To prevent suicides among the police, Gérald Darmanin announced this Wednesday before the Senate the recruitment of “about twenty psychologists in the most difficult places of the national police”.
Since the beginning of the year, nine police officers and a gendarme have taken their own lives. On average, there are between 30 and 40 suicides per year. The year 2019 marked a record with 50 suicides in the police.
“A direct link with personal life and not professional”
It was that year that the then Minister of the Interior, Christophe Castaner, implemented various measures, including the establishment of a single telephone number allowing civil servants to have anonymous, confidential and free to psychologists. On Wednesday, during questions to the government in the Senate, Gérald Darmanin announced that he had decided to have these devices evaluated by “an external consulting firm”.
The Minister of the Interior noted that “most of the suicides” had “a direct link with the personal and not professional life of these people”, while stressing that this clarification was not intended to “minimize them”.
The service weapon “contributes to the passage to the act”
“The fact that these police and gendarmes have a service weapon unfortunately contributes to the passage to the act more than in other administrations,” he said. However, he added, “the administration does not feel cleared of the tragedies we are experiencing”.
Gérald Darmanin recalled that last week the boss of the national police Frédéric Veaux had received all the unions specifically on this issue. They decided “unanimously” to “recruit twenty psychologists in the most difficult places of the national police”. It was also decided to “further coordinate the budgetary and human resources” for prevention, said the minister.