What Jan. 6 Did To Officer Howie Liebengood

Three days had passed since the riot. Three days and still Capitol Police Officer Howie Liebengood’s brother and sister hadn’t spoken to him. They knew he’d made it through without any physical injuries, but they worried about how the attack and its aftermath had impacted him psychologically. They were eager to hear his voice.

Finally, on the evening of Jan. 9, Howie had time to call his younger brother, John Liebengood, on his drive home from Capitol Hill. John patched in their younger sister, Anne Winters, and they discussed how Howie was holding up. It had been an exhausting three days, Howie said. Shifts of more than 14 hours long and only a few hours of sleep a night. To his brother and sister, he seemed despondent.

“I’m done,” Howie said. “I’m quitting.”

After 15 years on the force, Howie, 51, had decided to retire. The plan, he said, was to work through the upcoming inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden; he didn’t want his fellow officers — who were every bit as depleted as he was after the crisis at the Capitol — to be inconvenienced. “I can’t do that to them,” Howie said.

For John and Anne, the development came as an extraordinary relief. They’d long believed Howie’s service on the Capitol Police was harming his health, and they’d repeatedly urged him to quit. Yet he’d always refused. Now, Howie was ready to move on. It was some of the best news he’d shared with them in 15 years.

Upon hanging up the phone, Anne turned to her teenage sons to express her relief. “He’s going to quit,” Anne said. “He’s OK.”

Soon after, Howie arrived back at his home in northern Virginia, where his wife, Dr. Serena Liebengood, was waiting for him. When they’d finished dinner, which he barely ate, Howie told his wife about his plans to leave the department. What he wanted to do, he said, was move to Indiana, where his father was born and his family still owned farmland. Serena didn’t think her husband was necessarily serious about moving. And because he was so exhausted and had to be up before 4 a.m. for work the next day, she didn’t pursue the issue any further. Instead, Serena suggested he get some sleep.

Before Howie went upstairs, though, Serena asked how he was feeling and if he had any thoughts of harming himself. Serena made a point to check in with Howie if she thought something might be troubling him, and she understood that the past few days had been particularly stressful for him. For a second, Howie hesitated. Then he said that earlier he had briefly thought about hurting himself. But now, he told her, he was fine.

As Howie went off to bed, Serena stayed up. Around 10:45 p.m., she heard a loud noise from upstairs. She thought Howie must have fallen out of bed. When she went upstairs to investigate, she found Howie’s body. He’d used his service weapon to take his own life.

Howie Liebengood was the second Capitol Police officer to die after the Jan. 6 attack. But he was the first of what ultimately would become four officers who responded to the riot and then took their own lives in the days, weeks and months after the melee.

In some ways the public reaction to his death was fitting and respectful. Senate staffers constructed a memorial — complete with photographs, flowers and an American flag — by the door to the Russell Senate Office Building that Howie had guarded for years. Later, in 2022, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi would honor him with a Congressional Gold Medal, and in 2023, Biden would award him the Presidential Citizens Medal.

But the chaos of the riot and the messy partisan feuding in the years that followed have managed to obscure both Howie Liebengood’s life and the factors that led to his death. The details of his passing — he’d been on duty during the melee but wasn’t one of the officers who had been brutally beaten by the crowd — were lost in the political sparring. Some on the left decried the attack and compiled all the dead — Trump supporters and police — into one number. Voices on the right sought to downplay the violence and its consequences and even suggested that Howie and the other officers who took their lives might be part of a far-left conspiracy.

Now, as we approach the fourth anniversary of Jan. 6, and as the man who fomented the insurrection returns to the White House with plans to pardon many of the rioters, Howie’s closest family members are for the first time telling a fuller and more detailed account of his life and the battle they undertook to ensure his death was recognized as the tragic result of his job. It’s the story of a man who devoted himself to protecting an institution he’d revered since childhood, only to watch its politics turn increasingly poisonous, the policing environment grow more fraught and the daily demands of the job grow more onerous. For Serena, Howie’s struggles were rooted in the workplace challenges that law enforcement officers face on a daily basis. Howie’s siblings agree, but they believed that his tragedy had an additional dimension as well. “A very large part of it is the personal story and the grief that he carried,” said John Liebengood, “and the family legacy that he felt tied to.”

