And while Janine and Jesslyn will now have to heal from the trauma, possibly with the help of therapy, 16 police officers are seeking similar assistance. The Prime Minister announced this morning that the officers were on suicide watch, but the ComPol clarified that the officers sought counseling for their mental health. The department is working on getting an in house counselor, since the stress of the job can weigh heavily on the officers - especially in this pandemic time. And for now, these officers' guns have been taken away while they get treatment.
Chester Williams, Commissioner of Police
"You would know that often times as a society we don't think about the level of stress that I associated with being a police officer and the fact that police officers encounter different situations, some very heinous situations on a daily basis that those things do have a psychological effect on some people and so police officers like any ordinary people after all we are ordinary people. These issues do affect some of us and to add to that too we also have at times our own issues at home, then we have issues on the job and so that would add to the frustration and the stress of police officers and so we have a number of officers who are currently undergoing counseling because of the fact that we observe that they have some psychological issues and in some cases some of them identify it themselves and offer themselves to be counsel for these issues and so yes we are monitoring a number of officers for stress related issues and we are working through the ministry of public service employee assistance program to be able to counsel these officers and let me say that our minister is currently working on getting an in-house counselor for police, because it is one of the biggest organization in the country and we don't have a counselor. The BDF is smaller than us and the BDF have counselors and we don't. The truth is our job is more stressful than the BDF one is and so we are desperately in need on an in-house counselor and I am happy that our minister is working on that and we are hopeful that very soon we are going to have our own in-house counselor who will be able to help us with these issues."
Reporter
"Are you concern that any of these officers might end up taking their lives?"
Chester Williams, Commissioner of Police
"Well, what we have done is that these officers are not place to work in situations where they will handle firearms. We took away that privilege from them, so no firearms and we try to put them in areas where they will not encounter the public and in some cases some of them are not working. If the situation gets too intense, then we do not allow them to come to work."
