Suicide, threat calls to police up 50%

WELLINGTON: The number of suicide attempt and threatrelated calls to police have jumped more than 50% in the past five years.

Police figures obtained by RNZ show that on average there were nearly 60 calls for help across the country every day last year.

An Auckland police officer, whom RNZ has agreed to call Daniel, said he was called out once every two days to situations involving a suicidal person.

That was considered to be a good week, he said.

Daniel said officers often spend hours with someone trying to convince them to go to a mental health practitioner.

‘‘I feel like we do get called out and we are stuck in some situations where we are out of our depth and . . . police intervention is not really necessary,’’ he said.

‘‘But a lot of the time callouts are needed just because we want to make sure everyone’s safe.’’

Recruits go through a four hour training session at the police college, which police said provided them with a better understanding of the implications in suicide.

Frontline police members were then given compulsory refresher training every two years on how to manage and deal with suicide through an online elearning module.

Daniel said the training was brief.

‘‘I think most definitely we need more training but we also need more training in every area, the problem . . . we run into is how much training is actually needed,’’ he said.

‘‘I understand that mental health practitioners, and people who work in mental health, go through years of training but that’s not possible with the kind of training that goes on at police college.’’

In a recent inquest into a suspected suicide, police officers charged a woman with driving offences on the same night that she was expressing suicidal actions.

The coroner said the decision to hand out the summons on the same night, given the circumstances, was concerning.

Lawyer Annette Sykes, who has worked on cases involving police and suicidal or depressed people, said training for officers was abysmal, compared with the huge volume of calls they received.

Suicide related callouts across the country rose from more than 14,500 in 2013 to 21,700 last year, despite the population increasing by only 12% in the same period.

Police Association president Chris Cahill said officers increasingly were having to be jacks of all trades.

He said police were treated as a last resort measure in the consequences instead of the focus being on prevention.

He questioned whether more training was the answer.

‘‘Even if they double the training, is that really going to give police the expertise to solve this problem?’’ Mr Cahill said. — RNZ