While still in the grip of their own grief, Howie’s family — Serena, John and Anne — resolved to honor Howie’s life while working to ensure no other family had to endure a similar tragedy. Over the coming months, they would discover a mental health crisis in the law enforcement community perpetuated by out-of-date policies and prejudices that treated officer suicides as less worthy of recognition. In their effort to bring about change, the family would partner with lawmakers Howie had befriended on the job — including Sens. Chris Coons (D-Del.) and Tim Kaine (D-Va.) — while steadfastly refusing to engage in the political warfare over Jan. 6. “Howie didn’t care about a person’s political ideology,” said Serena, “and neither do I.”

By the time they were through, they’d successfully advocated for a new wellness center inside the Capitol Police, joined the effort to pass Congressional legislation and watched Howie become the first law enforcement officer who died by suicide to be recognized by the Department of Justice as a line-of-duty death under the new law.

Howie’s relationship with the U.S. Senate had begun nearly a half-century earlier, when his father, Howard S. Liebengood, arrived on Capitol Hill to serve as assistant minority counsel for the Senate Watergate Committee in 1973. The elder Liebengood, a conservative Republican, emerged as a trusted aide to Howard Baker, the Tennessee Republican who vice chaired the Senate panel that dug into the notorious scandal.

For Howie and his younger siblings, the Senate office complex became a place of childhood wonder. Without the weekday crowds of staffers and tourists, they were free to descend the grand staircases and race past the sweeping oil paintings. “You’re just sort of in awe of it,” recalled John. When they came upon an empty statue alcove, the kids would jump inside and strike their best Founding Fathers pose. “It was like a playground,” said Anne.

To the Liebengood children, the Senate was a warm, nurturing institution that felt more like a small-town community center than a cog in a legislative machine. Secretaries taught them to type, aides told them stories about ghosts in the Capitol. They watched 4th of July fireworks from Baker’s office. “I recognized it as a place of significance and something special without really knowing how or why,” recalled John. For young Howie, though, the most influential figure in the building was his own father.

In 1981, the elder Liebengood, a military police officer in the Army during Vietnam, became sergeant-at-arms for the Senate. The post put him in charge of the Capitol Police, a department of roughly 500 officers, and required him to perform ceremonial duties at signature Washington events, such as the first inauguration of President Ronald Reagan. “I’m the only one who can arrest the president,” he joked to his children.

Ever since Howie was 4 years old, when his father took him to the Indy 500 for the first time, he had dreamed of becoming a professional race car driver. But as he watched his father operate in the Senate — delivering marching orders to staffers, handing out advice and favors to lawmakers, snapping photos with world leaders — Howie could envision a future for himself on Capitol Hill, too. “If I’m not a race car driver,” a teenaged Howie 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. Though he earned a degree in history, he remained set on a career in car racing, his father’s favorite pastime. Howie’s professional racing career kindled an extraordinarily close relationship between father and son. “They were best friends,” said Anne. While Howie traveled the country to compete, he lived with his parents in the Washington suburbs, waiting tables and working construction on the side. By then, Howard Liebengood had departed the Senate for K Street, where he emerged as one of the city’s most powerful lobbyists. And despite the demands of his clients, he spent much of his time drumming up sponsorship dollars for Howie.

Chuck Merin, a former lobbying partner, recalled walking past Howard’s office one day and seeing him hunched over his desk, sketching on a notepad.

“Hey, what are you doing?” Merin asked.

“I’m working on a design for Howie’s racing helmet,” Howard replied.

