The Officer-in-Charge of the Traffic Division at Dehiwala Police Station has reportedly left his post and gone home, saying he could no longer bear the pressure of the job — an incident that has prompted a formal police inquiry.
Before leaving, the inspector recorded a note in the police information book stating that he could no longer cope with the heavy workload and the pressure of his duties, the Daily Mirror reported.
Entering the reason in the information book — the station’s official running log — means the departure was documented rather than an unrecorded absence, and gives the inquiry a contemporaneous account in the officer’s own words.
An inquiry, and a concern about precedent
Mount Lavinia Division Senior Superintendent of Police Ashoka Gunasekara has instructed the Mount Lavinia Crimes Investigation Bureau to investigate.
The SSP is reported to have expressed concern that the incident could set a negative precedent among other officers.
Statements have since been recorded from the Dehiwala traffic OIC and from the Assistant Superintendent of Police overseeing the division, after advice was obtained from the Police Legal Division — an indication that the force is weighing the disciplinary and legal position rather than treating the matter administratively.
Context
The complaint concerns workload rather than conduct, which makes it unusual among police-discipline stories.
It also lands on the part of the force that has been asked to do the most visibly more. Police deployed 10,000 traffic officers island-wide in August for a crackdown on reckless driving over the school holidays, and the President’s justice-sector programme in the same month set out plans to recruit 10,000 more police officers. Neither the Daily Mirror nor any other outlet connects this departure to that workload, and no causal link should be drawn from the sequence alone.
Not reported
The Daily Mirror did not name the officer, say when he left his post, or report whether he has returned to duty, been placed on leave, or been interdicted. It gave no detail of the workload complained of — the number of officers in the Dehiwala traffic division, its vacancy position, or the hours worked — and did not carry a response from Police Headquarters, the Police Media Division, or any police trade union. Whether the Inspector General’s office is involved was not addressed.
The Daily Mirror is the only outlet to have carried the story; it did not appear on the Ada Derana, NewsFirst or Hiru news listings at the time of writing. The paper attributes the account to unspecified “reports” rather than a named police source, and its own headline carries the qualifier “reportedly”.
