DEMAND on the police has grown so much so that the service needs to start saying\u00a0\u201cno\u201d, the chairman of South Yorkshire\u00a0Police Federation has said.<\/p>\n
Neil Bowles was responding to comments from HM Chief Inspector of Constabulary Tom Winsor, who suggested that demand on the police service had dropped. Mr Bowles said Mr Winsor should spend just one day in South Yorkshire Police\u2019s call centre to see what it is really like for officers.<\/p>\n
\u201cWithin South Yorkshire, the demand on policing just grows and grows and grows,\u201d said Mr Bowles.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Home Secretary wants us to be crime fighters, but we are not. We are social workers, we\u2019re teachers, we\u2019re health workers. We are the only service that can react 24\/7.\u201d<\/p>\n
South Yorkshire Police is already holding strategic meetings to decide what services it can stop offering in the future, but Mr Bowles said the force is risk averse when it comes to saying \u201cno\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cEveryone talks about it but they are afraid of what the perception is going to be when we turn around and say \u2018Sorry, we can\u2019t do that.\u2019 There is a fear that if we don\u2019t respond and something bad happens then we will be to blame,\u201d he says. \u201cWe\u2019ve got to get over that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr Bowles suggested that reassurance visits to victims of undetectable crimes should be reduced. \u201cA victim ends up speaking to five different officers when all they really want is a crime number to give to their insurance company. When the crime is undetectable, we have got to make a decision about what resources we are going to give to a job that will become just a statistic,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Another area Mr Bowles is concerned about is the time spent dealing with members of the public with mental health problems.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy has the police service got involved in mental health? We are not trained. We have got no idea how to deal with anybody suffering with a mental illness,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf we find someone on the street who is not well and a danger to themselves or others then we can arrest them and take them to hospital. But that should be the end of the matter. At the moment, officers are sitting there for six, seven, eight, twelve hours, waiting for the health service to come up with the necessary qualified people to assess them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jim Lucas, Secretary of the South Yorkshire Police Federation, added that the police service must also stop acting as the\u00a0\u201cstop gap\u201d\u00a0for the ambulance service. \u201cIt is time consuming and means officers are being taken away from the frontline,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
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