Police Failing Targets for Thousands of Urgent Calls

12.00.00am BST (GMT +0100) Fri 20th Sep 2002

The Liberal Democrats have expressed alarm over new figures issued by the Metropolitan Police Service that show the police are failing to respond to a quarter of urgent calls within the target time of 12 minutes – and that a third of those they fail to reach within 23 minutes.

The MPS July Performance Report shows that during July 5467 urgent incident calls were not responded to for at least 23 minutes.

"This is appalling," said Graham Tope, Liberal Democrat MPA member. "Rapid responses to urgent crimes are essential. The police failed to respond within the target times to more than 25% of calls, and more than one third of those they didn’t even reach within 23 minutes – which meant their effectiveness was substantially reduced."

"Police need to be on the scene quickly. Most crimes occur quickly and if the police are failing to arrive on time, public confidence will be damaged enormously."

"Given this decline in performance comes against a background of increased police numbers, the situation is even more unacceptable."