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Where Are All The Police? – An Analysis of Police Resources


• Senior police management on OCUs are aware of the 24/7 response resilience problem but they have not only failed to address it effectively, some make the number of officers available for response duties appear larger to be than it is.


• The provision of IT support, computer terminals, telephones, fax machines and vehicles to 24/7 Response officers is generally poor.


• Response officers experience role overload. They are pressurised to achieve results against targets, particularly sanction detections, but they are required to do other work that is not counted.


• The multiple demands made upon 24/7 Response officers pose threats to their integrity.


• 24/7 response work stresses officers and makes unreasonable demands to the detriment of their work/life balance.


• 24/7 response officers are perceived to have low status within the organisation, are required to do the work no-one else wants and are the ‘pool’ from which officers are always taken to staff new initiatives.


• 24/7 Response officers are not treated as professionals. Their work is under continuous scrutiny and attracts constant criticism. They are not trusted to exercise their own judgement and use their discretion.


• 24/7 response officers are required to service any other unit within the police and criminal justice systems which chooses to make demands upon them.


• A posting to a 24/7 relief is a posting to escape from at the earliest opportunity. • 24/7 Response reliefs have high leaving rates.


• 24/7 response work is potentially highly rewarding and satisfying and a role many officers joined the police service to do.


• 24/7 Response reliefs have to rely heavily on probationer constables who are expected to handle the full range of incidents despite their inexperience. Their training and development for the role of constable suffers in consequence.


• By their own admission, 24/7 officers are not delivering the quality of policing to citizens the officers consider they deserve. The delays in answering calls and the re-grading of incidents are considered to be unacceptable. Important evidence is lost through delayed responses and down- grading.


The impact of civilians performing traditional police roles


The extension of civilianisation of the traditional police role is another solution that has been promoted by the Home Office and ACPO as a means to freeing up police officer time. This means that non-sworn staff would be undertaking responsibilities traditionally performed by police officers including such activities as prisoner processing and analytical functions for criminal intelligence. We were interested to see what the effect had been in forces where such roles had been introduced. Therefore in the second phase of the research we spoke to a number of forces where civilian staff were performing traditional police tasks, ostensively to free-up police time for patrol duties and answering calls for service. However, we found little evidence to suggest that this goal was actually being achieved.


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