Howie climbed onto the winner’s podium on more than one occasion, taking the Motorola Cup Sport Touring class championship in 2000, for instance. Such triumphs were equally thrilling for father and son. “They were living their dream,” John said. In the early 2000s, however, sponsorship dollars began to dry up, and Howie recognized his professional motorsports dreams were no longer financially viable. By 2004, he had moved to Tennessee — the state where his father had launched his own career — to study for a master’s degree in sports management at the University of Memphis.

By that point, Howard Liebengood had returned to Capitol Hill, serving as chief of staff for Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist’s personal office. But then Howard’s wife Deanna developed symptoms of early-onset dementia. Howard retired from the Senate to take care of her. In January of 2005, Howie called home from Memphis but was unable to reach his father. Concerned, he reached out to his brother John, who asked a neighbor to check on his parents. Inside, the neighbor found Howard dead of a heart attack.

Howard’s death at 62 stunned the Beltway establishment. Obituaries ran in The Washington Post, The Associated Press, and The Los Angeles Times. Numerous lawmakers, including then-Sen. Joe Biden, turned out for the funeral. The loss was particularly devastating for Howie, his siblings say. He took time away from his studies to help care for his ailing mother and consider his own future. “My dad was his anchor, and he was no longer here,” recalled John. “Howie was very much struggling with the direction of his life.”

Before long, Howie began to discuss the possibility of applying to the Capitol Police — becoming one of the officers he’d looked up to as a boy, and joining the department that his father had once presided over. “He was looking for some relief from this grief,” said John, “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 him.

“Then I’ll make a change,” Howie replied. “But right now, this is where I need to be.”

In 2005, Howie arrived at the training academy in Cheltenham, Maryland, with his brother. Over the course of the day, instructors provided the roughly two dozen trainees with an overview of their new careers. After it was over, Howie turned to John: “Well,” he said, “I hope Dad would be proud of me.”

Across the street from the Capitol, on the west side of the Russell Senate Office Building, there’s an entrance that was generally reserved for lawmakers and staff. And it was here, during much of his 15 years on the force, that Howie Liebengood stood guard. To some of the people who passed through it each day, it was known simply as “Howie’s door.

For Howie, the assignment was a homecoming. He’d known some of the aides in the Russell building since childhood. “Everybody who knew Howie knew how important this place was to him,” said Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine. At the same time, Howie had an intuitive grasp of the internal politics of the Senate, inquiring with staffers about which lawmakers were working together and which measures 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,” recalled Sherman Patrick, a former top aide to Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.). “That’s fairly unusual, even for some Senate staff, unfortunately.”

When it came to protecting the building, Howie went by the book. It didn’t matter if you were a summer intern or a senior aide, everyone had to take off their belts and march through the metal detector. (After all, two Capitol police officers were fatally shot in 1998.) Still, to the folks who saw him every day, Howie was more than a security guard. He offered them warm greetings on their way into the building and reminders not to forget their coats on the way out. Liz Johnson recalls returning to the Russell Building after her then-boss, Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.), had just lost reelection by an agonizing 1,000 votes. When she approached his door, Howie had an expression of sympathy on his face. He “knew what we had just gone through,” Johnson recalled. “It was very comforting.”

Meanwhile, Republicans as well as Democrats liked to stop by Howie’s post to hear his thoughts on the big game or to chitchat about weekend plans. He played fantasy football with staffers, accepted invitations to office parties and occasionally hung out socially with the folks who went in and out of his door. Sometimes, senators took the long way to the Capitol just so they could stop by his entrance and say hello. “It was a grounding point for what should be eternal about the institution,” Patrick said, “that people that 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 website eHarmony. The two bonded over their careers as first responders — he a police officer, she a radiologist in training. “Everything was just so easy,” Serena recalled. They were married in October 2011.

Over the course of the late 2010s, as Washington’s politics became increasingly divisive, Howie grew disheartened by the partisan bickering that stymied much of the Congressional agenda. Ian Koski, who served as a top adviser to Sen. Coons from 2010 to 2015, recalled stopping by Howie’s door to vent about episodes of gridlock and dysfunction such as the government shutdown of 2013. “I guess I don’t technically know what his politics were, but we were both very frustrated by the manufactured nonsense that ratcheted up tensions,” Koski said. “He was putting his life on the line, doing his job for what was often obvious nonsense.”

