mental health crisis within the law enforcement community fueled by antiquated policies and biases toward officer suicides, often seen as less worthy of acknowledgment. Their advocacy for change involved collaboration with lawmakers Howie had befriended—including Senators Chris Coons and Tim Kaine—while avoiding the divisive politics surrounding January 6. “Howie didn’t care about a person’s political ideology,” Serena stated, “and neither do I.”
Their efforts led to the establishment of a new wellness center within the Capitol Police, progress toward Congressional legislation, and Howy’s recognition as the first law enforcement officer who died by suicide to receive acknowledgment as a line-of-duty death under new regulations by the Department of Justice.
Howie’s connection with the U.S. Senate began nearly fifty years earlier when his father, Howard S. Liebengood, arrived at Capitol Hill as assistant minority counsel for the Senate Watergate Committee in 1973. The elder Liebengood, a conservative Republican, would become a trusted aide to Howard Baker, who vice-chaired the Senate panel investigating the famous scandal.
To Howie and his younger siblings, the Senate office complex was a place of childhood fascination. The absence of weekday crowds allowed them to explore the grand staircases and admire sweeping oil paintings. “You’re just sort of in awe of it,” John recalled. Empty statue alcoves became makeshift playgrounds as they played at being Founding Fathers. “It was like a playground,” Anne said.
For the Liebengood children, the Senate represented a warm, nurturing institution—more akin to a community center than a governmental machine. Secretaries taught them typing, aides shared ghost stories, and they watched July 4 fireworks from Baker’s office. “I recognized it as a place of significance and something special without really knowing how or why,” John recalled. For young Howie, the most influential person in that building was his own father.
In 1981, the elder Liebengood, a military police officer during Vietnam, became the sergeant-at-arms for the Senate, overseeing the Capitol Police, which consisted of around 500 officers. This position came with ceremonial duties at significant Washington events, such as President Ronald Reagan's first inauguration. “I’m the only one who can arrest the president,” he joked with his children.
Since the age of four—when his father first took him to the Indy 500—Howie dreamed of becoming a professional race car driver. However, watching his father’s operations in the Senate—giving orders, offering advice, and meeting world leaders—sparked a vision for his own future in Capitol Hill. “If I’m not a race car driver,” a teenage Howie once told his sister, “I want to be a Capitol police officer.”
When it came time for college in 1987, Howie enrolled at Purdue University in Indiana, his father’s home state. While he graduated with a degree in history, his focus remained on racing. His professional racing career fostered a deep bond with his father. “They were best friends,” Anne noted. Traveling for competitions, Howie lived with his parents in the Washington suburbs while waiting tables and doing construction. His father had moved to K Street, where he became a powerful lobbyist, often dedicating time to finding sponsorships for Howie.
Chuck Merin, a former lobbying partner, reminisced about a visit to Howard’s office. One day, he saw Howard intensely sketching at his desk.
“Hey, what are you doing?” Merin asked.
“I’m working on a design for Howie’s racing helmet,” Howard responded.
Howie claimed victories on several occasions, including winning the Motorola Cup Sport Touring class championship in 2000. Such accomplishments brought immense joy for both father and son. “They were living their dream,” John said. However, as sponsorships dwindled in the early 2000s, Howie recognized that his racing ambitions were no longer financially sustainable. In 2004, he relocated to Tennessee—where his father had begun his career—to pursue his master’s degree in sports management at the University of Memphis.
By then, Howard had returned to Capitol Hill, serving as chief of staff for Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist. But when Howard’s wife, Deanna, began suffering from early-onset dementia, he left his position to care for her. In January 2005, Howie tried to call home from Memphis but couldn’t reach his father. Concerned, he asked John to check on their parents. A neighbor found Howard collapsed from a heart attack.
The loss stunned the Beltway community. Effusive obituaries appeared in The Washington Post, the Associated Press, and The Los Angeles Times, and numerous lawmakers—including then-Senator Joe Biden—attended the funeral. The impact of Howard’s death hit Howie especially hard, his siblings say. He took a break from school to care for his ailing mother and ponder his own future. “My dad was his anchor, and he was no longer here,” John recalled. “Howie was very much struggling with the direction of his life.”
Soon, Howie began contemplating applying to the Capitol Police, inspired to follow in his father’s footsteps and join the unit he had admired as a child. “He was looking for some relief from this grief,” John remarked, “and thought that doing something in sort of the footsteps of our dad would help.”
“What if you don’t like it?” Chuck Merin asked.
“Then I’ll make a change,” Howie replied. “But right now, this is where I need to be.”
In 2005, Howie joined his brother at the training academy in Cheltenham, Maryland. After a day of instruction for new recruits, Howie turned to John and said, “Well, I hope Dad would be proud of me.”
Across from the Capitol, Howie stood guard outside the west entrance of the Russell Senate Office Building for much of his 15 years on the force. To those who passed by, it became known simply as “Howie’s door.”
For Howie, the assignment felt like a return home. He had known some aides in the Russell building since childhood. “Everybody who knew Howie knew how important this place was to him,” remarked Senator Tim Kaine. Howie had an intuitive understanding of Senate politics, often asking staffers about collaborative efforts and which bills were likely to pass.
“He liked to know whether we were voting on a motion to proceed or whether we were voting on an amendment—and like, he knew the difference,” former top aide Sherman Patrick recalled. “That’s fairly unusual, even for some Senate staff, unfortunately.”
In terms of security, Howie adhered strictly to protocol—everyone, from summer interns to senior aides, had to walk through the metal detector without their belts. Yet, to those who saw him daily, Howie was more than a guard. He greeted people warmly on their way into the building, often reminding them not to forget their coats. Liz Johnson remembered returning to the Russell Building after her boss, Senator Kelly Ayotte, lost her reelection bid by a mere 1,000 votes. Howie’s sympathetic expression brought comfort as he “knew what we had just gone through.”
Beyond his professional role, employees from both sides of the aisle would often stop by Howie’s post to chat about sports or weekend plans. He participated in fantasy football with staffers, accepted invitations to office gatherings, and occasionally socialized with those who frequented his entrance. Some senators would even take the long way around just to say hello. “It was a grounding point for what should be eternal about the institution,” Patrick expressed, “that people who are different from each other are trying to do this self-governing thing together.”
In 2008, a few years after joining the Capitol Police, Howie met Serena through the dating site eHarmony. They bonded over their professions as first responders—he a police officer, she a radiologist in training. “Everything was just so easy,” Serena reflected. They married in October 2011.
