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 was the only outlet to have carried the story at the time of writing; it did not appear on the Ada Derana, NewsFirst or Hiru news listings. The paper attributes the account to unspecified “reports” rather than a named police source, and its own headline carries the qualifier “reportedly”.
Update — the officer has been suspended
September 6. The Dehiwala traffic OIC has been suspended from duty over alleged disciplinary issues, NewsFirst reported a day after the Daily Mirror’s account. The suspension was ordered by the Senior Superintendent of Police in charge of Mount Lavinia, and a disciplinary inquiry is to be conducted.
That is the same officer, the same division and the same SSP as in the account above — but a materially different framing of what happened.
The Daily Mirror described a man who walked off the job under workload pressure and logged his reasons in the station’s information book, with the SSP ordering an investigation and worrying about the precedent. NewsFirst describes “alleged disciplinary issues” and a suspension, language that places the fault with the officer rather than with the workload.
Neither outlet reconciles the two. A suspension is a routine consequence of abandoning a post regardless of the reason given, so the accounts can be read together — the workload complaint as the officer’s explanation, the disciplinary process as the force’s response. But NewsFirst does not mention work pressure, the information book entry, or the SSP’s concern about precedent at all, and it does not say the two are the same matter.
What has changed factually is the outcome: the inquiry described a day earlier as being weighed with advice from the Police Legal Division has now produced a suspension.
Not reported in the update
NewsFirst did not name the officer, give the date of the suspension, or say whether it is with or without pay. It did not specify what the “disciplinary issues” are, say when the inquiry will sit, or report who is conducting it — the Daily Mirror had placed the investigation with the Mount Lavinia Crimes Investigation Bureau. It did not carry any response from the officer, from Police Headquarters or from a police union, and it did not refer to the workload complaint that prompted the case.
