THE first national picture of the breadth and complexity of the work undertaken by the police has revealed that \u201cwhile crime may have fallen, level of demand on police resources has not reduced in the same way.\u201d<\/p>\n
The work \u2013 published by the College of Policing \u2013 reveals there is currently one police officer per 445 people in England and Wales. That is up more than 50 people per officer than in 2010. Officer numbers are down 11 per cent in that period.<\/p>\n
The College states: \u201cThere are two indications of emerging pressure on police resilience \u2013 decreased levels of visibility & increasing requests for mutual aid.\u201d<\/p>\n
The analysis shows the incoming and ongoing work of the police and suggests an increasing amount of police time is directed towards public protection work such as managing high-risk offenders and protecting victims who are at risk and often vulnerable.<\/p>\n
These cases, the College says, are often extremely challenging and rightly require considerable amounts of police resource.<\/p>\n
CEO Alex Marshall adds: \u201cThe evidence shows that while the number of crimes may have fallen, the level of demand on police resources has not reduced in the same way.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe changing mix of crime means that over the past 10 years, investigating and preventing crime has become more complex, and the costs of crime for the police have not fallen as much as overall numbers of crimes. Complex crimes such as child abuse and domestic violence are also understandably taking up more police time.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe College will continue to build on this early evidence base by working with forces to develop consistent approaches to map demand and to help inform policy decisions.\u201d<\/p>\n
Neil Bowles, Chairman of South Yorkshire Police Federation, said: “The current crime figures might show a drop but the actual calls coming into our call centre are not decreasing by that much, and sometimes they\u2019re definitely increasing.<\/p>\n
“So I\u2019m glad the College has brought out that piece of work. It\u2019s excellent to actually have some evidence to show what our demand is like, and I can certainly concur. The amount of time I\u2019ve got to spend on missing persons, on traffic enforcement and education, on low tier anti-social behaviour, whether that should be “crimed” or not is another matter.<\/p>\n
“What else is there? Mental health and ambulance assistance, that all sort of comes together as \u2018other demand. Demand on policing is either constant or increasing.”<\/p>\n