As the late 2010s unfolded, Howie grew increasingly disheartened by the divisive partisanship paralyzing Congress. Ian Koski, who served as a senior adviser to Senator Coons from 2010 to 2015, recalled venting to Howie about episodes of gridlock, such as the government shutdown of 2013. Koski noted that while he didn’t technically know Howie’s politics, their mutual frustration with congressional dysfunction encapsulated the frustrations of those working within it. “He was putting his life on the line, doing his job for what was often obvious nonsense,” Koski remarked.
Donald Trump's election in 2016 intensified protests that Howie was assigned to manage. The confirmation hearings for Justice Brett Kavanaugh, for example, saw left-leaning crowds besiege Capitol Hill. Howie noted to his siblings how some protesters glued themselves to doorknobs. He repeatedly encountered some of the same activists, including paid protesters who disrupted the Russell Building’s hallways not out of passion but merely for compensation. “Dad would be so upset to see how things are right now,” Howie confided to his sister.
Simultaneously, shifts within the Capitol Police heightened his frustrations. Due to officer shortages, Howie often had to take overtime shifts with little notice, working more holidays with less time off. According to John and Anne, Howie expressed discontent with police leadership, lamenting the promotion of the wrong officers and perceived punitive measures against the rank-and-file.
The prospect of making a mistake on the job, with the potential for repercussions, loomed large for Howie. “And if something didn’t go well or meet his expectation, or he would worry that he messed up something,” Serena noted, “he would bring that home with him, and it would upset him.”
Such stress often led to cycles of anxiety and despair. “I’m struggling,” Howie confided to his siblings. In late 2018, Serena expressed concern for Howie after a minor error at work caused him distress. While no one recalled the specifics, John and Anne remember Serena sharing that Howie was so upset he had mentioned the possibility of self-harm. Serena’s account diverged slightly; she stated the family network was concerned for her husband’s well-being. Regardless, Howie’s siblings reached out to a suicide prevention hotline, met him after his shift, and drove him home. Howie assured them he was fine, acknowledging thoughts about self-harm but insisting he would never do it.
“I wouldn't do that to Serena,” he asserted.
Howie agreed to keep his service weapon outside the house—advice provided by the prevention hotline.
Over the years, Howie had contemplated leaving the police. During his early years on the force, he often used vacation days to return to Memphis and work on his master’s degree in sports management. He also maintained an interest in academia, co-authoring a chapter in 2010 about Congress' influence on the professional sports industry for a book titled *Introduction to Sport Management: Theory and Practice.* He evaluated opportunities to pursue a Ph.D. in sports management but turned them down, not wanting to be away from Serena.
Despite their concerns, his siblings found it challenging to convince Howie to leave his job. For many law enforcement officers experiencing job-related stress or mental health challenges, the notion of changing careers can be daunting. The identity associated with police work often intertwines with self-worth, complicating the decision to leave. According to Karen Solomon, co-founder of First H.E.L.P., simply advising officers to quit over mental health concerns can exacerbate their anxieties. John and Anne felt that Howie bore additional burdens of pressure to uphold the family legacy, believing he didn’t want to let down their father.
A family friend remembered a lunch with Howie, lamenting his work struggles.
“You can always quit, remember,” the family friend suggested.
“My parents taught me never to quit,” Howie replied.
Securing care proved difficult for Howie, even with familial support. The culture within the Capitol Police didn’t encourage seeking help. According to former officers, mental health concerns were often treated as a sign of weakness, with little public discourse surrounding the topic. Though confidential assistance was touted to officers through a partnership with the House of Representatives, John and Anne recounted Howie’s reluctance to seek help from the department due to fears of professional repercussions. “He did not have confidence in the confidentiality of the process,” John stated.
Rather than pursuing options within the Capitol Police, Howie sought treatment externally. Unfortunately, many of the professionals he consulted had limited understanding of law enforcement’s unique stressors. One therapist provided him with advice he had previously received: Quit your job. Additionally, efforts to discuss his stress with his primary care physician following the 2018 incident did not alleviate the pressures he faced.
The strains of Howie’s career compounded when much of the nation shuttered due to COVID-19 in early 2020. Howie and Serena, as essential workers, continued reporting to their jobs daily. “Coming face to face on the Hill with some people wearing masks, some people not,” Serena recounted, “that was an extremely stressful component of Howie’s last year.” The couple coped with anxiety amid the increasingly isolating pandemic environment.
In May 2020, protests erupted nationwide following the murder of an unarmed Black man by a white officer in Minneapolis. During one protest in Washington, Howie confronted a demonstrator who had parked in a restricted area and requested she move her vehicle. According to Howie, she accused him of targeting her because of her race. The incident struck Howie deeply. “Because he was anything but a person who would harbor racism,” said Serena, who is Black. “He was heartbroken by that.”
As anti-police sentiment escalated, Howie began to conceal his badge and hide his uniform on his drives home. “He did not want people to know that he was a police officer,” Serena shared.
Despite these challenges, Howie held deep pride in his service at the Senate. In late 2020, he received a distinguished gold pin commemorating his 15 years of duty. “He felt so proud,” Serena remembered.
During this time, Howie conveyed his post-policing aspirations to Serena. After completing 20 years, he would qualify for a full federal pension and still be relatively young, around 56 years old. He envisioned himself embracing a new career path—perhaps in academia or an entirely different field.
When Serena suggested that he could resign earlier if he faced too much stress, Howie affirmed his intention to reach the 20-year mark.
“Five more years,” Howie would say. “Five more years.”
On January 6, 2021, Howie prepared to drive to Capitol Hill for his shift. He placed his coffee mug atop his car, then turned back to the front door, where Serena stood. “Don’t run towards danger,” she joked. “I want you to come back home to your wife.”
Howie laughed, fully aware of Trump’s call for supporters to gather in Washington to protest what he falsely claimed was a stolen election. Protests were not novel in the capital, so Howie believed that while the event could be charged due to Trump’s rhetoric, he hadn’t anticipated that it would escalate into chaos. The night before, Howie texted his siblings: “Tomorrow is going to be a show!”
However, upon arriving at Capitol Hill, he found a scene beyond imagination. A violent mob of Trump supporters breached police barricades and stormed the Capitol; far-right extremists attacked officers with flagpoles, baseball bats, and even a hockey stick, while lawmakers scrambled for safety. “It is a shit show,” Howie texted his brother and sister. “We found two pipe bombs and have been pepper spraying protesters.”
