In this extended interview, Sgt. Michael Sugrue recounts a 2012 in‑service shooting where he and fellow officers confronted a knife‑wielding intruder, ultimately killing the suspect. The incident shattered his long‑held sense of invincibility and marked a "tipping point" that triggered a cascade of personal crises: suicidal thoughts, the collapse of his marriage, a contentious custody battle, and a federal trial in which the suspect’s identical twin testified. Sugrue describes how the stigma of mental‑health struggles within first‑responder culture left him isolated, leading him to seek dangerous situations in hopes of a heroic death. A turning point arrived when a colleague attempted suicide on duty, prompting Sugrue to request help. He entered culturally competent therapy, discovered peer‑support groups for first responders, and pursued a multimodal recovery regimen—including talk therapy, group meetings, stellate ganglion block injections, EMDR, meditation, equine therapy, physical fitness, and gratitude practices. He emphasizes that healing often requires a combination of approaches and that sharing one’s story can break the isolation that fuels suicide. Sugrue promotes concrete resources: his co‑authored book Relentless Courage, 24/7 hotlines staffed by former responders, and the free "Save a Warrior" program for veterans and first responders. He urges others to be vulnerable, share their narratives, and seek out the supportive community that exists beyond the badge.
Chapters
He's clenching a huge full-size kitchen knife and starts coming towards us down the stairwell. I took a life. But that incident, I call it my tipping point. And literally I started putting myself in dangerous situations at work because if I died in the line of duty, I'd be a hero. I thought there was something wrong with me.
To an EMT, firefighter, police officer, first responder, military personnel, do you have any input on things that they can try that nobody else would know to at least try something?
There's power in healing in your story. And that's where the real power in healing was, is knowing that I wasn't alone. You know, I was suicidal. And I thank God every day that I'm here, and I know I'm here for a reason. I'll take you to December 2012, and about 3 in the morning, I was in my patrol car, 4 hours from going off duty, reviewing reports. And all of a sudden the alert tones come on the radio. And that's basically like a really high-pitched alternating sound that comes on the police radio. It's unusual. It only comes out for the most severe calls or in-progress calls. And so immediately my attention perked up. Immediately I start listening and the dispatcher, female dispatcher, sounds very frantic. I'd never heard her sound like this before. And she puts out that there is a woman inside the condominium and a man armed with a knife. About halfway there, the dispatcher again gets on the radio and she says now that the boyfriend and girlfriend are barricaded inside their bedroom. And I said, is the boyfriend the one with the knife or is there a third subject with a knife? And the dispatcher quickly says, no, there's a third subject armed with a knife. I pull up on scene. It's very dark. And literally as I start getting out of my car, the dispatcher starts screaming now on the radio and she says, units, units, there's a struggle. There's a struggle. And she says the phone line went dead. And thank goodness, at the same time, one of my officers is pulling up right behind me and we can hear blood-curling screams from a female coming from the distance. And we end up finding the unit and it goes from these blood-curling screams to just eerie silence. Now, at this point, it's just myself and this female officer, and we know we've got to get inside there. We announce ourselves. I start banging on the door saying, "Police, come out. Show us your hands. Show us your hands." Don't hear anything. She looks at me, I look at her. She goes in, I go in right behind her. Um, immediately we're in this kitchen area and there's just glass everywhere. We both exit the kitchen. She goes right, I go left down the hallway. I clear that family room, living room area, you know, checking for people, for anything. I don't see anybody. Come back to the bottom of the stairs. Now literally I'm shoulder to shoulder with my partner. She's to my right. To her right is a solid wall. So basically there's a solid wall. My partner, myself, we're looking up this dark staircase and we can see there's an opening to the top left. We have our guns out. We have mounted flashlights on our guns, very bright lights. And again, we're yelling, "Police, come out! Show us your hands! Show us your hands!" Moments later, a male subject partially comes out. We can't see the entire right side of his body. Can only see the left side of his body. Sweating profusely. His eyes are like wide open, literally just staring straight through us. The best way to describe it is like something out of a zombie movie. I mean, literally just staring straight through us. Again, you know, we're yelling, "Guns are out!" You know, "Show us your hands! Show us your hands!" I don't remember any visible reaction. I don't remember eyes blinking. I don't remember facial