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Policing and Combating Terrorism in Northern Ireland pp 143–190Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

The Experiences of Injured Officers

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Abstract

In addition to the hundreds of officers who lost their lives in the conflict, thousands were injured. Some officers sustained severe physical injuries resulting in the amputation of limbs. Bomb blasts have created single, double and triple amputees. Amputation was most often caused by explosions although gun attacks involving high-velocity rifles could also result in limb loss. Therefore, RUC officers experienced battlefield-like injuries similar in kind and degree to military personnel injured in Afghanistan and Iraq. Yet, these were police officers and not soldiers and some were badly injured at their homes in undercar booby-trap explosions. Officers also sustained psychological injuries and many suffer from PTSD.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Had a request been submitted under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 it would have had an exemption applied under section 12(1) as the cost of complying would exceed the appropriate limit (18 hours).

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  1. Department of Psychology, Sociology and Politics, Sheffield Hallam University, Sheffield, UK

    Neil Southern

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Correspondence to Neil Southern .

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Southern, N. (2018). The Experiences of Injured Officers. In: Policing and Combating Terrorism in Northern Ireland. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75999-9_6

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