The Western Ports Authority Police Command of the Nigerian Ports Authority yesterday sensitized officers in the Western Command on how to cope with psychological and emotional issues affecting them in their line of operations.
Commissioner of Police Western Ports, Mrs Hilda Ibifuro Harrison said that the sensitization session tagged “the emotional work impact and effective coping strategies for law enforcement professionals” is sequel to one held in January 2015 on how the police can “turn positive attitude into action”
According to her, the session is to equip officers on how to address a myriad of psychological and emotional issues affecting not only the health and behavior of policemen, but the image and performance of the force.
She noted that the training is another modest effort of the command to contribute to the development of the force in line with the vision of the Inspector General of Police Mr. Solomon Arase. The training is to acquaint officers with the causes, symptoms and manifestations of emotional work impact and ways it could be reduced and managed.
Mrs Harrison also said that policemen regularly deal with violent and predatory members of the society like armed robbers, kidnappers, militants and terrorists.
She added that they put their lives on the line in defense of others’ life and property and confront cruelties and horrors on daily basis.
The Commissioner lamented further that policemen spend most of their time around pain, suffering and sadness, and yet the same policemen are frequently the targets of complaints and criticism by members of the public.
“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”
Speaking at the end of the programme, the resource person for the training, Mrs Daisy brewster said that when police officers save life’s, they see certain things that affects them emotionally, so they have to go back and get a resource inwards.
Brewster who is lead trainer with Fenley Integrated Services Limited noted that Nigerian Police men are not superman, they are human beings and it is not different from other countries.
“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 is 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 begining to treat their publics as professionals, so we can help them know how to do this by controlling their emotions
She commended Mrs Ibifuro Harrison for taking time to equip her officers, assuring that this will begin to have a positive effect on the way officers of the command handle matters differently compared to other policemen in the country.
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