State Member for Wallsend, Ms Sonia Hornery MP, has called on the Government to allocate more resources to the Newcastle Local Area Command, after it was revealed that triple 0 emergency benchmarks are not being met.
A shortage of officers has led to Police failing to arrive at triple 0 emergencies within the benchmark time of 12 minutes in almost 25% of cases.
Ms Hornery yesterday moved a Notice of Motion in Parliament calling on the Government to allocate more Police resources to help fix response times.
The number of calls for Police assistance has decreased over the past few years. In the 2015/16 financial year there were 131,972 triple 0 calls, with Police meeting the 12 minute response time in 77.7 per cent of calls. While the performance target is 80 per cent of calls responded to within 12 minutes, this has not been reached in the past three years.
Quotes attributable to Member for Wallsend, Sonia Hornery
“This is another example of Police numbers not keeping up with population growth and demands in policing.’
“I have repeatedly called on the Government to provide more Police to the local area. Across the State, an extra 247 officers are needed each year just to keep pace with growth.’’
“NSW has the lowest number of Police officers per 100,000 population of any state in Australia, with more than 1000 officers gone from frontline policing across the six NSW regions since 2011/12.”
“The emergency response time figures are more damning, given that Police increased the target time from 10 to 12 minutes when the figures started spiralling down towards the 70 per cent mark five years ago.”
“These delays could cost lives. NSW Police do the best they can with limited resources and it doesn’t help when no new officers are allocated to the Local Area Command.”
“The Minister must ensure that more resources are allocated to the Newcastle Local Area Command.”