Twin sisters Karol and Judy Blackley had no idea when they both became police officers how differently their careers would pan out, reports CYDONEE MARDON.
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Twin sisters Karol and Judy Blackley served side by side in the NSW Police Force, often at the same crime scenes, yet their emotional responses to the horrors of police work are poles apart.
Karol developed chronic post-traumatic stress disorder and was treated like an outcast, receiving very little support from her colleagues and the people she considered family.
Judy, on the other hand, is still a serving police officer working in the Illawarra.
‘‘I take medication to sleep, to wake up, to get through the day. I will most likely have to take this medication for the rest of my life.’’
‘‘I did not ask for chronic post-traumatic stress disorder, but when I got it, there was no contact from anyone, except for a routine phone call before an HR meeting,’’ Karol said this week.
‘‘No visits, no caring commander, nothing. Six WorkCover case officers, not one of them making any effort for me to be booked into a psychiatrist to prescribe sufficient medication for me to sleep. They offered me the Yellow Pages to source my own.’’
Karol is breaking ranks and speaking out about her struggle to highlight the lack of support services for police.
She believes serving officers are too afraid to come forward for fear of reprisals in the ‘‘grin and bear it’’ culture of the police force.
Karol is urging the NSW government to follow the lead of the New York Police Department and offer 20-year redundancies.
‘‘That would stop sick people being forced back to work to the point where they become so psychologically damaged they cannot work anywhere due to the relentless symptoms they now have to be medicated for,’’ Karol said.
‘‘I take medication to sleep, to wake up, to get through the day. I will most likely have to take this medication for the rest of my life.’’
Post-traumatic stress disorder was preventable with proper support, she said.
‘‘A 20-year redundancy would allow people to have a dignified exit. Instead, you find yourself being followed by WorkCover surveillance because they think you are bludging, being deceptive. It’s a psychological illness. You don’t go from being an honest person to a lying fraudster for $300 a week.’’
Karol started in general duties at Lake Illawarra in 1991. By then her sister had been two years in the job at Sutherland general duties.
Lake Illawarra was, and still is, a busy and demanding command.
‘‘During my four years there I was exposed to many homicides, vehicle pursuits where I feared for my life, and arrests at gunpoint,’’ Karol said.
In 1994 she moved to Cronulla and began a career as a detective.
Judy worked in Rostering until her sixth year in the police where she went to Hurstville Crime Scene as a fingerprint technician. Judy’s day-to-day work involved examining homicide crime scenes and identifying corpses at the morgue.
‘‘I was also exposed to many unpleasant homicide scenes, suicides, accidental deaths, armed robber arrests at gunpoint, pursuits, sieges and high risk jobs,’’ Karol said.
The difference was that Judy mastered the skill of detaching.
She could treat each scene scientifically.
Karol, on the other hand, couldn’t avoid becoming attached to the victims she met, and their suffering families.
The photographs, coroners’ briefs and court appearances were all reminders of the horrors.
Every three months, Judy received a psychological ‘‘well check’’ because she belonged to a specialist unit and was offered all the counselling she needed.
‘‘All this time I was attached to a local area command and offered nothing,’’ Karol said.
‘‘In local area commands, if you went off sick you had to produce a medical certificate stating your illness. When you have PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) or depression or anxiety you don’t know you are sick. You rely on other people to notice you are not coping. The police culture meant you turned up to work no matter what.’’
In 2000, the twin sisters worked on the same homicide at Sutherland – Karol as an investigator on the strike force and Judy examining the bloody crime scene.
‘‘We saw the same scene but I had to stay on the case until the investigation was completed. I wasn’t offered any psychological support. Judy was.’’
The sisters both worked their way up to the rank of detective sergeant in Parramatta and that’s where Karol succumbed to several symptoms of PTSD.
‘‘I had investigated and was exposed to six violent murders in two years. I began to get very depressed, and the anxiety was consuming,’’ she said.
‘‘I applied for every other position off the front line to give myself a break but I couldn’t get a position that wasn’t in the detectives. There is simply nowhere to go.
‘‘I often worked more than 15 hours’ overtime a fortnight and was on call days in a row. This exacerbated my insomnia issues because I was often subjected to 19-hour shifts, interrupted sleep, and there was constant pressure waiting for the phone to ring to come into work to face more trauma.’’
Karol’s mental and physical health deteriorated until she had full blown chronic PTSD and despite being diagnosed in early 2010, she was forced back to the front line.
‘‘With 20 years of front-line exposure it is almost impossible for the mind to keep the bad things from constantly entering your thoughts,’’ she said.
‘‘You have flashbacks and everything in your perception is a crime scene or danger zone.
‘‘You can’t see things from a non policing perspective any more. Your friends and family can see it, they stop inviting you places because now you’re just an obsessive negative person ... you just can’t see it yourself.’’
It was during her final shift as a police officer that Karol felt the full weight of her sickness and the reality of being alone.
‘‘I had to get my sister to return my uniform and warrant card and badge once I’d gone,’’ she said.
‘‘No-one showed any interest in collecting it or contacting me for it. I was just gone, that was it.’’
Do you know more? Email: cmardon@fairfaxmedia.com.au
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