Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion (TTPSS­WA) pres­i­dent, ASP Ish­mael Pitt, has raised con­cern over the well-be­ing of po­lice of­fi­cers, warn­ing that the on­go­ing State of Emer­gency (SoE) and sus­tained high op­er­a­tional de­mands are plac­ing in­creas­ing strain on per­son­nel.

His com­ments come in the wake of the re­port­ed sui­cides of PC Yoha­nis Joseph and Rafael Joseph this week—tragedies that have in­ten­si­fied scruti­ny of men­tal health chal­lenges with­in the Po­lice Ser­vice and the ad­e­qua­cy of ex­ist­ing sup­port sys­tems.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Pitt said the pro­longed SoE has re­quired of­fi­cers to op­er­ate un­der con­tin­u­ous pres­sure, with im­pli­ca­tions for both their phys­i­cal and emo­tion­al health.