The Police Pastor is available to talk about anything one has on one’s mind in a confidential setting. The pastor works with police personnel as well as well as crime victims and those who have been arrested and are suspects in a case. Pastor Jaani Vilkkilä of the Helsinki Police Department always brings with him a small cross that the one he meets may choose to keep. Nowadays, employees of congregations or social service departments often accompany police to deliver a death notice. ©Jarkko Järvinen/Police Museum.
Shocking sensory stimuli are a part of the job for uniformed police, violent crime investigations, accident investigations, and fatality investigations. Police officers see deaths and victims of assault and abuse, accidents and suicides. Housing for the mentally ill and addicted can be unsettling. Investigating crimes in an office does not protect officers from seeing and hearing violence, as pre-trial investigations involve detectives going through material such as detailed images, sounds and videos of violence. Particularly traumatic is Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM) when investigating sexual offences against children. Game consoles are available at police stations to allow investigators to take an occasional 20-minute break and reduce the adverse mental health effects of the traumatic material they are dealing with.
Experiencing or witnessing violence causes emotional distress, which, if prolonged, is detrimental to well-being. Some police officers still feel that, to some extent, violence is part of the nature of police work, and not all cases of violence against police officers are reported. If a person resists the police with only physical force, the police often treat it as a normal police incident. Reports are more likely to be made if a police officer has been bitten, spat at in the face, or had their hair pulled.
After challenging encounters with the public, police officers can often experience fear, guilt, revenge or shame. If the situation is not unpacked afterwards, the officer’s working capacity and job satisfaction may be affected. The stresses of day-to-day life are different from those of challenging interactions with the public. The officer’s thoughts and feelings after an incident may be different from normal, unpleasant and disturbing. The mind becomes overstimulated in response to a challenging situation. There is a biological and physiological explanation for this: coping with a threatening and dangerous situation requires enhanced performance, sharpened senses, and decision-making. If the stress level rises too high, it will lead to poor decision-making and reduced performance because the stress will prove too much to bear.
Police fatigue on the rise
Police officers are under intense pressure to perform their jobs. The work should be done carefully, fairly and legally, but at the same time efficiently, quickly and in line with priorities. Many police officers find themselves struggling with an imbalance of resources and demands. The meaningfulness of the work, the public’s appreciation and expectations, and a strong sense of morality may reinforce the feeling of failure to adequately meet all the requirements of the job. For example, the responses to an occupational wellbeing survey conducted by the Finnish Police Union from 2019 to 2022 reflected the burdens of the job, the forced pace of the work, and an increase in challenges coping with the work and cumulative stress. This phenomenon is not unique to Finland – it is also seen in other European countries.
The police force has undergone several structural changes since 1996. The number of police officers decreased until 2017, reaching a low of around 7,300. At the same time, changes in the operating environment and internationalisation increased the police’s workload. The result is that demanding work is being done with fewer staff. The human and financial resources of the police are governed by political decision-making. Police workloads have increased, but there is not always enough money to hire new staff. Police officers have expressed concerns about job-related exhaustion, which can manifest itself in various ways. A police officer who normally has good control over their emotions may suddenly snap and become enraged or be constantly tired. A cheerful colleague can become cheerless, or their thoughts turn dark and cynical.
At the end of 2024, suicides by Finnish police officers were in the news, as four police officers had committed suicide that year. There are no accurate statistics comparing suicides among Finnish police officers with suicides in police forces in other countries. Individual, professional and organisational factors contribute to police suicides. Key risk factors include exposure to traumatic events, post-traumatic stress, mental health problems, and work-related stress such as shift work, long working hours, and sleep disturbances. Crises in personal life can also be a risk factor. The high standards of the police profession, the ideal of invulnerability, and a lack of willingness to seek help can sometimes prevent the early diagnosis and treatment of problems.
Attitudes towards public authorities have changed
The news has highlighted a change in people’s attitudes towards the authorities, especially the police. There have been growing questions surrounding the authority of the police. This may be part of the reason for the violence that police officers are increasingly encountering in the course of their duties. Changes in the operating environment are making the work of the police more and more challenging, and it is not easy to cope with under-resourcing. The police are constantly developing tactical approaches to better respond to the challenges of the current environment.
In 2019, around one in five field police officers experienced violence on a monthly basis, some even on a weekly basis. In general, violence against the police is motivated by the desire to avoid arrest. A suspect may try to escape from a police officer’s grasp, for example by kicking and punching. Violence with intent to harm is more worrying. It can be motivated by a desire for revenge, if the person is disappointed with society and uses violence to vent their aggression. Jonne Rinne, the President of the Finnish Police Union, uses the term “blue light sabotage”, which means making a hoax call to the emergency services to get the police, ambulance or rescue services – all authorities who arrive with their blue lights flashing – to a certain location in order to attack them with stones, bottles or fireworks, for example. More serious acts of violence are also possible. In the Nordic countries, the phenomenon of blue light sabotage has been particularly concerning in Sweden.