Police officers ‘not deployed’ to 39 per cent of incidents in Barnsley

Chief Superintendent James Abdy, Barnsley District Commander for South Yorkshire Police gave an update on the issue during a public accountability board meeting of the police and crime commissioner, Alan Billings today (December 6).

Alan Billings said: “39 per cent of incidents are resolved without deployments, and if I were a member of the public reading that, I’d probably read that as meaning that you didn’t send an officer out.”

CS Abdy told the meeting: “The police, as with other emergency services, receive a whole range of calls about many incidents. Some clearly are crime related, some are non crime related, and some incidents often just require a degree of reassurance.

“The ‘resolved without deployment’ incidents are the ones where there’s been a clear and professional assessment of any threat and risk.

“But there will always be a degree of incidents where it’s absolutely proportionate, professional and the right response to listen to the concerns of the caller, if possible to deal with that at that point of contact and then to alert other agencies as necessary.

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“Whilst it will always account for a proportion of our resolution to incidents, I can certainly provide that reassurance that the ones that we need to get to, we do. We make sure that those are prioritised.

“These are the numerous types of incidents that don’t necessarily warrant a police officer to turn up to actually deal with it in person.”

During the 13 weeks, the force has reported a ‘high level” of emergency calls, averaging 279 per week.

Overall emergency response times remain ‘broadly consistent with previous quarters’, around the 10-11 minute mark, ‘well within the targetof 15 minutes’.

The proportion of emergency calls attended to within that target time has also remained around 80 per cent.