Donald Trump’s election in 2016 intensified the protests that Howie had to respond to. The confirmation hearings for Justice Brett Kavanaugh, for instance, brought crowds of outraged liberals to Capitol Hill. Some protesters, Howie told his siblings, would glue their hands to doorknobs. Howie found himself responding to the same protesters again and again. There were even paid protesters, people who caused a ruckus in the Russell Building’s hallways not out of an ideological passion, but simply in exchange for cash. “Dad would be so upset to see how things are right now,” Howie told his sister.

At the same time, developments inside the Capitol Police exacerbated his frustrations. As a result of a shortage of officers, Howie was often forced to take overtime shifts with little notice. He had to work more holidays, according to Serena, and it was tougher to get time off. (Tim Barber, director of communications for the Capitol Police, acknowledged that there was an officer shortage prior to 2021 but did not provide comment on how the shortage affected the schedules and workloads of officers.) According to John and Anne, Howie began griping about Capitol Police leadership, complaining the brass promoted the wrong officers and unfairly punished the rank and file. (“We cannot speak for all of the previous USCP leaders,” Barber said.)

The specter of making a mistake on the job — and being reprimanded for it — loomed especially large for Howie. “And if something didn’t go well or meet his expectation, or he would worry that he messed up something,” Serena said, “he would bring that home with him and it would upset him.”

Sometimes, the stress would lead to cycles of anxiety or despair. “I’m struggling,” Howie would tell his siblings. In late 2018, Serena contacted Howie’s brother and sister. Howie was distraught after making a minor mistake on the job. No one in the family can recall the details but according to John and Anne, Serena told them that Howie was so distressed that he’d mentioned the possibility of harming himself. Serena’s account differs; she said she reached out to John and Anne on account of her concerns about her husband but does not recall Howie saying anything about self-harm. In any event, Howie’s siblings say they called a suicide prevention hotline, met Howie when he got off work and drove back to the house he shared with Serena. Around the kitchen table, Howie assured his family he was fine. According to John and Anne, Howie didn’t deny he had thought about self-harm, but he insisted he would never hurt himself.

“I wouldn't do that to Serena,” he said.

Howie agreed to keep his service weapon outside of the house — something the suicide prevention hotline had recommended.

Over the years, Howie had occasionally considered leaving the police. During his initial years on the force, he used much of his vacation time to travel back to Memphis so he could complete his master’s degree in sports management, and he maintained an interest in academia. Along with one of his father’s former lobbying partners, Martin Gold, Howie co-authored a chapter about Congress’ influence on the professional sports industry for a 2010 book, Introduction to Sport Management: Theory and Practice. Around that same time, opportunities emerged for him to pursue a Ph.D. in sports management at the University of South Carolina or the University of Northern Colorado. Howie decided against both programs because he did not want to be away from Serena.

But seeing the effect of the stress on their brother, John and Anne urged him to quit policing. Yet for law enforcement officers struggling with workplace stress or mental health issues, it’s never that simple. Police officers’ identities are often so closely tied to their profession the idea of switching careers is unfathomable, according to Karen Solomon, the co-founder of First H.E.L.P, an organization that works to reduce the mental health stigma for first responders. As a result, advising cops to give up their jobs over mental health concerns can make them feel like they have even fewer options, compounding their stress. But for Howie, according to John and Anne, the prospect of leaving his job on Capitol Hill contained an additional layer of complexity. “I also feel like he felt like he would be disappointing our dad if he wasn’t working up there,” said John.

A family friend recalls a lunch with Howie and listening to him lament his problems at work.

“You can always quit, remember,” the family friend said.

“My parents taught me never to quit,” Howie replied.