Although not in the thick of the onslaught, Howie’s assignment with the civil disobedience unit placed him outside the Senate office buildings. Nevertheless, the chaos represented a personal affront to him, as his siblings highlighted. As children, Howie and his family once watched fireworks from the majority leader’s office; now, rioters defaced the rotunda and left debris in hallways. “He was traumatized,” John stated.
Howie returned home at around 4:30 a.m. on January 7, utterly exhausted. “Are you OK?” Serena asked, her worry palpable. Howie replied that he was fine, albeit tired. When Serena asked about the events of the day, he shared a troubling incident in which a man he believed needed help raised his hand in a Nazi salute and shouted aggressively at him in German.
“I’m tired,” he told Serena before saying goodnight and heading to bed without showering. Two hours later, he awakened for his 9:30 a.m. shift.
In the wake of the attack, Howie and his colleagues had little time to process the traumatic events they experienced. Police leadership mobilized every available resource due to the department’s historic failure to protect the Capitol, obligating officers to work longer hours with reduced time off. The combination of the extra workload and sleep deprivation, alongside the trauma of the riot, plunged Howie into extreme exhaustion.
On January 7, around 8:30 p.m., following approximately 11 hours of heavy work, Howie rear-ended a car in the police cruiser he was operating. The collision rendered him unconscious for about 20 seconds and caused a nasal injury to his partner. Howie stayed late to draft an accident report—a deeply distressing experience for him, especially given his tendency to hold himself accountable for workplace mistakes. “It’s been an absolutely terrible week,” Howie texted his brother and sister. “Riots, death, and I wrecked a cruiser last night and got a coworker injured. It is my fault.”
John and Anne encouraged Howie not to blame himself. Anne even offered to drive him home from work so he could rest. “How are you mentally?” she asked in a text.
“I am just tired and disgusted,” Howie replied. “And my face hurts from the airbag.”
The following day, Howie informed his siblings that he would be working 12-hour shifts every day for the rest of the month. For someone already fatigued and trying to make sense of the trauma he’d just endured, this new reality was disheartening. “There’s no end in sight,” he told Serena.
Then, on January 9, Howie declared to his family, “I’m done.”
As they grappled with the shock of Howie’s death, the Liebengood family found themselves in the eye of a political tempest. News of Howie’s passing spread rapidly across media outlets, resulting in reporters showing up at Serena’s home while condolences flooded in from Capitol Hill colleagues.
During this time, someone suggested that Howie be honored by lying in state in the Capitol rotunda—a tribute typically reserved for distinguished citizens, including the two Capitol officers killed in 1998. For Howie’s grieving widow and siblings, this suggestion seemed fitting. However, weeks later, they learned the idea had been quietly retracted, raising suspicions. After all, Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick, who died from strokes induced by defending the Capitol, was honored just weeks later on February 2, 2021.
“It sort of did raise a flag,” John expressed. “Like, wait a second, this is being treated differently because it’s a suicide.”
In the wake of Howie’s death, the family discovered that his tragedy was not isolated but part of a more extensive mental health crisis within law enforcement. Dr. John Violanti, a former New York State trooper now a research professor, noted that police officers are 54 percent more likely to die by suicide than those in the general workforce. This increased risk is attributed to factors such as access to firearms, negative public perceptions of policing, and the emotional strain officers face, especially when dealing with trauma or abuse in their communities.
For officers caught in the chaos of the January 6 attack, additional risk factors emerged. Metropolitan Police Officer Jeffrey Smith, who took his life on January 15, had suffered a traumatic brain injury during the riot. Such injuries have been shown to increase suicide risk. And Howie—once a professional race car driver—was so severely sleep-deprived after the attack that he crashed a police cruiser. “Lack of sleep also has a physiological effect,” Dr. Violanti added. “When combined with trauma, it can severely impair decision-making.”
Despite the heightened risk factors, many law enforcement agencies still regarded officer suicides as a source of shame. The 1968 law barred police officers who died by suicide from being classified as line-of-duty deaths, denying their families eligibility for death benefits.
The Liebengood family viewed Howie’s death as directly tied to the workplace stress he faced on January 6 and in its aftermath. “I felt that Howie would have been here if it wasn’t for his job,” Serena said, arguing there was no reason his passing should be treated differently based on its classification.
The family reached out to lawmakers with whom Howie had established relationships during his years guarding the Senate. Tim Kaine’s staff reached out to officials at the U.S. Department of Justice but soon determined that granting the family’s request for a line-of-duty designation was unlikely due to the existing law.
Meanwhile, Congresswoman Jennifer Wexton connected with acting Capitol Police Chief Yogananda Pittman and other law enforcement leaders, advocating for Howie’s death to be designated line-of-duty, but the department had a longstanding policy against categorizing police suicides in that manner. According to Wexton, some officers on the call suggested that suicides could potentially be cases of officers seeking benefits. “I don’t want us to go down that road,” Wexton reported hearing from some officers. While Barbara, Capitol Police spokesperson, could not confirm Wexton’s account, he acknowledged, “[D]oesn’t mean it didn’t happen; just don’t know who was on [the call] or what was said.”
Amid these challenges, Serena, John, and Anne joined forces with one of Howard Liebengood’s former lobbying associates, Chuck Merin, to identify strategies to combat the epidemic of law enforcement suicides. Their advocacy resulted in Wexton securing over $4 million in funding to, among other things, hire six additional mental health professionals for the Capitol Police and establish the Howard C. Liebengood Center for Wellness within the department.
Yet another objective for the family remained unresolved. In May 2021, Serena attended a memorial service for all Capitol Police officers who had died in the line of duty. While Howie’s passing was acknowledged, it wasn’t formally honored. Serena was warmly embraced by the officers present but was seated apart from the other widows.
Within two months of the attack, Merin reached out to Jim Pasco, executive director of the National Fraternal Order of Police and a longtime associate of Howard Liebengood, describing the family’s frustration over the Capitol Police’s reluctance to categorize Howie’s death as line-of-duty. “We really need your help,” Merin said.
"As a matter of fact,” Pasco replied, “we need yours, too.”
At that moment, Pasco, who had lost his own brother to suicide, was rallying support for a bill that would allow families of law enforcement officers who died by suicide to file for line-of-duty classification and benefits if their tragic actions stemmed from traumatic job experiences dating from 2019 onwards.
