ROADS policing officers need specific support as they often attend traumatic incidents, South Yorkshire Police Federation has said.<\/p>\n
Chairman Steve Kent said: \u201cEvery aspect of policing, especially frontline policing or police officers who involve themselves in the evidential chain, will always need some kind of recognition and awareness of the mental health strains that go with it.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve been a response cop all my service. I\u2019ve had a very small period of working in roads policing, but what you do see with roads policing is they tend to see the catastrophic results of road accidents.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey might not be dealing with quite the drip, drip, drip of response officers in terms of job to job to job to job, but when they go to a serious road accident it is catastrophic. They need different support, I think, to deal with that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Steve said the rise in single crewing added to the potential for mental health issues. He explained: \u201cThey haven\u2019t got the ability to offload in the car afterwards. Traffic officers are going out in the car, nine times out of 10, on their own, and they don\u2019t have that balance, they don\u2019t have that sounding board.\u201d<\/p>\n
The force\u2019s Trauma Risk Management (TRiM) process is good for helping officers after these incidents, Steve said, but it wasn\u2019t triggered by every fatal incident.<\/p>\n
He said: \u201cAn officer could go to a fatal incident every day for four or five days. They\u2019re not going to get a TRiM procedure every time that happens and you never know what\u2019s going to be the straw that broke the camel\u2019s back.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo there needs to be more awareness. Maybe even if it\u2019s a counsellor spending the morning with the team and saying, \u2018I\u2019m here if you want to speak to me\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n
This month the PFEW is focusing on the wellbeing of roads policing officers and family liaison officers, with Roads Policing Lead Gemma Fox saying: \u201cThe demands on this critical policing discipline and the toll it can take on officers\u2019 mental health and wellbeing cannot be underestimated.\u201d<\/p>\n