expression, no body movement, nothing. At some point, 2 more officers come inside the condominium. Moments later, my partner yells, "He's got a knife! He's got a knife!" And now we can see his entire body. In his right hand, he's clenching a huge full-size kitchen knife. So now we're yelling, "Drop the knife! Drop the knife!" Again, no reaction. And then moments later, he takes the knife up over his head in a stabbing position, starts coming towards us down the stairwell. I shoot, other officers shoot. Eventually he's down at the bottom of the stairs. I don't know if I've hit him or not. I don't see any blood. I don't see any injuries. And so literally we are just a few feet from the subject at the bottom of the stairs. He's still clenching this huge knife. And so now we're yelling at him, drop the knife, drop the knife. He starts coming back up with a knife. I mean, literally right there in front of me. And I shot. My partner shot. I mean, it was devastating. It was obvious that he had been killed at that point. I mean, his eye was gone. There was blood everywhere. And thank God we got there when we did, because literally the subject had been stabbing through the bedroom door with this huge knife and the door was coming off the hinges. But that incident, I call it my tipping point because I had been exposed to hundreds of incidents before that. Incidents I never talked about. I never processed. They just stacked up and stacked up. But this incident literally took away my feeling of invincibility that I had had my entire career in both the military and law enforcement. I mean, I literally thought I was untouchable, you know, but the fact is that I took a life.
Hmm.
And it doesn't matter that it was justified. It doesn't matter that people were saved. I have to live with that fact, and I don't think most people understand the weight of something like that. My life started to fall apart. I literally lost everything. It got to the point where my marriage was over. I was fighting for custody of my beautiful daughter, um, the lawsuit was going. I ended up a defendant in federal court in San Francisco on trial, you know, 2-week jury trial, when I literally saved a couple's lives. And what I didn't tell you was that the man that tried to kill me had an identical twin brother, and he was in the courtroom with me. So this face that had been in my nightmares for 4 years is literally sitting feet behind me in the courtroom for 2 weeks. And I told myself the whole time that once I got past that trial, all my problems go away. And we prevailed, we won the trial, but they didn't go away. That trial made things much, much worse. And literally, I started putting myself in dangerous situations at work, hoping that a bad guy took me out, putting my judgment, my tactics, my training to the side, and literally putting myself in harm's way, hoping somebody killed me. Because if I died in the line of duty, I'd be a hero. And it was a few weeks later, I was on duty and my best friend tried to kill himself when I was on duty. And that was my wake-up call. Because a month after that is when I got the strength and courage to finally ask for help. And I pulled out my cell phone and I called the on-duty watch commander and just said, "Look, I can't do this anymore. I need help." I met a phenomenal culturally competent clinician, a therapist. And what I mean by that is one who specializes in first responders or military members. And she told me about first responder support meetings, which I had no idea about. And that's where, for the first time, I met fellow brothers and sisters—paramedics, dispatchers, police officers, firefighters—who were sharing, like, literally things they were going through, had gone through, how they came out the other side. And I didn't realize Like, I thought I was the only one. I thought there was something wrong with me. And that's where the real power and healing was, is knowing that I wasn't alone and knowing that I had this new family I found where I could share anything and everything and not be judged, not be looked down upon. And here's the most ironic thing. So at this point, I'd been a police officer for over a decade, right? And I trusted the people I work with. Like, I knew that if I went to an active shooter situation, they would have my back to the fullest. I trusted them with my life. But why is it that I couldn't trust them enough to ever open up or have real-life discussions about what I was going through, about what was going on in my personal life? There's this kind of dichotomy where you've got to be this strong, brave person. But in reality, We're exposed to hundreds and hundreds of traumatic incidents over our career. What I do think is that because of the stigma attached to it, there's a couple things that happen. First thing is that when people finally get the strength and courage to ask for help, they don't get the help they need, or they get outcasted. You know, they get put out on an island by themselves where nobody wants to be associated with them, and that's terrifying for people of your profession, right?
Because you build camaraderie that is not replaceable anywhere else. So you're almost getting removed from your tribe or family even deeper, in a sense.
