5 Jul 2018

Police need more suicide risk training - lawyer

From Morning Report, 6:13 am on 5 July 2018

A lawyer is calling for police recruits to have more suicide risk training after the number of suicide-related calls jumped by 50-percent in five years. Police figures show that last year, on average, there were 60 such calls to police across the country every day. Recruits at police college go through just a four hour session on handling suicide risk before becoming front line officers. Officers are then given compulsory refresher training about how to manage and deal with suicide every two years through an online e-Learning module. Lawyer Annette Sykes, who has worked on a number of cases involving the police handling of suicidal or depressed people, told RNZ reporter Jessie Chiang that's not good enough.