The introduction of a trauma tracker that could prevent officers from succumbing to psychological breakdown has been welcomed by South Yorkshire Police Federation.<\/p>\n
A Home Office white paper published in January outlined a legislative push to make trauma monitoring systems mandatory across all 43 forces in England and Wales.<\/p>\n
By linking an officer\u2019s individual collar number to every harrowing incident they attend, the tracker creates a permanent digital record of cumulative exposure that cannot be ignored by a changing rotation of supervisors.<\/p>\n
The trackers would monitor the toll of the job on police officers by highlighting red flag incidents including fatal road traffic collisions, child sexual abuse and sudden deaths.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is absolutely needed. We’ve sadly lost five officers to suicide in the past 10 years,\u201d Federation Chair Steve Kent said.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne officer is too many, and there have been countless suicide attempts.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere needs to be an urgent and thorough investigation into why this is happening and how we can prevent it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Steve called for better mental health provision for officers and for investigations to be expedited.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe need to put pressure on the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC), and for those under investigation, we need to consider anonymity until they are dismissed or found guilty of an offence.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy are we applying rules that don’t exist in any other public sector organisation to officers who may be suspected of misconduct or are facing misconduct proceedings? It has a massive impact on officers’ mental health, so the rules around that need to be changed.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are on the precipice of a mental health epidemic in policing, so if we can improve wellbeing support, then hopefully that will drive down suicide numbers,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n