In my opinion, that's more traumatizing than the things that we see on the street or the things that we see on the battlefield. This is what I think pushes most people over the edge into suicide, because it's that abandonment. It brings up unresolved childhood trauma, which in a lot of cases is abandonment in different forms. It's trauma on top of trauma on top of trauma. If you can visualize it, you this unresolved childhood trauma. On top of that, you have the workplace trauma or the battlefield trauma. Now on top of that, you have moral injury, and then you have administrative betrayal or institutional betrayal, you know. But in most cases, and in my case, most first responders, we forget about our childhood. We push it away, we move on, we become very successful, and it's not until another traumatic incident brings it all right back up. Wow.
What tools do you use today? I know you mentioned meditation. There was some sort of injection, ESGG.
It's an injection only done by a medical doctor. It's done in a bundle of nerves in your neck, and it's with a common anesthetic used for, like, a lot of times labor and delivery or childbirth, and it's for pain. But what they found out a couple decades ago was by accident that can actually reduce or lessen these physical fight or flight symptoms. And so it doesn't cure post-traumatic stress, but what it does is it allows you to be in the right space or mindset or physical space to do the things you need to do like therapy, group meetings, EMDR, meditation. You know, there's all kinds of different things that you can try or do. And that's the thing, is that for most people it's a combination approach. It's not one single thing that works for everybody. For me, it was definitely a combination. It was talk therapy, it was group meetings, it was stellate ganglion block, meditation. I've done things like equine therapy, working out. I also practice gratitude, ending the day with just positive thoughts in your mind. And then going to sleep with that, you're much more likely to have good dreams as opposed to nightmares or night terrors. That's why I want people to understand, like, don't put all your eggs in one basket and don't give up if you try one thing and doesn't work. Have an open mind and try new things. Keep going.
To an EMT, firefighter, police officer, first responder, military personnel, anyone who's in the situation where they need help and they're having thoughts of suicide or trauma symptoms and they can't because of culture, they can't ask for it. Do you have any input on things that they can try that nobody else would know to at least try something if they're feeling like they're going to kill themselves? Absolutely.
So I'm going to be a little biased here, but the first thing is this book right here. Okay. Relentless Courage. You can see quickly that you're not alone, that you're not abnormal, because my story is going to be your story. And I guarantee that countless things in here will resonate with you. And with the doctor's analysis and explanation here, Doc Springer, she's my co-author, that's going to give you that insight and that validation. Yes. That, you know, most people don't have. And so there are actually a bunch of text lines, hotlines that are free. They're 24/7. They're staffed by volunteers, many of whom are first responders or were first responders. I went through another program called Save a Warrior. It was a week-long program. It's actually free. It's for any military veterans, active military, any first responders. But it deals with that childhood trauma. Because for the first couple years, I only dealt with the work trauma. I dealt with the things that I saw in the military. I dealt with the things that I saw on the job as a police officer, but I didn't deal with that childhood trauma. You know, I get the fear and the apprehension of people wanting to ask for help, but there's many things that you can do in privacy without other people knowing about it. You know, I was suicidal, and I thank God every day that I'm here, and I know I'm here for a reason. I absolutely do. But I'm living proof that things do get better, that there is hope. I'm not saying it's going to be easy. I mean, my journey was difficult, and there was a lot of ups and downs.
Is there anything anyone can do to help spread the word?
You know, I think that everyone has a story. You and I were talking before this interview. You have a story, and there's power in healing in your story. And it's not only healing for us to share our story, but it's healing for other people. And what I found is that if you want people to be vulnerable with you, you have to first be vulnerable yourself. And so I really encourage people to share your story, to show people that, you know, there is hope, that you have gotten through things, because it lets people know that they're not alone. Just know, most importantly, there's endless resources out there. There are tons of your brothers and sisters who do get it, who will understand you, who aren't going to judge you. And I think that's the key. Like I said, I thought it was only me. I thought something was wrong with me. I thought that nobody would understand it, that everyone would judge me, everyone would look down upon me. But I promise you, if you reach out, you will find help. What's your story?
We all have a story that makes us who we are, or multiple stories. Come share yours. Hit me up, @vibewithhumanity on Instagram. DM me. Thanks, guys. Enjoy these two right here.
