Epress.am News from Armenia
It has already been one week that police officers have been keeping duty on Yerevan’s highest bridges. Among their responsibilities is preventing suicide attempts. The most well known bridges, in regards to suicide, mostly follow the Hrazdan river; Hrazdan’s big bridge, famously known as Kievian (60 meters high), Davtashen’s bridge (92 meters), and Victory Bridge (34 meters).
Anonymous police officers told journalists that they are discontent with the Law Enforcement leadership’s new initiative, with the hope that they would be freed from it. “Even without this job, day and night we’re on the streets, but now we have no way to stay away from the sun,” protested the police officer with handcuffs and a club tied to his belt.
According to him, the police leadership warned them that for every unprevented suicide, they would be reprimanded, their salaries lowered, and deprived them from future bonuses, “a few days ago on another bridge, they started an investigation for a registered incident and those on patrol are under threat of being strictly reprimanded. Though, there’s no reward for saving someone.”
I said that “if there were rewards, you would present a few acts of preventions at every shift.”
“That’s impossible. First of all, we won’t let ourselves do that. Second, they are monitoring us here and there are cameras all over the city. They follow us even closer than they do ordinary citizens,” answered the police officer.
Another police officer, who was also discontent with the leadership’s new spotlight on suicide, interfered in the conversation, he claimed, “they said that last week the president was attending a wedding which was to take place in the Hrazdan canyon’s Florence restaurant. Someone jumped off the bridge and blocked his entourage’s path. They were forced to change their route and from that moment, they decided to send patrol units to all bridges. As if everything was alright before.”
He also noted, that until the present moment they haven’t been told what criteria they should look for in potential suicide victims, “if someone wants to commit suicide, no one could prevent the person. You don’t need to find that person on a bridge. I can’t place a camera in everyone’s head. What should I do, run after every person who seems weird? Half the city walks with gloomy mug faces; should I not let them walk across the bridge? Look, you look gloomy too! Generally, you don’t even look like a journalist.”
Epress.am spoke to Police public relations department representative Armen Malkhasyan, who noted that they don’t have a specific service for suicide prevention. According to Malkhasyan, the patrol units have routes and police officers may appear on the bridge during the day.
Yuri M.