23 OPP Police Officers have killed themselves since 1989.
FaceBook Operational Stress Injuries Support Page :
https://www.facebook.com/groups/482632841916458/
https://www.facebook.com/groups/482632841916458/
OPP
Suicides
paulmurphy@obesitythunderbay.ca
Neglect
of suicidal cops a disgrace
First
posted: Saturday, October 27, 2012 06:25 PM EDT
How is it possible that in 2012, the Ontario Provincial
Police and their political masters can still be in denial about the toll
operational stress takes on those whose job it is to serve and protect us?
How is it possible Ontario Ombudsman Andre Marin could find
in 2012 that OPP officers reporting symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
(PTSD) are still being subjected to ostracism and ridicule?
That they fear even asking for help could derail their
careers?
How is it possible the OPP keeps no statistics on suicides
within the force and doesn’t even formally acknowledge their occurrence?
It took Marin’s investigation to reveal that since 1989, 23
active and retired OPP officers have committed suicide — two more than have
been killed on duty during that period — with five suicides in the last 18
months alone.
That doesn’t mean all of these deaths were necesssarily the
result of job-related stress. But how would the OPP even know, given that it
has no formal programs for dealing with PTSD, or suicide prevention, and only
one staff psychologist for all of Ontario, who does not diagnose or treat
patients?
The OPP doesn’t even keep a list of outside medical
professionals from whom traumatized officers can seek help, nor does it track
how many officers have contacted its employee assistance programs for help with
PTSD.
Finally, how, given the reality that if this is going on in
the OPP, you can bet it’s going on in municipal police forces across the
province, could Ontario’s Ministry of Community Safety, which oversees these
forces, give Marin, as he put it, the “bureaucratic brushoff” when he raised
these concerns?
In releasing his report last week, Marin credited Sun Media
columnist Mark Bonokoski’s story about how the OPP had abandoned retired OPP
Insp. Bruce Kruger as he sought help for the PTSD that had taken over his life.
Marin said Bonokoski’s work was the impetus for his own
study, involving dozens of interviews with active and retired OPP and municipal
police officers, leading to his 155-page report, In the Line of Duty,
containing 34 recommendations calling on the OPP and Ontario government to
start addressing this issue in a serious way.
Given the massive personal toll on police officers and their
families caused by operational stress, to say nothing of the huge costs borne
by taxpayers when officers are disabled by PTSD, surely taking long overdue
action on Marin’s report is a no-brainer.
As for concerns that implementing Marin’s recommendations
will cost money, here’s our advice to Premier Dalton McGuinty’s government —
for as long as it lasts — on how it can provide this funding.
Stop wasting hundreds of millions of taxpayers’ dollars
canceling gas plants to save a couple of Liberal seats during elections, and
invest a fraction of that in helping police officers suffering from PTSD get
their lives back on track.
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