Police union to hold emergency meeting as officer shortage delays call-out times

The police union is calling an urgent emergency meeting over officer shortages, saying people are waiting hours for help.

The police resourcing crisis has boiled over with an emergency meeting of police union workplace delegates called to discuss its effect on rank-and-file officers amid fears public safety could be put at risk.

Alarmingly, senior officers and the police union have revealed serious manpower shortages on some shifts are resulting in many taskings – including to domestic violence incidents – being put on hold.

In some instances callers wait up to an hour for police to attend, while taskings to other incidents such as a housebreaking, are delayed for even longer.

Police Association president Mark Carroll said there was now a deficiency of 370 police officers – which included the shortfall of 90 police recruits, revealed by The Advertiser last month, and daily Covid absences – that had “devastated frontline policing’’ and was now affecting service delivery.

He said Wednesday’s delegates meeting would discuss both the impact of the shortages and SAPOL’s controversial district policing model because many rank-and-file officers believed “the two are intricately intertwined.’’

Mark Carroll, President of the Police Association of South Australia. Picture: Supplied

“The police commissioner needs to realise the DPM as it stands is not working, our members have lost confidence in it and it needs to be urgently reviewed,’’ he said.

“The model has failed in key areas, namely the Response and District Policing Teams functions, because there are simply not enough officers to perform both functions.

“The police force belongs to the community of South Australia. There is a crisis and the public need to be aware of this.’’

Police Commissioner Grant Stevens said despite current resource issues, tasking times for all serious incidents classed as grade one met benchmark targets and grade two benchmarks were slightly below target “for very few taskings.’’

“The majority of grade two taskings are attended within 15 minutes, a very small percentage are not,’’ he said.

“However, we acknowledge that grade three taskings, the non-urgent attendances that can be scheduled, are below benchmark.’’

SA Police Commissioner Grant Stevens. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Brenton Edwards

While Mr Carroll would not comment on any resolutions that would be made at the delegates meeting, he said a significant number of members did not have confidence in the district policing model.

“This is where it is heading, there is a big backlash from the members, morale is down and they do not support what is going on,’’ he said.

“They contact us regularly, they put in hazard forms regularly because of a lack of staff and a lack of ability to respond to taskings.

“And there is no proactive policing being done in any great way, which is precisely what the DPM is supposed to be about, that is to get police to follow crooks and stop crime.’’

He said low-level drug dealing was virtually unpoliced and district policing teams were spending the majority of their shift backing up response teams because of the shortages.

“And there seems to be a stabbing every day and cars being stolen and torched almost on a nightly basis,’’ he said.

“We have been approached by senior officers who run the districts who have stated the model is failing and there are simply not enough staff to do the job required of them. And we know these same senior officers have raised their concerns at assistant commissioner level at weekly meetings but it seems to fall on deaf ears.

“We are never going to have enough people to make it work in the short term and even long term it is going to take several years to recruit enough officers to staff the model as it was intended.’’

Mr Stevens said the future of the district policing model had already been the subject of “discussion and consideration’’ during meetings examining the causes of the current staffing challenges.

“We have already turned out minds as to whether or not the district policing team stage two needs to be suspended, but at this point in time we have made the decision to continue with it and to put the effort into fully staffing it so it can be fully tested and evaluated,’’ he said.