Howie found it difficult to access the care that he needed, even with the support of his family. For one thing, the culture inside the Capitol Police was not conducive to help-seeking behavior. According to former Capitol Police officers, mental health struggles were considered a sign of weakness inside the department, and the topic was rarely discussed. Barber, the spokesperson, for the Capitol Police said confidential help was available to officers through a partnership with the House of Representatives’ employee assistance program. But according to John and Anne, Howie worried that if he sought assistance through the Capitol Police, his superiors might find out and he’d suffer professional repercussions. “He did not have confidence in the confidentiality of the process,” John says.

Instead of going through the Capitol Police, Howie sought care outside of the department. But here, too, there were problems. The professionals Howie went to for help were unfamiliar with the unique stressors of law enforcement. One therapist gave Howie the same advice he’d heard before: Quit your job today. And visits to his primary care physician after the incident in 2018 did not ameliorate the impact of his workplace stress.

The challenges of Howie’s career only got more difficult when much of the country shut down for the Covid pandemic in early 2020. Both Howie and Serena — as front-line workers — still had to go to work each day. “Coming face to face on the Hill [with] some people wearing masks, some people not,” Serena recalled, “that was an extremely stressful component of Howie’s last year.” Amid the fear and isolation that they endured during the pandemic, Howie and Serena struggled with anxiety.

Then the killing in May 2020 of an unarmed Black man by a white police officer in Minneapolis touched off protests across the country. During one of these protests in Washington, Howie approached a demonstrator who had parked in a restricted space and asked her to move her car. The woman accused Howie of singling her out because she was Black, according to what he told Serena. The incident deeply wounded Howie. “Because he was anything but a person who will harbor racism,” said Serena, who is Black. “He was heartbroken by that.”

As the anti-police sentiment continued to spread, Howie began hiding his badge and covering up his uniform on the drive home from work. “He did not want people to know that he was a police officer,” Serena said.

Despite it all, Howie’s service in the Senate remained extraordinarily meaningful to him. In late 2020, he received an ornate gold pin, honoring his 15 years on the force. “He felt so proud,” Serena recalled.

Around this same time, Howie told Serena about his plan for life after the police. At 20 years of service, he could retire with a full federal pension. He’d still be relatively young — 56 or so — and he’d have the time and financial security to pursue a new career. Maybe in academia, or maybe something different.

When Serena explained that he could always leave the force earlier if things got too stressful, Howie said he was committed to reaching 20 years.

“Five more years,” Howie would say. “Five more years.”

Around 10 a.m. on Jan. 6, 2021, Howie prepared to drive over to Capitol Hill for the start of his shift. He placed his mug of coffee on the roof of the car and turned back towards the front door of his house, where Serena was standing. “Don’t run towards danger,” Serena joked. “I want you to come back home to your wife.”

Howie laughed. He was well aware that Trump had urged his supporters to flock to Washington to decry what he falsely claimed was a stolen election. But protests were a daily occurrence in the capital. And according to John, while Howie believed that Trump’s weekslong campaign to overturn the results of the election would make this particular demonstration highly charged, he hadn’t seen anything to suggest it would get out of hand. Howie had sent a text to his brother and sister the night before: “Tomorrow is going to be a show!”

Howie arrived on Capitol Hill, though, to find something he had never imagined. A violent mob of Trump supporters was storming through police barricades and barreling into the Capitol; far-right extremists were beating police officers with flag poles, baseball bats and even a hockey stick, lawmakers were racing for safety down hallways only steps ahead of the chanting mobs. “It is a shit show,” Howie texted his brother and sister. “We found two pipe bombs and have been pepper spraying protesters.”

Howie wasn’t in middle of the melee. While serving on the department’s civil disobedience unit’s “soft squad” — whose members had helmets and batons as opposed to full riot gear — he was assigned to patrol outside the Senate office buildings. Still, the lawlessness represented a deeply personal violation for him, his siblings told me. As kids, Howie and his family used to watch the 4th of July fireworks from the majority leader’s Capitol office. Now, the rotunda was overrun by violent rioters who left their excrement in the hallways. “He was traumatized,” John said.

