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"How to fight effectively against suicide in the ranks of the Police?"

2022-01-21T18:55:45.507Z


FIGAROVOX/INTERVIEW – In reaction to the wave of suicides in the police, the Director General of the National Police brought together unions and associations on January 20, 2022. Linda Kebbab regrets that the hierarchy is disconnected from reality and does not apply effective measures.


Linda Kebbab is the national delegate of the SGP Police-FO Unit.

She published in 2020 with Stock

Guardian editions of peace and revolt.

FIGAROVOX.- Since the beginning of the year seven policemen have taken their own lives.

How do you explain this dramatic figure?

Linda KEBBAB. -

A suicide is a difficult event to apprehend and cannot be explained by a single isolated reason. Nevertheless, in the case of suicides in a profession where the esprit de corps is extremely strong, the professional aspect cannot be completely ruled out. Contrary to what some IGPN surveys or police authorities may announce without nuance after a suicide. In fact, through the effect of work rhythms or through self-isolation in the face of mistrust from part of French public opinion, many police officers are cut off from the rest of society.

Added to this are the difficulties of freeing speech in a profession that has long conveyed the image of silent virilism;

but also a certain omerta that reigns in many services in which the atmosphere can be execrable without anyone bravely putting an end to it.

All this can have the effect of a bomb.

The malaise is growing in our ranks, as evidenced by the associations of police officers fighting against suicide or the operational psychological support service (SSPO) in place in the institution and increasingly solicited or even overwhelmed with calls.

A 2018 Senate report indicates that the suicide rate oscillates

"around 14 suicides per 100,000 inhabitants for the entire population, this rate has risen on average, over the last ten years, to 25 for the national gendarmerie and to 29 for the national police”

.

Why are police officers more at risk of suicide than in other professions?

What are the structural causes?

The report also pointed to a deep psychological malaise that could be related to

“difficulties related to the very nature of the profession”

, in particular the permanent confrontation with violence and human misery, without a decompression chamber for lack of political and administrative will, and the dilapidated state of our work environment. In addition, police officers are constantly looking for meaning in their action to guide their commitment, not having the feeling of being recognized either by or by power, or by the media, or by their hierarchy. The latter, on the contrary, instead of creating an effect of solidarity contributes to individuality and therefore loneliness. For example, the bonus for exceptional results, or the colloquially misnamed “merit bonus”, which should be renamed the “discord bonus”, is a real tool for the voluntary dismantling of the cohesion and development of the group.Isolating the police officers from the only ones with whom they spend most of their time and share difficult missions: their own colleagues.

Read alsoHow the state is struggling to respond to police suicide

This isolation is not corrected by those responsible, on the contrary.

For example, the recent insane declarations of the Minister of the Interior and the President of the Republic speak of putting an end to the only cycle of work, called "strong vacation", the most likely to resocialize the policeman outside of the people of his job.

For a simple question of penny-pinching savings in manpower… The “whatever it takes” does not apply to the lives of the police officers…

On January 20, 2022, Frédéric Veaux, the director general of the police received unions and associations.

What did you expect from this meeting?

What are your conclusions?

The need for police officers to use the Operational Psychological Support Service (SSPO) depends less on major traumatic events such as attacks than on the rise in violence and the need for a significant presence in the service. However, the more this responsibility rests on the police, the less time they benefit from moral or psychological respite. An aspect which seems to have escaped the Director General of the National Police, whose speech on the occasion of the CHSCT on Thursday January 20 seemed disconnected from reality, in particular when he mentioned the compulsory sport times while many of his own heads of service deny them to the workforce.

This was an opportunity for our trade union organization to recall that we cannot indefinitely be satisfied with meetings, commissions and other delegations that are not followed up with effects or be permanently ignored whistleblowers.

Linda Kebbab

Unfortunately and unsurprisingly, this extraordinary CHSCT was neither the occasion for concrete and pragmatic announcements nor those of openness to our demands.

It was an opportunity to recognize the failure of the freedom of speech, even the hunt against those who would express themselves on the ill-being especially if it is professional.

This was an opportunity for our trade union organization to recall that we cannot indefinitely be satisfied with meetings, commissions and other delegations that are not followed up with effects or be permanently ignored whistleblowers.

It was also an opportunity to recall that the fight against suicide can only be done with the good will of all those who, in the various hierarchical strata and at all levels of the national police, hold in their hands the career and the lives of agents, with abuses that we denounce.

What do you think are the solutions to respond to this emergency?

It is imperative to resize the services of the SSPO.

9,000 police officers call on them each year, but the number of personnel dedicated to this mission is insufficient.

Currently 90, it will be necessary to trivialize the use of the SSPO, and to establish psychological debriefing, especially during missions confronting our colleagues with social suffering (intra-family violence, suicides, fatal traffic accidents, etc.) during which the effects of identification to peers are common.

How could our technocrats have imagined for a single moment that such a human matter [internal suicide prevention training] could be dispensed by a PowerPoint alone in front of its screen?

Linda Kebbab

Put an end to simple e-learning for internal training in police suicide prevention. How could our technocrats have imagined for a single moment that such a human matter could be dispensed by a PowerPoint alone in front of its screen?

Increase the number of sentinel police officers, those officers responsible for detecting colleagues in distress and alerting. The training of these sentinels should only be provided by professionals from the medical field. Our administration plans to pre-empt this training and entrust it to police officers whose job is not psychiatry, however good trainers or teachers they may be. Administrative control, budgetary savings, or the desire to maintain discourse and systemic omerta? It is all this innovative device, which has proven itself abroad because it is totally separate from the service, which is in danger. On the contrary, it is necessary to decentralize the alert procedure, to create a parallel network outside the hierarchy. Quite the opposite of what the DGPN is embarking on.

Our alerts remain at best a dead letter and the police officers who testify are ignored, at worst they are sanctioned.

Linda Kebbab

Control and impose a coercive procedure when the joint bodies highlight a toxic management situation.

Currently neither the investigative delegations nor the CHSCTs are followed up even when the latter sound the alarm.

Our alerts remain at best a dead letter and the police officers who testify are ignored, at worst they are punished.

And the authors in the hierarchy are untouchable.

Source: lefigaro

All news articles on 2022-01-21

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