Police union admits overwhelmed officers are forced to ignore incidents

FIRST with NEIL MITCHELL

The Police Association has revealed public response times are part of a wishlist it will carry through the 2018 Victorian election campaign.

Victoria, Tasmania and the Northern Territory are the only police forces that don’t have response time targets.

• New South Wales officers have a target of attending to 80 per cent of urgent jobs within 12 minutes.
• In Western Australia, the target is nine minutes for the most urgent jobs.
• South Australian police are meant to attend 45% of their high priority cases within 10 minutes.
• The ACT‘s officers aim to attend 75% of priority cases in 8 minutes.

Queensland police report on their response times to calls but don’t have targets.

Police union boss Wayne Gatt told Neil Mitchell it was time for Victoria to set benchmarks, admitting sometimes officers are forced to ignore jobs because resources are overwhelmed.

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“When our members, quite honestly, are under resourced, when they don’t have the right resources in the right places, sometimes they have to turn a blind eye to the small things,” Sgt Gatt said.