Commissioner of Police, Western Port command, Mrs Hilda Ibifuro- Harrison has lamented the plight policemen and women go through in the course of their duties in defence and protection of people’s life on daily basis.
She said as a result of this, policemen spend most of their time coping with pains, suffering and sadness, yet the same policemen are frequently the targets of complaints and criticism by members of the public.
Harrison who was speaking yesterday at a sensitization workshop for officers of the Western Command in Lagos tagged “The emotional work impact and effective coping strategies for law enforcement professionals” said the workshop was to help address psychological and emotional issues affecting not only the health and behaviour of policemen, but the image and performance of the force.
She said that policemen regularly deal with violent and predatory members of the society like armed robbers, kidnappers, militants and terrorists hence the need for the training to acquaint officers with the causes, symptoms and manifestations of emotional work impact and ways it could be reduced and managed.
“Putting all of these and many more together, it becomes very obvious that policemen experience and pass through a lot of stressful and traumatic challenges in the course of performing their duties.
“Quite often than not, these have led to the formation of habits with very negative consequences on the psyche of the officers.
“Emotional work impact generally refers to the various effects in the form of traumatic experiences and stress that are brought to bear on law enforcement professionals, particularly, police officers by the very nature of their job and the environment in which they work,” she said.
The resource person for the training, Mrs. Daisy Brewster commended the police boss for taking time to equip her officers, assuring that the training will begin to have a positive effect on the way officers of the command handle matters compared to other policemen in the country.
“What I am doing is to train them to know that they are dealing in different environments compared to their counterparts abroad, but the expectations are the same, they need to meet up by knowing how to handle their emotions.
“The police will need to start carrying themselves as professionals and try to change those things denting the image of the force, they should begin to treat their publics as professionals, so we can help them know how to do this by controlling their emotions,” she said.
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