It was after 4:30 a.m. on Thursday when Howie finally returned home from work.

“Are you OK?” asked Serena, who had been anxiously waiting up for him.

Howie was exhausted, he explained, but fine. When Serena inquired about the day’s events, he told her about a troubling incident he’d had with a protester. As the riot was unfolding, Howie had seen a man he believed was lost, so he went to offer assistance. As Howie got closer, however, the man raised his hand in a Nazi salute and made an aggressive statement to him in German.

“I’m tired,” he told Serena. Howie said goodnight and went to bed without showering. Two hours later, he was up again to return for his 9:30 a.m. shift.

After the attack, Howie and his colleagues had little time to process what they’d been through. As a result of the department’s historic failure to protect the Capitol, and the ongoing concerns about the safety of Congress, police leadership mobilized all available resources. Officers had to work longer hours with less time between shifts. According to Howie’s family, the additional workload and attendant sleep deprivation — not to mention the trauma of the attack itself — had put Howie into a state of extreme exhaustion.

At around 8:30 p.m. on Jan. 7, after working roughly 11 hours, Howie rear ended a car in the police cruiser he was driving, according to John. The impact knocked Howie unconscious for about 20 seconds — he was never diagnosed with a concussion — and broke his partner’s nose. Howie had to stay late to write an accident report. For Howie, who had always been hard on himself when it came to workplace mistakes, the accident was deeply upsetting. “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.”

Howie’s brother and sister urged him not to blame himself. Anne offered to drive him home from work so he could lay down in the back seat. “How are you mentally?” Anne asked in a text.

“I am just tired and disgusted,” Howie replied, “and my face hurts from the airbag.”

The next day, Howie told his brother and sister that he would be working 12-hour shifts every day until the end of the month. For a bone-weary man trying to make sense of the trauma he’d just endured, it was another distressing development. “There’s no end in sight,” he told Serena.

Then, on Jan. 9, Howie told his family he was done.

As they tried to absorb the shock of Howie’s death, the Liebengood family found themselves at the center of a political superstorm. Word of Howie’s death flashed across cable news chyrons and ran in newspaper headlines. Reporters showed up at Serena’s doorstep. At the same time, lawmakers and staffers from across Capitol Hill reached out to offer condolences and support.

It was during this period that one Capitol Hill figure — the family cannot recall precisely who — suggested the possibility of having Howie lie in honor in the Capitol rotunda, a tribute reserved only for citizens of considerable distinction, including the two Capitol officers who were killed in 1998. To Howie’s devastated widow and siblings, this seemed like it would be a fitting homage to a man who had given so much to the Congress. So John says he was puzzled when, a few weeks later, the suggestion was retracted with little explanation. After all, Brian Sicknick, the Capitol Police officer who’d experienced two strokes and died after defending the Capitol from the pro-Trump mob, was afforded this honor on Feb. 2, 2021. (Washington, D.C.’s chief medical examiner would later say that what transpired on Jan. 6 “played a role in [Sicknick’s] condition.”)

“It sort of did raise a flag,” John said. “Like, wait a second, this is being treated differently because it’s a suicide.”

By then, Howie’s widow and siblings had discovered that Howie’s death was not an isolated tragedy; rather, it was the latest casualty in the mental health crisis that had long plagued the law enforcement community. According to Dr. John Violanti, a former New York State trooper who is a research professor at the University at Buffalo’s school of public health, law enforcement officers are 54 percent more likely to die by suicide than members of the American working population. This higher risk, according to Dr. Violanti, is linked to easy access to firearms, negative public attitudes towards policing and the emotional strain that many officers experience on the job, whether it’s from recovering dead bodies or interviewing abused children.

