EARLIER this week, the killing of 25-year-old Améli Nahan by her boyfriend Arnaud Martin in the Parisian suburb of Sarcelles could have been treated by the media as one of the many run-of-the-mill crimes that unfortunately take place in and around all the big cities of the world.
But there was a difference! Arnaud was a young policeman who, after shooting Amélie dead, put the revolver to his own head and pulled the trigger.
The tragedy of course was an emotional affair but it brought to the public’s attention much more and complicated details that are now being taken as a national opprobrium.
According to a statement by the Minister of Interior Gerard Colomb, as many as 44 policemen and 16 security guards have committed suicides in France since the beginning of this year. The revelations even go as far as 10 years back with a total number of 479 policemen taking their own lives with firearms left in their care to protect the citizens.
Loire Valley journalist Jean Lauvergeat has his explanation for this tragic and growing phenomenon. He says: “Personal and emotional reasons as in the Arnaud-Amélié case are rare. Most of the police agents who committed suicides belonged to the services charged with the mission of maintaining security in the so-called ‘difficult’ neighbourhoods full of immigrants.
“Add to this the rising cases of terrorism when these policemen realise that dozens, often hundreds, of innocent people including women and children are mercilessly murdered by terrorists; they blame themselves for lack of diligence and feel it impossible to continue living with a guilty conscience.”
The interior minister, who made it clear that he would shortly announce measures to handle the crisis, hinted at the possibility of creating special psychological centres exclusively for police personnel, men and women, who go through the experience of handling terrorism crises and frequently witness ghastly horrors from a very close range.
To the argument that security officials probably commit suicides in such an alarming number because they have easy access to revolvers and rifles, Prof Albert Salvani, a psychologist, answers: “This is not very logical reasoning as it could be true for soldiers too who also possess firearms but do not commit suicides. Then, what about doctors, nurses and laboratory personnel who are in touch all the time with dangerous medicines and other chemicals?”
The general secretary of National Police Syndicate (SCPN), Céline Berthon, says: “Police officers watch so much violence and human misery, day and night. Also add to this bad conditions and overwork.”
The situation has gone so critical that an association called Angry Wives of Forces of Order was formed recently. Its representative Perrine Salé says: “We understand perfectly that a security official never takes off the uniform definitively. But they are citizens like everyone else and have private lives with wives and children. It is the government’s duty to get into action immediately and find ways to protect us and our families.”
A few days ago daily Le Figaro published an exclusive interview of Eric Ciotti, a National Assembly member belonging to the party La Republic and considered an expert on the questions of security. He said:
“Though the scandal of police officers committing suicides seems to have suddenly raised its head as a very preoccupying phenomenon, unfortunately it goes many years back. Of course, each lonely suicide appears to be a very individualistic phenomenon, but there have been so many cases that we no longer can treat them as such. The governments that have succeeded each other for the past 10 years have pledged to do something, but these have remained only dead-letter promises. Now we need some action …much more concrete than those honourable speeches at the coffins of dead security officers.”
The writer is a journalist based in Paris
Published in Dawn, November 26th, 2017
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