Previous efforts to pass such legislation had failed due in part to the stigma surrounding mental health and suicides. According to Pasco, the January 6 events illuminated the issue and provided an opportunity to attach real stories to the challenges faced within law enforcement. “And candidly, when January 6 came along,” he noted, “we saw it as a vehicle to put faces on the issue.”
After connecting with Pasco, the Liebengoods joined the campaign to pass the proposed legislation. Serena shared Howie’s story with Congressional offices, and those who knew Howie encouraged their peers to show support for the reform. Senator Tammy Duckworth authored the bill, with Senators Kaine and Coons among the co-sponsors. “I definitely viewed myself as trying to get the policy right, but also being a personal advocate for this family,” Kaine remarked. “I had Howie and his family principally in mind in pressing this forward,” said Coons.
They were not the only advocates for the bill. The most notable ally was Erin Smith, widow of Metropolitan Police Officer Jeffrey Smith, who had taken his life following the Capitol attack. She worked closely with Senator Duckworth throughout the legislative push. Several nonprofit groups advocating for first responders’ mental health, such as First H.E.L.P., also assumed significant roles in the initiative. But according to Kaine, Howie’s legacy provided powerful motivation for action. “It was connected to a person that we knew and loved,” Kaine stated, “and that enabled it to be embraced in such a bipartisan way by this Senate.”
In May 2022, as the bill prepared to clear both houses of Congress, Jim Pasco found himself backstage during the National Peace Officers’ Memorial Service, which the National FOP’s foundation sponsors. There, he encountered President Biden, a supporter of the National FOP and someone familiar with the elder Liebengood from his days in the Senate.
“Jimmy,” Biden said, “We’re doing this for Howard as much as anybody, right?”
In November 2022, just three months post-enactment, the DOJ classified Howie Liebengood’s death as a line-of-duty incident. This made him the first law enforcement officer who died by suicide to receive such recognition under new legislation. For the Liebengood family, it represented a combination of pride amidst profound loss. “This is about Howie,” Serena said, “but it’s also about all of these other families and law enforcement officers who died by suicide.”
The Liebengoods acknowledge that much work remains ahead. Law enforcement officers continue grappling with mental health issues, and despite the legislative change, many families await the death benefits for which they have applied, per Karen Solomon’s insights at First H.E.L.P. However, Howie’s widow and siblings remain resolute in their commitment to advocacy. Last January, Serena formed the Howard C. Liebengood Foundation, which aims to enhance the health and wellness of law enforcement personnel through interdisciplinary research and education. John and Anne remain engaged with the team at the Liebengood wellness center to share Howie’s story and promote mental health initiatives. John expresses optimism regarding the new resources available within the Capitol Police, urging officers to utilize the wellness center. “I would encourage people to use the wellness center,” he said. Furthermore, Serena, John, and Anne continue advocating for Howie’s inclusion on the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial in Washington, which the family believes has never recognized a suicide-affected officer.
Barber, the Capitol Police spokesperson, indicated that since January 6, 2021, the department has “dramatically increased its focus on employee well-being.” He noted that the Liebengood wellness center “delivers programming for every domain of human well-being and provides resources and support for USCP sworn and civilian employees and their families.” Initiatives initially centered on mental health, nutrition, and physical fitness have expanded to include peer support and spiritual care through chaplaincy programs. Stress-relief support dogs are also available as part of the program. Barber added that bi-monthly workshops on suicide awareness and prevention are presented to recruits and supervisors, and new employees partake in a three-day experiential wellness curriculum, ensuring an early understanding of available resources.
Each anniversary of January 6 remains emotionally challenging for Howie’s family, but this year’s will be particularly painful for John and Anne, given Trump's plans to pardon many riot participants. Nonetheless, they have consistently chosen not to engage in the ongoing political conflicts surrounding the event. They believe doing so would distance them from potential allies in their quest to prevent further law enforcement suicides.
“[Other] families are going through very similar things that we’re going through. We know there is another layer to ours because it is tied to this national historic event,” John acknowledged. “But I’m choosing to not spend my energy on that as much as I am on trying to make change happen.”
For Serena, avoiding the political battles surrounding January 6 has been vital to her emotional well-being. “This upcoming January 6 will be especially challenging for me,” she expressed, “knowing that officers will once again stand ready to protect and serve even as they continue to endure the trauma they sustained four years ago.”
If you or someone you know is struggling with suicidal thoughts, help is available 24/7 through the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline via the toll-free hotline at 1-800-273-8255. You can also text TALK to 741741.
Sophie Wagner contributed to this report for TROIB News
On the evening of January 9, Howie finally had a moment to call his younger brother, John Liebengood, while driving home from Capitol Hill. John included their younger sister, Anne Winters, in the conversation, and they talked about Howie’s well-being. Howie described the last few days as exhausting, with shifts lasting over 14 hours and only a few hours of sleep each night. To John and Anne, he sounded despondent.
“I’m done,” Howie declared. “I’m quitting.”
After 15 years on the force, 51-year-old Howie had decided to retire. He explained that he planned to work through the upcoming inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden, not wanting to burden his fellow officers, who were equally depleted by the Capitol crisis. “I can’t do that to them,” Howie said.
For John and Anne, this news was an immense relief. They had long felt that Howie’s service on the Capitol Police was detrimental to his health and had urged him to resign repeatedly, only to be met with his refusal. Now, though, he was ready to move on—perhaps the best news he had shared with them in 15 years.
After hanging up, Anne turned to her teenage sons and expressed her relief. “He’s going to quit,” she said. “He’s OK.”
Upon returning home to northern Virginia, Howie found his wife, Dr. Serena Liebengood, waiting for him. After a dinner he barely touched, he shared his plans to leave the department. Howie expressed a desire to move to Indiana, where his father was born and where the family still owned farmland. Serena wasn’t certain he was serious about moving, and recognizing his exhaustion, she suggested he get some rest.
Before heading upstairs, however, Serena checked in with Howie about how he was feeling and whether he had any thoughts of self-harm. She was attuned to his emotional state, aware of the intense stress he had endured in recent days. For a moment, Howie hesitated but then admitted that he had briefly considered hurting himself earlier that evening. Yet, he assured her, he was fine now.
As Howie went to bed, Serena remained awake. Shortly after 10:45 p.m., she heard a loud noise from upstairs, assuming Howie must have fallen. When she went to check, she found his lifeless body; he had used his service weapon to end his life.
