WA Police suicides: Commissioner Chris Dawson pledges to hold mental health forum to prevent further tragedies

Police Commissioner Chris Dawson will hold a forum dealing with mental health, to start within the next few weeks, in the wake of recent suicides that have shocked the force. Mr Dawson said the department had a lot of programs and services on offer, but following the recent tragedies of two officers who took their own lives within two weeks, he was asking “if there is anything more we can do”. “I’ve invited clinical experts and peer support officers, relevant advocacy groups and a broad cross-section of our workforce, so we can actually then re-double or intensify the programs that we presently offer,” Mr Dawson said. The summit comes after The West revealed two officers — including Sergeant Randall Moulden, who ran his own police station in the Great Southern — took their own lives within two weeks on July 3. Mr Dawson said extra officers had been deployed to the COVID-19 taskforce, potentially leaving squads and teams across WA Police short staffed and under the pump. “We’ve had to recruit additional police to support the efforts during COVID because it is a state of emergency but, look, we are coping quite well with it,” Mr Dawson said. “In the whole scheme of things, crime in fact has broadly gone down markedly since COVID came here — we didn’t expect that. But at the same time our officers are under a degree of pressure because of COVID. “What we want to do is make sure we have sustainable numbers of police, and the additional that we’re now recruiting are going to fully support us. Once we come through the other side of COVID — and we will — we will be able to redeploy the existing police right around the State, in fact.” The mental health forum also comes after a “mentally broken” police officer with three decades of experience shared his tormented mind with The West — saying his pleas for help to WA Police went unanswered leaving him feeling scared he “was going to become another statistic”. The officer, who worked across regional and metropolitan WA, said he was suffering from post traumatic stress disorder which plagues him with nightmares, sometimes up to seven a night. The 47-year-old said the PTSD he attributes to years on the force has finally taken its toll and is driving him out of his dream job. “I dream about all the deaths I have attended. I see the faces and crash sites of all the fatal crashes I have dealt with — babies, teenagers who have (taken their own lives), young P-plate drivers who died on the roads,” said the officer who wants to remain anonymous. The 27-year-veteran of the job also revealed the torment includes dreams where he is the one “shooting and stabbing people to death”.