Why your calls to London police may take days to get a response, and what's being done

London Police Services (LPS) says response times for calls have, in some instances, jumped from hours to days because of an increase in workload for front-line officers. 

The issue was debated at length on Thursday in a contentious LPS board meeting discussing the source and potential solutions to the problem. 

Police are responding within minutes to the most urgent, life-threatening Code 1 calls, which involve in-progress crimes or emergencies. However, according to a memo presented by police Chief Steve Williams at the meeting, they're receiving 27 per cent more of these types of calls compared to last year.

Officers have had to put in an extra 33,000 hours to deal with the same number of calls as last year. Response times for Code 2 calls — for crimes or urgent issues not currently in progress — have risen 96 per cent, which means it could take days for police to respond. 

There was an instance where it took four days for police to respond to a call about a sexual assault, which Williams said was "not acceptable."

According to Williams, these challenges have a negative impact on the well-being of their officers, leading to issues like burnout and fatigue. 

"Officer burnout is real," Williams said. "I see it, I hear it and I can feel it. We're often asked, 'How many officers do you have off on PTSD or due to occupational stress injuries?' like that's somehow a key metric. And it is an important metric, but we shouldn't be waiting until the officers are off duty to address this." 

The issue has also led to paying $454,000 in overtime. Code 3 calls — issues that don't pose an immediate threat to the public — have risen 25 per cent in the last year. 

Tackling the problem

A number of changes have been made to tackle the issue, including redeploying officers from other areas or units. 

Eleven Community Oriented Response Unit officers have been moved to patrol operations indefinitely, as well as eight from school resource officer positions and eight from other areas. 

This solution wasn't welcome by all.

"With all due respect to the chief, I don't support reducing some of the programs and reallocation because it's a Band-Aid," said board member Jeffery Lang during the virtual meeting. "And quite frankly, I believe our community deserves better than that, and more importantly, I think that our staff, that our frontline officers, deserve better than that." 

Lang believes it's a deployment- and human resource-related problem. 

"I support it on a temporary basis because we can do it right now and it is going to take pressure off of some of our frontline workers and help alleviate that problem. But we need to get our heads around the fact that a great majority of the time we're not meeting minimum service requirements."

Lang pointed the finger at city council and asked the two councillors on the board, the vice-chair, Coun. Jesse Helmer, and Coun. Maureen Cassidy to bring the issue back to council.

"I would push back a little bit on the pressure put on two of the councillors sitting on this board right now," Cassidy replied. "City council, as a whole, deals with the budget that comes from the police board. And with great respect to board member Lang, who has been on this board for three years, city council can only deal with the budget that is presented to them."