Howie Liebengood was the second Capitol Police officer to die following the January 6 attack and the first of what would ultimately become four officers who responded to the riot and later committed suicide in the days, weeks, and months afterward.
The public reaction to his passing showed respect and honor. Senate staffers created a memorial outside the Russell Senate Office Building, adorned with photographs, flowers, and an American flag—an area Howie had guarded for many years. Later, in 2022, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi honored him with a Congressional Gold Medal, and in 2023, President Biden awarded him the Presidential Citizens Medal.
Yet, the chaos surrounding the insurrection and the ensuing partisan conflict obscured not only Howie Liebengood's life but also the factors leading to his death. The details surrounding his passing—he had been on duty during the riot but hadn’t directly faced violence—became lost amid the political strife. Some on the left condemned the attack, merging both the deaths of Trump supporters and law enforcement officers into one statistic, while some on the right attempted to downplay the violence, insinuating that Howie and the other officers who took their lives were part of a far-left conspiracy.
Now, as the fourth anniversary of January 6 approaches—and with the figure who incited the insurrection returning to the White House to consider pardoning many of the rioters—Howie’s family is sharing a comprehensive account of his life and the battle they undertook to ensure his death was recognized as a tragic consequence of his role. It’s a narrative about a man devoted to protecting an institution he loved since childhood, only to witness its political climate become increasingly toxic and the demands of his job unbearable. For Serena, Howie’s challenges stemmed from the daily pressures faced by law enforcement officers. While John and Anne agreed on that point, they believed his struggles were intertwined with a personal narrative filled with grief and familial legacy. “A very large part of it is the personal story and the grief that he carried,” John Liebengood remarked, “and the family legacy that he felt tied to.”
In their own grief, Howie’s family—Serena, John, and Anne—committed to honoring his life while working to ensure no other family experienced a similar tragedy. Over the months that followed, they uncovered a mental health crisis within the law enforcement community fueled by antiquated policies and biases toward officer suicides, often seen as less worthy of acknowledgment. Their advocacy for change involved collaboration with lawmakers Howie had befriended—including Senators Chris Coons and Tim Kaine—while avoiding the divisive politics surrounding January 6. “Howie didn’t care about a person’s political ideology,” Serena stated, “and neither do I.”
Their efforts led to the establishment of a new wellness center within the Capitol Police, progress toward Congressional legislation, and Howy’s recognition as the first law enforcement officer who died by suicide to receive acknowledgment as a line-of-duty death under new regulations by the Department of Justice.
Howie’s connection with the U.S. Senate began nearly fifty years earlier when his father, Howard S. Liebengood, arrived at Capitol Hill as assistant minority counsel for the Senate Watergate Committee in 1973. The elder Liebengood, a conservative Republican, would become a trusted aide to Howard Baker, who vice-chaired the Senate panel investigating the famous scandal.
To Howie and his younger siblings, the Senate office complex was a place of childhood fascination. The absence of weekday crowds allowed them to explore the grand staircases and admire sweeping oil paintings. “You’re just sort of in awe of it,” John recalled. Empty statue alcoves became makeshift playgrounds as they played at being Founding Fathers. “It was like a playground,” Anne said.
For the Liebengood children, the Senate represented a warm, nurturing institution—more akin to a community center than a governmental machine. Secretaries taught them typing, aides shared ghost stories, and they watched July 4 fireworks from Baker’s office. “I recognized it as a place of significance and something special without really knowing how or why,” John recalled. For young Howie, the most influential person in that building was his own father.
In 1981, the elder Liebengood, a military police officer during Vietnam, became the sergeant-at-arms for the Senate, overseeing the Capitol Police, which consisted of around 500 officers. This position came with ceremonial duties at significant Washington events, such as President Ronald Reagan's first inauguration. “I’m the only one who can arrest the president,” he joked with his children.
Since the age of four—when his father first took him to the Indy 500—Howie dreamed of becoming a professional race car driver. However, watching his father’s operations in the Senate—giving orders, offering advice, and meeting world leaders—sparked a vision for his own future in Capitol Hill. “If I’m not a race car driver,” a teenage Howie once told his sister, “I want to be a Capitol police officer.”
When it came time for college in 1987, Howie enrolled at Purdue University in Indiana, his father’s home state. While he graduated with a degree in history, his focus remained on racing. His professional racing career fostered a deep bond with his father. “They were best friends,” Anne noted. Traveling for competitions, Howie lived with his parents in the Washington suburbs while waiting tables and doing construction. His father had moved to K Street, where he became a powerful lobbyist, often dedicating time to finding sponsorships for Howie.
Chuck Merin, a former lobbying partner, reminisced about a visit to Howard’s office. One day, he saw Howard intensely sketching at his desk.
“Hey, what are you doing?” Merin asked.
“I’m working on a design for Howie’s racing helmet,” Howard responded.
Howie claimed victories on several occasions, including winning the Motorola Cup Sport Touring class championship in 2000. Such accomplishments brought immense joy for both father and son. “They were living their dream,” John said. However, as sponsorships dwindled in the early 2000s, Howie recognized that his racing ambitions were no longer financially sustainable. In 2004, he relocated to Tennessee—where his father had begun his career—to pursue his master’s degree in sports management at the University of Memphis.
By then, Howard had returned to Capitol Hill, serving as chief of staff for Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist. But when Howard’s wife, Deanna, began suffering from early-onset dementia, he left his position to care for her. In January 2005, Howie tried to call home from Memphis but couldn’t reach his father. Concerned, he asked John to check on their parents. A neighbor found Howard collapsed from a heart attack.
The loss stunned the Beltway community. Effusive obituaries appeared in The Washington Post, the Associated Press, and The Los Angeles Times, and numerous lawmakers—including then-Senator Joe Biden—attended the funeral. The impact of Howard’s death hit Howie especially hard, his siblings say. He took a break from school to care for his ailing mother and ponder his own future. “My dad was his anchor, and he was no longer here,” John recalled. “Howie was very much struggling with the direction of his life.”
Soon, Howie began contemplating applying to the Capitol Police, inspired to follow in his father’s footsteps and join the unit he had admired as a child. “He was looking for some relief from this grief,” John remarked, “and thought that doing something in sort of the footsteps of our dad would help.”
“What if you don’t like it?” Chuck Merin asked.
“Then I’ll make a change,” Howie replied. “But right now, this is where I need to be.”
