“Allow officers to step away from mentally demanding roles”

ENSURING officers step away from high pressure specialist jobs could be key in protecting their mental health.

According to reports, Chelmsford Crown Court recently heard that officers had to seek counselling after being exposed to abhorrent images and videos during the investigation of a paedophile.

This sort of work, often unseen by the public, unsurprisingly can take its toll on investigators, says Essex Police Federation Chair Steve Taylor.

He thinks giving officers the chance to step away from often mentally demanding roles could be beneficial.

“It’s obviously an extremely challenging role,” he said.

“We do provide mental health surveillance and screening of them but in my view it’s not something that they can or perhaps should do for a protracted amount of time.

“It affects them, it can take a real personal toll on them and they need rotating out because we all have a limited amount of time that we can spend investigating these sorts of matters – dealing with indecent images of children and the people who deal in them is, of course, one of the worst areas.”

He thinks the idea could be applied to other areas of policing too when ‘stepping away’ could be the best outcome for everyone.

“There are only so many road traffic accidents that colleagues can go to,” he said.

“And when you’ve reached your limit, you’ve reached your limit. In these instances, the best thing is to support colleagues and identifying that they need to step away.

“It’s something the public don’t always appreciate, that officers are out there dealing with some of the worst things imaginable and it might not be easy to talk about, but we need to.

“I would encourage officers to realise when and what their limit is, if you are at the point of enough is enough, that you can’t do it anymore then arguably you have gone too far already.

“Talk to your supervisor, the Federation, occupational health, there’s no shame in realising there’s a limited shelf life in what you can be exposed to.

“Stepping away is sometimes the most professional thing you can do.”