Since the beginning of the year, ten police officers and a gendarme have taken their own lives.
On average, there are between 30 and 40 suicides per year.
Successive Interior Ministers have in turn taken measures to try to stem the phenomenon.
Without really succeeding in doing so.
Christophe Girard, vice-president of the Pep's association, explains that "the main cause of police officers' discomfort is post-traumatic stress syndrome" linked to the difficult interventions and the demanding work pace of the officers.
Grégory Joron, general secretary of the SGP Police-FO Unit union, pleads for the establishment of a "culture of prevention" in order to detect agents in ill-being as soon as possible.
A particularly dark start to the year for the police.
On Thursday, a 35-year-old administrative officer from the Rennes police station committed suicide by jumping from the roof of the building.
A few days earlier, it was a young civil servant from the Marseilles BST who killed himself with his service weapon.
Since January 1, ten police officers and a gendarme have committed suicide.
“The months of January have always been complicated.
But here, we are on the double of the usual average.
It's super worrying, ”explains
Grégory Joron, general secretary of the SGP Police-FO Unit union , to
20 Minutes .
On average, between 30 and 40 suicides are recorded each year.
The year 2019 marked a record with 50 suicides in the police.
"We are on the same basis level figures", alarmed the trade unionist.
How to explain this wave of suicides within this institution?
"In 2021, we received 6,000 calls from colleagues", explains Christophe Girard, vice-president of the Pep's association, a mutual aid association between police officers.
“The main cause of the discomfort of the police, he continues, is post-traumatic stress syndrome, whether by accumulation or identification.
Police officers see the darker, more violent side of society throughout their careers.
We cannot come out unscathed from this profession, it has a real impact on the humans that we are.
Grégory Joron, for his part, points to the pace of work of the agents – the famous “hourly cycles” – and the “very brutal, archaic, vertical” management in the police.
39% of agents in psychological distress
According to the barometer of the Mutuelle des forces de sécurité (MGP), published in June 2021, 24% of the 6,000 police officers questioned admitted to having had suicidal thoughts or heard their colleagues mention suicidal thoughts during the last twelve months. In addition, 39% of agents are in psychological distress according to this study. Over the past 25 years, more than 1,100 police officers have committed suicide, an average of 44 suicides per year. The suicide rate within the profession is nearly 50% higher than that of the French population.
The devices to help police officers who feel bad are already numerous.
In 2019, the Minister of the Interior, Christophe Castaner, set up a single call number allowing civil servants to have anonymous, confidential and free access to psychologists.
His predecessor, Gérard Collomb, had presented a salvo of measures intended to stop this sinister epidemic which is also hitting the gendarmes.
Before him, Bernard Cazeneuve had also tried to seize the subject head-on by launching, in 2014, a plan comprising 23 measures.
Not enough psychologists
“But we are more in the reaction when we should put in place a culture of prevention”, remarks Grégory Joron.
And the latter to emphasize: “There are 70 prevention doctors for the entire national police, 100 operational psychologists for 155,000 agents.
Whereas, in my opinion, it would be necessary to make an appointment with a psychologist systematic and compulsory to take stock with the agent, and potentially detect the personnel in pain.
But we are light years away from being able to do so.
»
The Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, announced before the Senate the recruitment of "about twenty psychologists in the most difficult places of the national police" to prevent suicides among the police.
"In total, there will therefore be 122. We are very far from having a culture of prevention", notes Grégory Joron.
Raising awareness among apprentice police officers
The director general of the police, Frédéric Veaux, announced, on January 21, the strengthening of the “Sentinels” system, launched in 2021. About forty agents have already been trained to identify and guide their colleagues in distress. The objective, in 2022, is to train 2,000 more. The managers of the Pep's association presented him with "the Six'C protocol". It is an "emergency psychological first aid protocol that allows us to prepare for an intervention, to pay attention to each other during it, and then to debrief in a specific way", says Christophe Girard. This protocol, he says, “will be assessed by doctors from the Ministry of the Interior”. “If they agree, all the police will be trained. »
The members of this association, made up of 26 volunteers, also wish “to be able to intervene in police schools”.
The objective, argues its vice-president, is to "raise students' awareness of the fact that this profession is not insignificant and that it is important to reserve a space for speaking out throughout one's career, to take care of himself and to watch over his colleagues".
Society
Discomfort in the police: A quarter of the police have "suicidal thoughts", according to a study
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Suicides in the police: "We must understand the real causes of these acts"
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Ministry of Interior
Faintness
Police officer
Suicide
Police
Gendarmerie
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