Textbooks aside, we must recognize that defensive projection is a way of life, a way of being and moving in the world. From [FTP] In 2020, according to the Officer Down Memorial Page, 45 police officers were shot and killed in the line of duty — a decrease from the previous year. Absent from the database of fallen officers, however, are the 173 cops who ended their own watch. After rising for four consecutive years in a row, suicide among police dropped a little but is significantly higher than 2016.

As the number of officers killed in the line of duty decreased, the number of cops taking their own lives has increased. The website Blue H.E.L.P. (Honor. Educate. Lead. Prevent.) has been tracking these numbers for years in an attempt to prevent police officer suicides.

Cops are killing themselves at a rate nearly equal to 4 times the rate they are dying in the line of duty and this subject seems entirely taboo. Last year, it was nearly five times higher.

A report commissioned by the Ruderman Family Foundation showed that officers’ highest risk of death is by suicide with most deaths in California and Texas. [MORE]

According to FUNKTIONARY:

Projection - a highly emotional charged activity (dynamic energy) that occurs whenever an unknown aspect of yourself sees itself in somebody else. Whatever you're unaware of about yourself is always noticed in other people first. Remember that everything (i.e., known and disowned traits, unconscious) is projected. If you can't stand someone else for some seemingly known reason then you have the disliked feature or aspect in you but are unaware of its existence or presence within you. You notice it in someone else but its origin is in you. 2) "seeing" feelings, motives or attitudes in another that are really in ourselves only. 3) personified versions of one's own personality. 4) capacity for "charging" a particular area or energy system. 5) a false cause. 6) an unsettling hidden worry--deep seated in the psyche. Projections are illusions created by shadows of one's mind. Fear is often the template for its own manifestation. Projection is the vibration that we don't appreciate in someone else resonating with what we don't like in (or about) ourselves and is the source of most prejudice. "If you have hate for something there, this is yourself, though hard to bear. For you are I and I am thou. You hate in you what you despise. You hate urself and think it's me." ~Frederick S. Perls. Projection takes what is happening where you look rather than where you are. “You spot it, you got it." Ultimately projection generates a great deal of pain and confusion, since you are attempting to crucify save others not from their sins, but your own. "And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye." Your mind can and build a case of universal innocence as easily as it will look far personal guilt. Love is a state of being or vision for living that handles all things equally--as it. A projection into the future belies the reality of the present and relies on faith for its eventual realization. Wherever you go, there you are. (See: Perception. All, Hell, Condemnation, Semi-Projection, Self-Confrontation, prejudice, Shadow, Conscious, Archetype, Enemy, Terrorists, Collective Unconscious, Expectation, Core Beliefs, Self-Observation, "Others" & "Direct Hit")