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Police cars with no sirens risk response times, federation says


Remmy

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Police cars with no sirens risk response times, federation says - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-birmingham-34124935 

Police cars with no sirens are being used for emergency responses, delaying officers and potentially preventing arrests, the Police Federation says.

West Midlands Police has a fleet of 109 Vauxhall Corsa cars intended for neighbourhood policing.

The Federation, which represents rank and file officers, said the vehicles had been used for more than 100 urgent calls in the last 12 months.

The West Midlands force said the Corsas were "not intended for response work".

The Federation's health and safety official Pete Harkness said: "Officers are ordered to drive the Corsa at patrol speed and obey the rules of the road.

"But the absence of a siren means they often cannot get traffic to move out of their way and this, in turn, can delay them getting to an emergency situation.

"This is very frustrating for the officers and they feel they are letting the public down by not getting to them as quickly as possible in a crisis situation."

The union blames cost-cutting for the use of cars without sirens.

Superintendent Kerry Blakeman, from the force's operations department, said officers who respond to call-outs in cars without sirens have to follow the Highway Code and cannot break the speed limit to cut through traffic.

He said: "Incidents graded as 'immediate' are responded to as soon as possible, usually in a matter of minutes and on many occasions require the use of lights and sirens.

"At no point was the Corsa intended for response work as it is a low performance vehicle."

 

It seems to me the force is burying it head in the sand! It really doesn't matter what the vehicle is intended for either.

Stop the control room deploying these patrols to immediate response incidents, potentially putting the public at risk and failing to hit response times (and that always gets the bosses attention).

Or just pay the money and have the vehicles equipped correctly so they are fit for purpose.

I guess this will become more of an issue as budget cuts bite even deeper.

 

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Hampshire have been phasing out having vehicles without the proper lighting and sirens.  We still have a few but most are fully kitted now for pretty much this reason.

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Perhaps the problem isn't so much that these vehicle are under-equipped, but instead that there simply too few patrols available.

If you're buying a vehicle exclusively for neighbourhood policing use that doesn't involve response then it's wrong to waste public money over-equipping it for that role.  If there is a proper contingent of officers and vehicles assigned to response then all is well, but as soon as the number of response resources is cut to inadequate levels then you will inevitably start pulling in differently tasked officers to deal with emergencies and suddenly your adequately equipped NPT car becomes a woefully under-equipped area car.

I think that forces need to decide whether they can provide an adequate dedicated response capability or whether they need to start 'borrowing' resources from other teams.  In the latter case they need to equip other teams so that they are suitable for augmenting the response team when needed - not to do so is trying to have your cake and eat it.

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Given that NPT cars can sometimes respond, attend RTCs etc. it is really a false economy to save a couple of grand on a cheaper car, only to find it is limited in use.  My force is now moving away from getting smaller cars that are less equipped and going for a more standard one for everyone. 

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This assumes the majority of officers are response trained and able to use the warning equipment. Having a marked car isn't essential for many roles within the police, there are the obvious ones of course. 

There is a place for unmarked vehicles especially in a investigative, CID or SNT based role. Although this can differ depending on he remits of these teams in others forces. As in mine they do not respond to grade 1 calls or would ever need a marked car. 

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Great use of statistics 100 calls over 12 months to urgent calls, and that is assuming there was a want/need for B7T to be used as being assigned doesn't always mean they have to rush there.  There is also wthe question of whether they were allocated to the calls or the officers 'volunteered' to do them, in effect offering to do a job with the less appropriate equipment - the old desire of police to do the job almost regardless of their skills/equipment.

The flipside is those numbers could be the tip of the iceburg where inappropriate officers/resources are routinely being used for the wrong calls,
 

 

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At least their SNT have vehicles..

I frequently find myself doing neighbourhood patrols from the back of an armoured carrier, owing to the fact there are 2 unmarked Vauxhall corsas between 50 or so SNT officers.