In 2005, Howie joined his brother at the training academy in Cheltenham, Maryland. After a day of instruction for new recruits, Howie turned to John and said, “Well, I hope Dad would be proud of me.”
Across from the Capitol, Howie stood guard outside the west entrance of the Russell Senate Office Building for much of his 15 years on the force. To those who passed by, it became known simply as “Howie’s door.”
For Howie, the assignment felt like a return home. He had known some aides in the Russell building since childhood. “Everybody who knew Howie knew how important this place was to him,” remarked Senator Tim Kaine. Howie had an intuitive understanding of Senate politics, often asking staffers about collaborative efforts and which bills were likely to pass.
“He liked to know whether we were voting on a motion to proceed or whether we were voting on an amendment—and like, he knew the difference,” former top aide Sherman Patrick recalled. “That’s fairly unusual, even for some Senate staff, unfortunately.”
In terms of security, Howie adhered strictly to protocol—everyone, from summer interns to senior aides, had to walk through the metal detector without their belts. Yet, to those who saw him daily, Howie was more than a guard. He greeted people warmly on their way into the building, often reminding them not to forget their coats. Liz Johnson remembered returning to the Russell Building after her boss, Senator Kelly Ayotte, lost her reelection bid by a mere 1,000 votes. Howie’s sympathetic expression brought comfort as he “knew what we had just gone through.”
Beyond his professional role, employees from both sides of the aisle would often stop by Howie’s post to chat about sports or weekend plans. He participated in fantasy football with staffers, accepted invitations to office gatherings, and occasionally socialized with those who frequented his entrance. Some senators would even take the long way around just to say hello. “It was a grounding point for what should be eternal about the institution,” Patrick expressed, “that people who are different from each other are trying to do this self-governing thing together.”
In 2008, a few years after joining the Capitol Police, Howie met Serena through the dating site eHarmony. They bonded over their professions as first responders—he a police officer, she a radiologist in training. “Everything was just so easy,” Serena reflected. They married in October 2011.
As the late 2010s unfolded, Howie grew increasingly disheartened by the divisive partisanship paralyzing Congress. Ian Koski, who served as a senior adviser to Senator Coons from 2010 to 2015, recalled venting to Howie about episodes of gridlock, such as the government shutdown of 2013. Koski noted that while he didn’t technically know Howie’s politics, their mutual frustration with congressional dysfunction encapsulated the frustrations of those working within it. “He was putting his life on the line, doing his job for what was often obvious nonsense,” Koski remarked.
Donald Trump's election in 2016 intensified protests that Howie was assigned to manage. The confirmation hearings for Justice Brett Kavanaugh, for example, saw left-leaning crowds besiege Capitol Hill. Howie noted to his siblings how some protesters glued themselves to doorknobs. He repeatedly encountered some of the same activists, including paid protesters who disrupted the Russell Building’s hallways not out of passion but merely for compensation. “Dad would be so upset to see how things are right now,” Howie confided to his sister.
Simultaneously, shifts within the Capitol Police heightened his frustrations. Due to officer shortages, Howie often had to take overtime shifts with little notice, working more holidays with less time off. According to John and Anne, Howie expressed discontent with police leadership, lamenting the promotion of the wrong officers and perceived punitive measures against the rank-and-file.
The prospect of making a mistake on the job, with the potential for repercussions, loomed large for Howie. “And if something didn’t go well or meet his expectation, or he would worry that he messed up something,” Serena noted, “he would bring that home with him, and it would upset him.”
Such stress often led to cycles of anxiety and despair. “I’m struggling,” Howie confided to his siblings. In late 2018, Serena expressed concern for Howie after a minor error at work caused him distress. While no one recalled the specifics, John and Anne remember Serena sharing that Howie was so upset he had mentioned the possibility of self-harm. Serena’s account diverged slightly; she stated the family network was concerned for her husband’s well-being. Regardless, Howie’s siblings reached out to a suicide prevention hotline, met him after his shift, and drove him home. Howie assured them he was fine, acknowledging thoughts about self-harm but insisting he would never do it.
“I wouldn't do that to Serena,” he asserted.
Howie agreed to keep his service weapon outside the house—advice provided by the prevention hotline.
Over the years, Howie had contemplated leaving the police. During his early years on the force, he often used vacation days to return to Memphis and work on his master’s degree in sports management. He also maintained an interest in academia, co-authoring a chapter in 2010 about Congress' influence on the professional sports industry for a book titled *Introduction to Sport Management: Theory and Practice.* He evaluated opportunities to pursue a Ph.D. in sports management but turned them down, not wanting to be away from Serena.
Despite their concerns, his siblings found it challenging to convince Howie to leave his job. For many law enforcement officers experiencing job-related stress or mental health challenges, the notion of changing careers can be daunting. The identity associated with police work often intertwines with self-worth, complicating the decision to leave. According to Karen Solomon, co-founder of First H.E.L.P., simply advising officers to quit over mental health concerns can exacerbate their anxieties. John and Anne felt that Howie bore additional burdens of pressure to uphold the family legacy, believing he didn’t want to let down their father.
A family friend remembered a lunch with Howie, lamenting his work struggles.
“You can always quit, remember,” the family friend suggested.
“My parents taught me never to quit,” Howie replied.
Securing care proved difficult for Howie, even with familial support. The culture within the Capitol Police didn’t encourage seeking help. According to former officers, mental health concerns were often treated as a sign of weakness, with little public discourse surrounding the topic. Though confidential assistance was touted to officers through a partnership with the House of Representatives, John and Anne recounted Howie’s reluctance to seek help from the department due to fears of professional repercussions. “He did not have confidence in the confidentiality of the process,” John stated.
Rather than pursuing options within the Capitol Police, Howie sought treatment externally. Unfortunately, many of the professionals he consulted had limited understanding of law enforcement’s unique stressors. One therapist provided him with advice he had previously received: Quit your job. Additionally, efforts to discuss his stress with his primary care physician following the 2018 incident did not alleviate the pressures he faced.
The strains of Howie’s career compounded when much of the nation shuttered due to COVID-19 in early 2020. Howie and Serena, as essential workers, continued reporting to their jobs daily. “Coming face to face on the Hill with some people wearing masks, some people not,” Serena recounted, “that was an extremely stressful component of Howie’s last year.” The couple coped with anxiety amid the increasingly isolating pandemic environment.
