Injury, PTSD top reasons for police officer claims
Katie Nicholls
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
Thunder Bay’s police board received information on the health and safety of officers during its monthly meeting on Tuesday.
Inspector Gordon Snyder presented board members with the bi-annual report on health and safety statistics for police officers.
Snyder said for 2023 there were a total of 80 WSIB claims made by on-duty officers. These numbers were broken down, with the top two being related to strains or impact injuries sustained due to a physical altercation with an individual who was being taken into custody and to PTSD from work-related traumatic event exposures, according to the meeting’s agenda.
Those injuries represent 26 and 18 workplace-related injuries, respectively.
During a break, Snyder told Dougall Media that communication with individuals is important.
“[Officers] do whatever we can to protect the individual who is often going through difficult experiences, but also to protect our officers who have to address and deal with this individual who is going through this difficult experience and oftentimes acting out violently.
“Secondly to that is obviously our different use of force options that sometimes we have to use to protect ourselves and to protect others that are involved in these violent situations.”
Snyder also spoke to officers who’ve taken time off work because of PTSD.
“This is a major health risk to our members and it’s something that we’re continually working on and something that we’re taking very seriously.
“We’re looking to have further implementation of other measures into place throughout the year as we continue to try to address that leading cause of injury for our members.”
Chief Darcy Fleury spoke to the board about the service’s participation in last weekend’s Pride parade.
He noted that many members volunteered to police the parade as well as partake in parade activities.
Fleury noted there weren’t any major concerns at the event and that police are open to participating in more 2SLGBTQIA+ events.
“Of course, we’ll attend and participate to whatever event — however they want us to participate. It’s really important . . . To whatever extent they wish us to be involved, we will.
“Most of our officers that were down there volunteered to do that this year . . . I think everybody’s really working together to make it a better partnership.”
Fleury noted that since the Community Conversation that police participated in in April, he’s implemented training videos and literature he received as a result of the consultation and passed it to his senior staff members.
“We have talked to our senior staff and our training people. We are implementing that, putting some of those training videos out there for officers to have a better understanding and education as to the feelings and the sentiment around police, and police involvement with their activities.
“I think we’re going in the right direction as well as continuing to work towards building our diverse community. That’s just work that’s in progress and can take us some time.”
He also said they are still in the process of putting together a diversity committee. It’s going to take a little while, he said, but they’re working towards that in the next few months.
Katie Nicholls
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
TBnewswatch.com