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As SR said, at least their SNT have proper vehicles! Most of the MET SNT fleet is unmarked 'vanilla' cars. No lights, livery, or radio. Our marked minibuses save for some battenburg are the same, no equipment whatsover!

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Poor fleet management in my humble opinion. If the response teams don;t have enough suitably equipped vehicles to use and are forced to use the diarrhoea diary cars then that is a management failure.

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Where we are neighbourhood officers still attend emergency calls where practicable. I can't see a reason they shouldn't tbh.

The only non response vehicles we have available to use are CID plain cars with no markings or livery and we still end up going to emergency calls. The alternative is having NUTD to go to such calls as our neighbouring BCUs are as busy or busier than us.

We have a planned demand team who deal with appointments and volume crime investigations not suitable for CID. They drive marked response cars and are expected to attend emergency calls where response are unavailable.

It keeps officer skillsets up  and protects the public. Money should not be a primary consideration given its a drop in the ocean of the police budget.

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Poor management, nothing more, nothing less. I completely understand the rationale around buying the more expensive Insignia's with autoboxes, thus doing away with the clutch issue, and I also completely understand the consequential requirement to save on NPT vehicles. Corsa's are more than good enough for NPT in urban areas such as the West Mids. What I don't understand is why they aren't fitted with sirens? The saving can not be that much, surely?

It reminds me of a cock up in my own force. The town in which I work has an usual amount of 'fast roads' thus we have a requirement for cars with decent blue lights - strobe bars or LEDs. Due to a reorganisation two years ago we inherited a number of low mileage NPT cars. They were the same model and spec as our cars, same siren, but instead of a strobe or LED lightbar, they had an old style blue beacon - completely unsuitable for fast roads. Again I can completely understand that during times of austerity we just had to make do with these. What I didn't understand is that when our high mileage response cars were decommissioned, one by one (and not replaced because we had no money), why were the strobe or LED lightbars not taken off them and used to replace the beacons on the old NPT vehicles? Answers on a postcard... We ended up with the daft situation whereby none of our response vehicles were replaced and we had a fleet consisting of the old NPT vehicles only.

Want to add insult to injury? NPT's remaining cars (those that didn't get given to response) also slowly died, and were very quickly replaced with high spec cars with decent lightbars! We ended up with the bizarre situation where PCSO's on NPT were pootling around in 1.7l Astra estates with LED lightbars, whilst response officers were having to blat around in 1.3 Astra hatchback's with old style, weathered plastic no-longer-translucent beacons! Poor management, nothing more, nothing less.

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It has always been the case that you grabbed whatever vehicle was available to attend urgent calls.  In this day and age I can see no conceivable reason for not having sirens on marked vehicles.  It makes no sense whatsoever not to have them.  There was an ex-PCC who insisted that all unmarked vehicles in SYP were duly battenburged (without lights/sirens), thus creating another headache for CID and Civvies who were not trained or equipped to deal with traffic stuff at the roadside.  Interference like this and poor management of the fleet and its use will inevitably lead to bigger problems at the sharp end.

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 Interference like this and poor management of the fleet and its use will inevitably lead to bigger problems at the sharp end.

Exactly that! Interference. The PCC shouldn't be getting involved in day-to-day decisions like that. It's outside their remit. They set the general plan, not get involved in vehicle issues. The only reason to stick their oar in is to make a political point and look good in front of the voter(s).

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It has always been the case that you grabbed whatever vehicle was available to attend urgent calls.  In this day and age I can see no conceivable reason for not having sirens on marked vehicles.  It makes no sense whatsoever not to have them.  There was an ex-PCC who insisted that all unmarked vehicles in SYP were duly battenburged (without lights/sirens), thus creating another headache for CID and Civvies who were not trained or equipped to deal with traffic stuff at the roadside.  Interference like this and poor management of the fleet and its use will inevitably lead to bigger problems at the sharp end.

It created more than a headache for some officers, but I'd be crucified if I said more here!

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