Exhausted police officers are having their weekends cancelled due to a lack of resources, South Yorkshire Police Federation said.<\/p>\n
The situation was \u201cvery frustrating\u201d for officers, who were often being drafted in to help police football matches.<\/p>\n
Federation Chair Steve Kent said: \u201cThe pressures now are unbelievable and the numbers are just not quite there\u201d.<\/p>\n
It followed the Police Federation of England and Wales publishing its Police Leavers\u2019 Survey, which showed 27% of officers were resigning before reaching pension age.<\/p>\n
Most cited low morale and poor job satisfaction as the main reasons for walking away from their career, disillusioned and burnt out.<\/p>\n
The survey found that 63% of people who resigned pointed to the job\u2019s negative impact on their family and personal life as a critical factor.<\/p>\n
Steve said the impact was being felt across all roles in policing, from frontline and neighbourhood officers, to detectives and traffic cops.<\/p>\n
He continued: \u201cIt\u2019s massively worrying and it\u2019s not getting any easier.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor a force that has more limited resources than most, this is felt even keener here with our numbers, which are still nowhere near enough for what they need to be.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe hear a lot of our officers who are having their days off disrupted for football matches, and they\u2019re obviously very frustrated about that because that\u2019s precious weekends that they\u2019ve not got now with their families and friends.\u201d<\/p>\n
Steve said many accepted busy shift patterns were \u201clife in the pursuit\u201d of being police, but the cumulative effect over decades was wearing thin on people.<\/p>\n
He added: \u201cWhich is why people get to the point where they\u2019re like, \u2018I\u2019ve had enough of this. I don\u2019t want to put up with this anymore\u2019.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt all ties in with the larger question of resourcing and funding for policing, because if we had adequate resources and adequate funding there would be more officers to share this out.\u201d<\/p>\n
Officers also told the PFEW survey how staff shortages often led to increasing workloads and the inability to meet unit demands.<\/p>\n
This issue was cited by 60% of police who resigned from their roles.<\/p>\n
Steve said: \u201cThe pressures now are unbelievable and the numbers are just not quite there.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe desperately rely on retaining experience in the police and if we start having a churn where people see it as a 10-year career and they move on, it\u2019s going to cause us significant problems.\u201d<\/p>\n