In May 2020, protests erupted nationwide following the murder of an unarmed Black man by a white officer in Minneapolis. During one protest in Washington, Howie confronted a demonstrator who had parked in a restricted area and requested she move her vehicle. According to Howie, she accused him of targeting her because of her race. The incident struck Howie deeply. “Because he was anything but a person who would harbor racism,” said Serena, who is Black. “He was heartbroken by that.”
As anti-police sentiment escalated, Howie began to conceal his badge and hide his uniform on his drives home. “He did not want people to know that he was a police officer,” Serena shared.
Despite these challenges, Howie held deep pride in his service at the Senate. In late 2020, he received a distinguished gold pin commemorating his 15 years of duty. “He felt so proud,” Serena remembered.
During this time, Howie conveyed his post-policing aspirations to Serena. After completing 20 years, he would qualify for a full federal pension and still be relatively young, around 56 years old. He envisioned himself embracing a new career path—perhaps in academia or an entirely different field.
When Serena suggested that he could resign earlier if he faced too much stress, Howie affirmed his intention to reach the 20-year mark.
“Five more years,” Howie would say. “Five more years.”
On January 6, 2021, Howie prepared to drive to Capitol Hill for his shift. He placed his coffee mug atop his car, then turned back to the front door, where Serena stood. “Don’t run towards danger,” she joked. “I want you to come back home to your wife.”
Howie laughed, fully aware of Trump’s call for supporters to gather in Washington to protest what he falsely claimed was a stolen election. Protests were not novel in the capital, so Howie believed that while the event could be charged due to Trump’s rhetoric, he hadn’t anticipated that it would escalate into chaos. The night before, Howie texted his siblings: “Tomorrow is going to be a show!”
However, upon arriving at Capitol Hill, he found a scene beyond imagination. A violent mob of Trump supporters breached police barricades and stormed the Capitol; far-right extremists attacked officers with flagpoles, baseball bats, and even a hockey stick, while lawmakers scrambled for safety. “It is a shit show,” Howie texted his brother and sister. “We found two pipe bombs and have been pepper spraying protesters.”
Although not in the thick of the onslaught, Howie’s assignment with the civil disobedience unit placed him outside the Senate office buildings. Nevertheless, the chaos represented a personal affront to him, as his siblings highlighted. As children, Howie and his family once watched fireworks from the majority leader’s office; now, rioters defaced the rotunda and left debris in hallways. “He was traumatized,” John stated.
Howie returned home at around 4:30 a.m. on January 7, utterly exhausted. “Are you OK?” Serena asked, her worry palpable. Howie replied that he was fine, albeit tired. When Serena asked about the events of the day, he shared a troubling incident in which a man he believed needed help raised his hand in a Nazi salute and shouted aggressively at him in German.
“I’m tired,” he told Serena before saying goodnight and heading to bed without showering. Two hours later, he awakened for his 9:30 a.m. shift.
In the wake of the attack, Howie and his colleagues had little time to process the traumatic events they experienced. Police leadership mobilized every available resource due to the department’s historic failure to protect the Capitol, obligating officers to work longer hours with reduced time off. The combination of the extra workload and sleep deprivation, alongside the trauma of the riot, plunged Howie into extreme exhaustion.
On January 7, around 8:30 p.m., following approximately 11 hours of heavy work, Howie rear-ended a car in the police cruiser he was operating. The collision rendered him unconscious for about 20 seconds and caused a nasal injury to his partner. Howie stayed late to draft an accident report—a deeply distressing experience for him, especially given his tendency to hold himself accountable for workplace mistakes. “It’s been an absolutely terrible week,” Howie texted his brother and sister. “Riots, death, and I wrecked a cruiser last night and got a coworker injured. It is my fault.”
John and Anne encouraged Howie not to blame himself. Anne even offered to drive him home from work so he could rest. “How are you mentally?” she asked in a text.
“I am just tired and disgusted,” Howie replied. “And my face hurts from the airbag.”
The following day, Howie informed his siblings that he would be working 12-hour shifts every day for the rest of the month. For someone already fatigued and trying to make sense of the trauma he’d just endured, this new reality was disheartening. “There’s no end in sight,” he told Serena.
Then, on January 9, Howie declared to his family, “I’m done.”
As they grappled with the shock of Howie’s death, the Liebengood family found themselves in the eye of a political tempest. News of Howie’s passing spread rapidly across media outlets, resulting in reporters showing up at Serena’s home while condolences flooded in from Capitol Hill colleagues.
During this time, someone suggested that Howie be honored by lying in state in the Capitol rotunda—a tribute typically reserved for distinguished citizens, including the two Capitol officers killed in 1998. For Howie’s grieving widow and siblings, this suggestion seemed fitting. However, weeks later, they learned the idea had been quietly retracted, raising suspicions. After all, Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick, who died from strokes induced by defending the Capitol, was honored just weeks later on February 2, 2021.
“It sort of did raise a flag,” John expressed. “Like, wait a second, this is being treated differently because it’s a suicide.”
In the wake of Howie’s death, the family discovered that his tragedy was not isolated but part of a more extensive mental health crisis within law enforcement. Dr. John Violanti, a former New York State trooper now a research professor, noted that police officers are 54 percent more likely to die by suicide than those in the general workforce. This increased risk is attributed to factors such as access to firearms, negative public perceptions of policing, and the emotional strain officers face, especially when dealing with trauma or abuse in their communities.
For officers caught in the chaos of the January 6 attack, additional risk factors emerged. Metropolitan Police Officer Jeffrey Smith, who took his life on January 15, had suffered a traumatic brain injury during the riot. Such injuries have been shown to increase suicide risk. And Howie—once a professional race car driver—was so severely sleep-deprived after the attack that he crashed a police cruiser. “Lack of sleep also has a physiological effect,” Dr. Violanti added. “When combined with trauma, it can severely impair decision-making.”
Despite the heightened risk factors, many law enforcement agencies still regarded officer suicides as a source of shame. The 1968 law barred police officers who died by suicide from being classified as line-of-duty deaths, denying their families eligibility for death benefits.
The Liebengood family viewed Howie’s death as directly tied to the workplace stress he faced on January 6 and in its aftermath. “I felt that Howie would have been here if it wasn’t for his job,” Serena said, arguing there was no reason his passing should be treated differently based on its classification.
The family reached out to lawmakers with whom Howie had established relationships during his years guarding the Senate. Tim Kaine’s staff reached out to officials at the U.S. Department of Justice but soon determined that granting the family’s request for a line-of-duty designation was unlikely due to the existing law.
