Violence pushes cops over edge

Young constables, emotionally unprepared for a traumatic working environment, are the most vulnerable to suicide in the ranks of the police.

This was highlighted yesterday at the start of a three-day summit in Pretoria to discuss ways to prevent police suicides.

Between January and June, 34 police officers killed themselves, bringing the total number since 2009 to 387.

National police commissioner Riah Phiyega said most of the officers who had committed suicide in the past four years were male constables aged between 24 and 29.

Police Minister Nathi Mthethwa said the highest annual number of suicides among police was last year - 98. Gauteng topped the list with 26 suicides, followed by KwaZulu-Natal at 23 and North West at 13 .

Lieutenant-Colonel Retha Watson, of the police's psychological services unit, said policemen were most likely to kill themselves between Thursday and Sunday, when intoxicated.

She said 98% of suicides used their service firearms, whereas the rest hanged themselves or took an overdose of medication.

She noted that 26 of the 98 police who committed suicide last year had also killed their spouse or girlfriend.

Mthethwa said police were exposed to unimaginable violence: they saw their colleagues killed and had to comb through gory crime scenes or cordon-off bloody road accidents.

Their stress levels and tension were elevated by insults and threats from the public.

Police and Prisons Civil Rights Union general secretary Nkosinathi Theledi recommended that psychological services workers be brought to police stations instead of being based at national and provincial offices.

"A police officer in need of urgent professional [help] has to make an appointment that could be months away. The ideal situation would be to have this service at the police stations for immediate access," Theledi said.

Cassey Amoore, of Frontline, a privately run counselling service set up by the SA Depression and Anxiety Group, said it received 400 calls a day from the public, including police officers and their families.

"They suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder and this impairs their ability to think rationally and [they] conclude that nothing is going to work. This is worsened by access to guns," she said.

Young police constables, she said, "are not emotionally prepared and suddenly find themselves exposed to enormous trauma, violence and poor working conditions, with long hours and little pay".

Mthethwa said the summit would consider whether psychological help should remain voluntary or be made compulsory.

It was proposed at the summit that police officers be prohibited from taking their guns home.