'I don’t know how I can live without him': Chicago cop who died by suicide was devoted family man

Celal Cenker Surgit didn’t take the typical path to become a Chicago cop.

He played goalie for a professional soccer team in his native Turkey, built an import-export business in Russia and eventually came to the United States in 1997 and invested his earnings in real estate.

After his first marriage ended, he met his next wife, Reema Surgit, during a chance encounter at a restaurant he’d opened in Edgewater called Arkadash Cafe. He asked for a date, and the two quickly fell in love.

“He actually told me later on — he kind of creeped me out — that the first time he saw me he thought to himself that she’s gonna be my wife,” Reema Surgit said.

When the couple married in 2005, Celal Surgit began the process of joining the police force but didn’t tell his new wife until after he’d passed all his exams.

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For Celal Surgit, becoming a police officer had been a dream deferred. His father, a judge in Turkey, had discouraged him from going into law enforcement and instead pushed him to continue his studies as a younger man.

After spending much of his career as a beat cop patrolling the Austin and Albany Park police districts, the officer’s colleagues grew concerned Wednesday when he failed to show up to work.

Fellow officers conducting a well-being check at his West Ridge home found him dead from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound to his chest, according to police and the Cook County medical examiner’s office. He was 54.

Reema Surgit and their daughters, 17-year-old Tulin and 16-year-old Lana, are still processing the loss and the months that led up to the officer’s death.

“I don’t know how I can live without him,” Tulin said. “He did everything for me and just guided me through everything.”

Chicago Police Department faced rash of officer suicides

In recent years, the police department has grappled with a troubling rise in suicides and stinging criticism of its efforts to provide mental health support to officers to prevent them from burning out.

But even before then, a U.S. Justice Department report in 2017 found the suicide rate of Chicago cops was 60% higher than the national average for law enforcement officials.

Between 2016 and 2023, 31 department employees died by suicide. In 2022 alone, the most devastating year for officer suicides during that period, seven Chicago cops took their own lives — three of them within a single month that summer and three more within a week that December.

Following that initial cluster of suicides, the department’s former wellness adviser Alexa James said routinely canceling officers’ days off was “inhumane” as she called for a sweeping plan to address psychological issues.

NAMI Chicago

James, chief executive of the Chicago branch of the National Alliance of Mental Illness, said the department is now moving in the right direction.

She noted there’s “way more resources” dedicated to mental health and “way more willingness and motivation from the individual officers” to seek help. Meanwhile, NAMI Chicago continues to train officers at the police academy, which James credited for “really trying to thread the idea of wellness through a ton of their curriculum.”

The department, however, still has only 18 counselors serving its 11,684 members and apparently hasn’t met its longstanding goal of assigning one counselor to each of its 22 police districts.

A police spokesperson said the department remains committed to expanding a program that provides free counseling to current and former cops and their families, noting that two new offices were opened on the South and West sides last year to make care more accessible.

“Ensuring the mental and physical well-being of officers remains a top priority for the Chicago Police Department,” the spokesperson said in a statement.

Despite the improvements, James said some officers are left without a support system outside of the department.

“They don’t have a much larger community where they can talk about their work, and they’ve lost relationships over it because people have become so polarized about the police,” she added.

‘He’s my biggest love’

Reema Surgit said her husband started growing despondent in December and had become a shell of his normal self. His mood had “dulled.”

“I started talking to him here and there, like, is anything going on?” she recalled. “But he wouldn’t say anything other than, ‘I’m just worried about some certain things’ and that’s it … you know, life and how the future’s gonna be.”

Reema Surgit had just overcome a long bout of depression after she was fired by the police department in 2019.

In a lawsuit filed in federal court, she alleged she was “unlawfully terminated” after being subjected to discrimination based on her Muslim faith. But in March 2023, Judge Raymond Chang ruled in favor of the city and dismissed the case.

While Reema Surgit was consumed with the lawsuit, her husband’s real estate business suffered amid the pandemic. She acknowledged the case became “a big burden” on the family, noting her husband had warned her against joining the police department in 2017.

As she tried to jolt him out of his malaise, he still showed some signs of his old self.

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Just a few days before he was found dead, she sent him a text message saying she missed “the old Cenker,” using his middle name.

“I’ll bring back the a--hole guy,” he joked.

Reema Surgit was in Saudi Arabia, where she grew up, when another officer called her Wednesday and said her husband had missed work. A police car had already been sent to their house, and she gave them permission to enter.

She said she was just thankful they got there before her daughters returned from school. Now, the whole family is struggling to find a path forward.

“Before I slept, he would say, ‘I love you,’ and I would give him a kiss on the cheek,” Lana said. “I could not sleep without saying good night to him or wake up without saying good morning.

“He’s my biggest love, and he loved us more than anything.”