For the officers caught in the middle of the attack on the Capitol, there were additional risk factors. Metropolitan Police Officer Jeffrey Smith, who took his own life on Jan. 15, 2021, suffered a traumatic brain injury during the riot. Such injuries, according to Dr. Violanti, serve to increase the likelihood of suicide. And Howie — a former professional race car driver — was so sleep-deprived after the attacks that he crashed a police cruiser. “Lack of sleep also has a physiological effect,” Dr. Violanti said. “Put that together with trauma, and it makes decision-making even more irrational.”

Yet despite the increased mental health risks associated with the profession, many law enforcement departments still viewed officer suicide as a shameful weakness. Under a 1968 law, police officers who died by suicide were not considered to be line-of-duty deaths, and their survivors were ineligible to receive death benefits.

The Liebengood family, however, saw Howie’s death as a direct result of the workplace stress he experienced on Jan. 6 and its aftermath. “I felt that Howie would have been here if it wasn’t for his job,” Serena said. And there was no reason, they argued, why his passing should be treated differently just because of how he died.

The family reached out to lawmakers with whom Howie had become friendly during his years in Russell. Tim Kaine’s staff contacted officials at the U.S. Department of Justice, but they soon concluded that the department was unlikely to grant the family’s request for a line-of-duty designation on account of the 1968 law.

Separately, Jennifer Wexton (D-Va.), who was Howie’s representative in Congress, spoke by phone with the acting Capitol Police Chief Yogananda Pittman and other law enforcement officers. The lawmaker urged the Capitol Police to classify Howie’s death as in the line of duty, which the department did not do as a matter of policy for law enforcement suicides at the time. According to Wexton, some of the other law enforcement figures on the call “expressed the belief that officers would kill themselves in order to get this designation and to be honored.” Barber, the Capitol Police spokesperson, said he could not confirm Wexton’s account of the call. “[D]oesn’t mean it didn’t happen,” he said, “just don’t know who was on [the call] or what was said.”

Around this time, Serena, John and Anne teamed up with one of Howard Liebengood’s old lobbying partners, Chuck Merin, to identify ways to combat the crisis of law enforcement suicide. Following the family’s advocacy, Wexton in May of 2021 secured more than $4 million dollars to, among other things, fund six additional mental health professionals for the Capitol Police. The congresswoman also announced the establishment of the Howard C. Liebengood Center for Wellness inside department.

Still, the family’s other objective remained unresolved. In May of 2021, Serena attended a memorial service for all Capitol Police officers who’d died in the line of duty over the years. Howie’s death was acknowledged during the ceremony, though not formally honored. Serena was warmly received by the officers in attendance. But instead of sitting up front with the other widows, Serena was seated elsewhere.

Within two months of the attacks, Merin had contacted Jim Pasco, the executive director of the National Fraternal Order of Police and another old pal of Howard Liebengood. Merin described the family’s frustration at the Capitol Police’s unwillingness to classify Howie’s death as in the line of duty.

“We really need your help,” Merin said.

"As a matter of fact,” Pasco replied, “we need yours, too.”

Pasco, who had lost his own brother to suicide, was at that very moment working to rally support for a bill that would make law enforcement officers who died by suicide eligible for line-of-duty classification. The legislation, which would become known as the Public Safety Officer Support Act of 2022, would enable the families of such officers to apply for line-of-duty death benefits if they experienced certain traumatic events while on the job in 2019 or later.

Similar efforts had failed in the past, according to Pasco, partly because of an unwillingness to speak publicly about mental health and suicide. “And candidly, when Jan. 6 came along,” Pasco said, “we saw it as a vehicle to put faces on the issue.”

After connecting with Pasco, the Liebengoods joined the campaign to get the legislation passed. Serena went to Capitol Hill to tell Howie’s story to Congressional offices, and the lawmakers who knew Howie best urged their colleagues to support the reform. Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D.-Ill) was the bill’s author in the Senate, and Sens. Kaine and Coons were among the cosponsors. “I definitely viewed myself as trying to get the policy right, but also being a personal advocate for this family,” said Kaine. “I had Howie and his family principally in mind in pressing this forward,” said Coons.

