MEMBERS of the Police Regional Office (PRO)-Cordillera are psychologically stable.
This was the evaluation given by Police Major Nick Balunos, regional psychologist of PRO-Cordillera, following the recent directive of Regional Director Israel Ephraim Dickson in response to the recent shooting of a member of the Regional Mobil Force Battalion (RMFB) in Ifugao by his fellow policemen after a finger wrestling match.
The shooting happened on September 29 after members of the PRO-Cordillera Regional Mobil Force Battalion engaged in a "Tulhi" or traditional finger wrestling match.
But Balunos said the incident is an isolated case.
"What we will re-initiate is a program regarding psycher-monitoring, so down the line, we will re-empower chief clerks, the team leaders to monitor discreetly their behavior. Every fifth day of the month, they will be submitting a 64-questionnaire for persons confronted with difficult situation, financially, emotionally will be checked and submitted to us as our basis for intervention and monitoring," Balunos said.
He added that if they fail in the test, police will undergo counseling and stress management.
"In that particular case in Ifugao, we have debriefed already in coordination with stoical wordpress in Ifugao and our next program with Dra. Bautista who is also our regional psychiatrist is to conduct a lecture on awareness, followed by the incorporation of anger management in the regular stress management program," Balunos said.
Balunos said there are programs implemented by PRO-Cordillera in identifying the various coping mechanisms of persons, and the different aggression levels especially when they are preoccupied.
He said the police personnel who shot his co-policemen has low cause of control.
"We have two kinds of low cause of control. We tend to express our feelings inwardly or externally. If it's is inward, we keep our feelings to ourselves, and if it is external, we express it through verbal and physical. In this case, what we saw was that he had a low cause of control which led him to express his feelings physically," Balunos said.
"The basic remedy for people having low cause of control is to talk to them even if you are not a guidance counselor, you let them feel that you are very interested on the issue and somehow it will ease the burden of the person," he added.