Meanwhile, Congresswoman Jennifer Wexton connected with acting Capitol Police Chief Yogananda Pittman and other law enforcement leaders, advocating for Howie’s death to be designated line-of-duty, but the department had a longstanding policy against categorizing police suicides in that manner. According to Wexton, some officers on the call suggested that suicides could potentially be cases of officers seeking benefits. “I don’t want us to go down that road,” Wexton reported hearing from some officers. While Barbara, Capitol Police spokesperson, could not confirm Wexton’s account, he acknowledged, “[D]oesn’t mean it didn’t happen; just don’t know who was on [the call] or what was said.”
Amid these challenges, Serena, John, and Anne joined forces with one of Howard Liebengood’s former lobbying associates, Chuck Merin, to identify strategies to combat the epidemic of law enforcement suicides. Their advocacy resulted in Wexton securing over $4 million in funding to, among other things, hire six additional mental health professionals for the Capitol Police and establish the Howard C. Liebengood Center for Wellness within the department.
Yet another objective for the family remained unresolved. In May 2021, Serena attended a memorial service for all Capitol Police officers who had died in the line of duty. While Howie’s passing was acknowledged, it wasn’t formally honored. Serena was warmly embraced by the officers present but was seated apart from the other widows.
Within two months of the attack, Merin reached out to Jim Pasco, executive director of the National Fraternal Order of Police and a longtime associate of Howard Liebengood, describing the family’s frustration over the Capitol Police’s reluctance to categorize Howie’s death as line-of-duty. “We really need your help,” Merin said.
"As a matter of fact,” Pasco replied, “we need yours, too.”
At that moment, Pasco, who had lost his own brother to suicide, was rallying support for a bill that would allow families of law enforcement officers who died by suicide to file for line-of-duty classification and benefits if their tragic actions stemmed from traumatic job experiences dating from 2019 onwards.
Previous efforts to pass such legislation had failed due in part to the stigma surrounding mental health and suicides. According to Pasco, the January 6 events illuminated the issue and provided an opportunity to attach real stories to the challenges faced within law enforcement. “And candidly, when January 6 came along,” he noted, “we saw it as a vehicle to put faces on the issue.”
After connecting with Pasco, the Liebengoods joined the campaign to pass the proposed legislation. Serena shared Howie’s story with Congressional offices, and those who knew Howie encouraged their peers to show support for the reform. Senator Tammy Duckworth authored the bill, with Senators Kaine and Coons among the co-sponsors. “I definitely viewed myself as trying to get the policy right, but also being a personal advocate for this family,” Kaine remarked. “I had Howie and his family principally in mind in pressing this forward,” said Coons.
They were not the only advocates for the bill. The most notable ally was Erin Smith, widow of Metropolitan Police Officer Jeffrey Smith, who had taken his life following the Capitol attack. She worked closely with Senator Duckworth throughout the legislative push. Several nonprofit groups advocating for first responders’ mental health, such as First H.E.L.P., also assumed significant roles in the initiative. But according to Kaine, Howie’s legacy provided powerful motivation for action. “It was connected to a person that we knew and loved,” Kaine stated, “and that enabled it to be embraced in such a bipartisan way by this Senate.”
In May 2022, as the bill prepared to clear both houses of Congress, Jim Pasco found himself backstage during the National Peace Officers’ Memorial Service, which the National FOP’s foundation sponsors. There, he encountered President Biden, a supporter of the National FOP and someone familiar with the elder Liebengood from his days in the Senate.
“Jimmy,” Biden said, “We’re doing this for Howard as much as anybody, right?”
In November 2022, just three months post-enactment, the DOJ classified Howie Liebengood’s death as a line-of-duty incident. This made him the first law enforcement officer who died by suicide to receive such recognition under new legislation. For the Liebengood family, it represented a combination of pride amidst profound loss. “This is about Howie,” Serena said, “but it’s also about all of these other families and law enforcement officers who died by suicide.”
The Liebengoods acknowledge that much work remains ahead. Law enforcement officers continue grappling with mental health issues, and despite the legislative change, many families await the death benefits for which they have applied, per Karen Solomon’s insights at First H.E.L.P. However, Howie’s widow and siblings remain resolute in their commitment to advocacy. Last January, Serena formed the Howard C. Liebengood Foundation, which aims to enhance the health and wellness of law enforcement personnel through interdisciplinary research and education. John and Anne remain engaged with the team at the Liebengood wellness center to share Howie’s story and promote mental health initiatives. John expresses optimism regarding the new resources available within the Capitol Police, urging officers to utilize the wellness center. “I would encourage people to use the wellness center,” he said. Furthermore, Serena, John, and Anne continue advocating for Howie’s inclusion on the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial in Washington, which the family believes has never recognized a suicide-affected officer.
Barber, the Capitol Police spokesperson, indicated that since January 6, 2021, the department has “dramatically increased its focus on employee well-being.” He noted that the Liebengood wellness center “delivers programming for every domain of human well-being and provides resources and support for USCP sworn and civilian employees and their families.” Initiatives initially centered on mental health, nutrition, and physical fitness have expanded to include peer support and spiritual care through chaplaincy programs. Stress-relief support dogs are also available as part of the program. Barber added that bi-monthly workshops on suicide awareness and prevention are presented to recruits and supervisors, and new employees partake in a three-day experiential wellness curriculum, ensuring an early understanding of available resources.
Each anniversary of January 6 remains emotionally challenging for Howie’s family, but this year’s will be particularly painful for John and Anne, given Trump's plans to pardon many riot participants. Nonetheless, they have consistently chosen not to engage in the ongoing political conflicts surrounding the event. They believe doing so would distance them from potential allies in their quest to prevent further law enforcement suicides.
“[Other] families are going through very similar things that we’re going through. We know there is another layer to ours because it is tied to this national historic event,” John acknowledged. “But I’m choosing to not spend my energy on that as much as I am on trying to make change happen.”
For Serena, avoiding the political battles surrounding January 6 has been vital to her emotional well-being. “This upcoming January 6 will be especially challenging for me,” she expressed, “knowing that officers will once again stand ready to protect and serve even as they continue to endure the trauma they sustained four years ago.”
If you or someone you know is struggling with suicidal thoughts, help is available 24/7 through the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline via the toll-free hotline at 1-800-273-8255. You can also text TALK to 741741.
Sophie Wagner contributed to this report for TROIB News