The Liebengoods were far from the only ones rallying support for the bill. Indeed, the single most influential advocate in the effort was Erin Smith, the widow of Metropolitan Police Officer Jeffrey Smith, who died by suicide after responding to the attacks. Smith worked closely with Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D.-Ill) on the effort. Nonprofit groups focusing on first responders’ mental health, such as First H.E.L.P., also took leadership roles in the campaign. But according to Kaine, Howie offered a powerful reason of his own. “It was connected to a person that we knew and loved,” Kaine said, “and that enabled it to be embraced in such a bipartisan way by this Senate.”

In May of 2022, with the bill poised to pass both houses of Congress, Jim Pasco arrived at the Capitol for the annual National Peace Officers’ Memorial Service, which the National FOP’s foundation sponsors. Pasco found himself backstage with President Biden, a longtime National FOP supporter who was on hand to deliver remarks. Pasco approached the president — who knew the elder Liebengood from his days in the Senate — and thanked him for his support.

“Jimmy,” Biden said, “We’re doing this for Howard as much as anybody, right?”

In November 2022, three months after the law was enacted, the Department of Justice determined that Howie Liebengood’s death was in the line of duty, making him the first law enforcement officer who died by suicide to be recognized by the DOJ as a line-of-duty death under the new legislation. For the Liebengood family, it was a moment of pride in a time of tragedy. “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 understand that it’s far too soon to declare victory. Law enforcement officers are still struggling with mental health issues, and despite the passage of the line-of-duty legislation, hundreds of families are still waiting to receive the death benefits they’ve applied for, according to Karen Solomon, the co-founder of First H.E.L.P. But Howie’s widow and siblings are committed to staying in the fight. Last January, Serena launched the Howard C. Liebengood Foundation, which works to improve the health and wellness of law enforcement officers through interdisciplinary research and education. John and Anne continue to meet with staff at the Liebengood wellness center to share Howie’s story and promote mental health. John is heartened by the additional mental health resources that the Capitol Police is now offering. “I would encourage people to use the wellness center,” he said. And Serena, John and Anne continue to advocate for Howie’s inclusion on the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial in Washington, which the family says has never before recognized an officer who died by suicide.

Barber, the Capitol Police spokesperson, said the department has “dramatically increased its focus on employee well-being” since Jan. 6, 2021. The Liebengood wellness center was established “to deliver programming for every domain of human well-being and to provide resources and support for USCP sworn and civilian employees and their families,” he said. “Services originally targeted mental health, mind body medicine, nutrition, and physical fitness. Over the past three and a half years the program has evolved to now include peer support and spiritual care through Chaplaincy programming. Wellness support dogs are part of the program as well to assist the workforce with stress mitigation and relief. Through the combined efforts of each program element, the [Liebengood wellness center] strives to take proactive measures to support USCP employees and their families and to be available in times of crisis or loss.”

Barber added that workshops covering suicide awareness and prevention are “delivered to every new recruit class, all new supervisors, and offered to the general workforce each month. New recruits also participate in a three-day experiential holistic wellness curriculum, so every new employee begins their USCP careers with a full understanding of the wellness supports and resources available to them. Additionally, the program launched a wellness smartphone app with self-assessments, resources, information, and the capability to reach any member of the wellness or peer support team. This provides 24/7 access to wellness programming for all USCP personnel and their families.”

Each anniversary of Jan. 6 is hard for Howie’s loved ones. But for John and Anne, this year’s anniversary will be even tougher, given president-elect Trump’s plan to pardon many of the people who attacked the Capitol. Still, they have steadfastly refused to engage in the political warfare that still defines the event. Doing so, they believe, would only alienate allies in their effort to eliminate 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 said. “But I’m choosing to not spend my energy on that as much as I am on trying to make change happen.”

For Serena, who has also refused to engage in the politics of Jan. 6, this year’s anniversary will be painful for reasons that have nothing to do with Trump’s plans. “This upcoming Jan. 6 will be especially challenging for me,” she says, “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.