OPP officer felt abandoned by OPP after cruiser flipped

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OPP officer felt abandoned by OPP after cruiser flipped

Postby Thomas » Sat Oct 06, 2012 3:15 pm

Michael Polson: Officer felt abandoned by OPP after cruiser flipped in 2009

Michael Polson, 49, has investigated homicides, sexual assaults and other terrible crimes in his three decades as a police officer.

But it wasn’t until Aug. 22, 2009, that his life took an ill-fated turn on Flos Road 4, west of the Simcoe County town of Phelpston.

Polson, an Ontario Provincial Police constable, was responding to an emergency call. A fellow officer who was reporting a cocaine overdose in Wasaga Beach needed assistance.

With his cruiser going 130 km/h and his emergency lights on, Polson spotted a vehicle in front of him and assumed the driver saw him coming in the rear-view mirror.

As he remembers it, Polson was coming up parallel to the car when the driver made a wide left turn. He T-boned the vehicle, sending it across the road. The male driver wasn’t seriously injured.

Polson’s cruiser spun into a ditch, hit a hydro pole and flipped on its roof, the officer remaining conscious the whole time.

“My daughter was 2 at the time and I thought, ‘I’m going to die and she’s going to grow up without me,’” Polson recalls thinking.

He had to break a window to climb out of the cruiser.

He couldn’t believe he was alive. His hand was bloody and his head hurt, but he had no internal injuries — at least, not physical ones.

But a few days later, he knew something was wrong.

He told his sergeant he would be back to work soon, but he was experiencing profound depression. He had never had a mental illness.

Within a week, Polson was on painkillers and anxiety medication.

About two weeks after the accident, he contacted the employee assistance program at the OPP and explained what he was feeling.

“The person I talked to suggested I try yoga,” Polson says.

Every time he saw police officers on the news, he got a sinking feeling in his stomach. He couldn’t sleep and was becoming irritable. He turned to alcohol.

Polson says his drinking got so bad that he and his wife almost broke up.

He has been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder by five different health-care providers, he says.

Eventually, Polson began seeing a psychologist. He also made a Workplace Safety and Insurance Board (WSIB) claim, which was granted.

However, he says that through a misunderstanding, the OPP and WSIB tried to rush him back to work before he was ready. He tried to explain his concern that he would end up hurting somebody back on the job because he was extremely angry and irritable, and not dealing with stress very well, he recalls.

“I knew I wasn’t capable of going back to work,” Polson says.

In a meeting with the WSIB, he burst into tears.

Polson, who has also worked as an officer in Toronto, says the OPP told him he was jaded, and that they did not understand what PTSD was.

The WSIB cut off his benefits on Jan. 31, 2011. He is appealing that decision.

“There’s no way WSIB should have cut me off,” he says. “It was an on-duty accident. I am suffering and my family suffered for it.”

Since then, he has been receiving about 60 per cent of his income in disability insurance from Great West Life.

“I’m in a position now where I’m going to retire,” Polson says. “I have to look after my mental health.”

He will leave the force at the end of the year.

Polson credits his psychiatrist, Dr. Randall Boddam, and his wife, Tammy Bourque, with saving his life.

“I can’t believe she stuck with me,” says Polson, who had his last martini in February.

He and his wife are expecting a second child in February. Their daughter is now 5.

Bourque is also an OPP constable and says her colleagues in the intelligence bureau, where she is a crime analyst, are understanding about her husband’s problems.

“I have an inspector who asks regularly how Michael is doing.”

Sadly, that has not been Polson’s experience with his superiors. “Mental health is not really understood in the policing environment,” he says. “It’s (seen) almost like a contagious disease that can rub off on someone.”

http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/crime/a ... ed-in-2009
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