The Department of Justice ruled Thursday that a Metropolitan Police Department officer's suicide in the days following his involvement in the Jan. 6, 2021 riot at the U.S. Capitol was a "line of duty" death, allowing his widow to get previously denied benefits, The Hill reported.
According to the news outlet, MPD officer Jeffrey Smith's wife, Erin Smith, will now be able to get federal benefits after being denied when her husband shot himself on Jan. 15, 2021, nine days after battling with protesters at the Capitol.
"When my husband died, I was denied the line of duty benefits that he deserved," Erin Smith said in a statement. "But I knew from the beginning that Jeffrey died in the line of duty from the injuries he suffered on Jan. 6."
Erin Smith is the first to file an application for benefits under a law signed a year ago by President Joe Biden that extends the death, disability, and education benefits to public safety officers and their survivors who suffered stress-related problems during a traumatic incident while on the job.
Called the Public Safety Officers Benefits Program, the law "extends death and disability benefits under the Public Safety Officers' Benefits program to certain public safety officers and survivors of public safety officers who suffer or suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, acute stress disorder, or trauma- and stress-related disorders following an exposure to one or more traumatic events while on duty. The PSOB Program provides death, disability, and education benefits to public safety officers and survivors of public safety officers who die or become disabled as a direct and proximate result of a personal injury in the line of duty."
Jeffrey Smith was a 12-year veteran patrolman sent to the Capitol on Jan. 6. He was hit in the head with a pole while scuffling with protesters and slipped into a "deep depression," Erin Smith told The New York Times in August 2021.
When he was called back to work on Jan. 15, Jeffrey Smith took his own life with his service weapon on the George Washington Parkway, becoming the second officer involved in the Jan. 6 incident at the Capitol to do so, the report said.
"When my husband left for work that day, he was the Jeff that I knew," Erin Smith said in the Times interview. "When he returned after experiencing the event, being hit in the head, he was a completely different person. I do believe if he did not go to work that day, he would be here, and we would not be having this conversation."
Until the new law, suicides were not considered "line of duty" deaths, blocking surviving family members from getting benefits.