Putting Traumatized Cops at Ease

David Anduri was a cop for the City of Santa Barbara for 13 years. Like a lot of cops, Anduri never talked about things. Or at least that’s what his mother, Patti Anduri, said. That silence may well have killed him. Anduri died in October 2014 of liver failure. At only 37 years of age, he had managed to drink himself to death.

Not long afterward, Patti Anduri and her husband, David Anduri Sr., sued City Hall and former police chief Cam Sanchez. Their son, they argued, sustained post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of harrowing on-the-job service calls to which he’d responded. Anduri was pushed to drink, they claimed, because City Hall had effectively prevented him from securing the benefits to which he should have been entitled. Their attorney, Jonathan Miller, filed legal papers in federal court alleging City Hall had violated Anduri’s civil rights. It was, Miller conceded, an untested legal theory. That theory would never get put to the ultimate test. Last year, City Hall settled with the Anduris, agreeing to pay a modest $200,000 to make the case go away.

This Monday, Patti and David Anduri returned the favor. At a press conference in front of police headquarters, they presented the Santa Barbara Police Foundation a Prize Patrol–sized check for $100,000 to help sustain a groundbreaking mental-health counseling program for cops, firefighters, and other first responders.