Police 111 Call Findings Shows Clear Need For More Frontline Police And Resources
“These results show that in most cases Comms Centre Staff have managed to carry out their job and follow Police protocol in their current pressure-cooker environment, however it is unsettling to see one of the factors in the complaint findings was lack of available Police to attend the calls. There is a clear need for more frontline police and a focus on adequate resources for that area,” Association President, Greg O’Connor said today.
Mr O’Connor was responding to release of the Police findings on the 17, 111 calls released by Police yesterday evening.
“We are also concerned that our members are not hung-out -to-dry by Police Management/Commissioner because a major factor in their decision-making has had to be the number of frontline Police they have available to attend these calls.”
“We know our frontline Police do their difficult community job well with the resources that they have.” said Mr O’Connor. “However most, if not all, additional funding in recent years has been tagged to specific areas and frontline police numbers have been ignored with staff continuously robbed for other initiatives.”
Mr O’Connor said, “We have one of the lowest numbers of Sworn Police to Population in the English-speaking world, with 1 officer to every 554 New Zealanders. In Australia they have 1 Police officer to every 427 Australians. NZ would require some 2000 police officers, just to come up to Australia’s ratio.”
“The Government needs to in increasing frontline Police numbers and improving their resources,” said Mr O’Connor. “If they do this, then the Police will be better able to respond to all calls, not just those that are Priority One and the NZ public will feel safer.
