To protect, to serve, to save to heal – who helps them?

A couple of weeks ago, we all saw a YouTube video go viral about police brutality in Cape Town.  Police brutality is around and as I don’t condone it, what made me wonder is what is making the policemen and women so angry that their anger makes them go that far.

A lot of the time, we forget that our civil servants are traumatized and often on a daily basis. Try to imagine the emotions that you would experience if you had to see a murder scene, find a child that was raped, old lady mugged and this could be experienced in one working shift. How do you deal with all of this?

I know you are probably saying to yourself that no one made them choose that job but what would happen if no one chose to be a policeman, a fire-fighter, a nurse? Why aren’t the heads of these departments not making sure that they are being counselled on a regular basis? Why, do a lot of them, when they do get help are stereotyped by their industry?

I was a wife of a police reservist and I remember the look in his eyes when he saw or experienced something that bothered him. Now, imagine, going through all of this and coming home to your family and you can’t even discuss the case with your wife to help you decompress. Yet, your family also has to try and be understanding, coping with the mood swings and stress.  Imagine not knowing fully what your spouse or partner sees on a daily basis. A lot of them also don’t discuss it to protect their family of the harsh realities of the streets outside our front doors.

The psychologists hired by these departments, can they be trusted? Are they trying to encourage the men and women to come and see them or do they wait until they are forced to come and see them? Do they honestly and truly keep confidentiality? I am not blaming them for what is going on but something is clearly wrong. Whatever it is needs to be found and the issues need to be resolved or ways are the people in charge need to finds to help our civil servants cope and manage whatever it is.

Our civil servants should be among the highly paid employees in South Africa. Why, you say? Because our lives are in their hands on a daily basis and I feel, if we look after them, show them we support them and lift their morale, and then maybe they will stay on the straight and narrow to provide us with the best possible service.

In order for them, to reduce their anger, their out lashing of violence, we need to support them and give them the help they need for this anger, their stress and the trauma they experience.

Many of the people I still know in these industries don’t realize that I often see the trauma in their eyes, their face. I can only imagine how they feel when they try their best to protect people they might never know, get the person responsible or lose the person they sweated to save.

I can only imagine what it feels like when you spend so much time on a case, piecing the puzzle together just to see the person walk, the evidence lost and you get the blame. I can only imagine how it must feel to feel like you are working yourself to death and nothing changes. Crime increases, the same people walk the streets, lack of staff, low pay and low morale.  I can only imagine trying to work together to fight a fire, knowing you have already lost people among the flames. I can only imagine how it must feel beating a man’s chest with all the stamina you have to get his heart beating again just to stop with the realization that it was all in vain.

We might not have faith in them but we must also remember that God gave them the calling and the faith to follow the call. A call that asks for self sacrifice, unselfishness, to care without knowing and that we don’t become a policeman/woman, a fire-fighter, a nurse, a teacher, a paramedic, a doctor, we are called to it. I know that some become these things because they need a job but for many God called them to that career. And even though I am also one of those people who get agitated with the lack of service, lack of education, just lack of motivation to give a good service, I still like to believe that there are many roses among the thorns and I pray that when I need them for something serious, God will send His rose to me.