If you have to call the Police today, how confident are you that you’re going to get the response you’d expect?

And by that, I mean the Police turning up when you’d expect them to.

You hear people say all the time, don’t you, that if they’ve had to call 111 it can feel like a lifetime before the emergency services have arrived.

Which is natural, because if there’s something really serious happening and you need help, the best response time is instant. Anything longer feels like forever.

We’re finding out today that forever has got longer than it used to be with the Police confirming that they've extended their response time targets because they were failing to live up to the old ones.

Which is a funny old way to deal with under-performance, isn’t it? Not meeting your targets? Oh, we’ll just make them less ambitious so you can achieve them.

Now I’m not having a go here at the officers on the frontline - but that’s what the Police and the Government have done.

Because police are so stretched, they’ve had to drag-out their response time targets for emergencies and burglaries.

Until now, they’ve aimed to get to emergencies in urban areas within 20-to-25 minutes - now the target is 45 minutes.

In rural areas, it’s now one hour - up from 45.

And hearing that really has dented my faith. Knowing that those targets have been extended makes me less confident that, if I need the Police, that I’m going to get the response not only that I expect - but also that I need.

Part of the problem is the amount of time police spend on mental health call-outs, which are up by 60 percent.

You may recall the London Metropolitan Police announcing recently that it was pulling out of mental health call-outs because it was having such an impact on their ability to provide the bread-and-butter police services.

And I think the New Zealand Police really needs to look at doing something similar, as well.

Just this morning, there were four police cars parked up near our offices with the officers dealing with a mental health call-out. That's probably at least eight police officers involved.

Now, again, I’m not having a go at the officers. And I’m certainly not saying that the poor soul that they were there to help wasn’t deserving.

But that is a real-life example of how the likes of mental health call-outs really are having an impact on police resources.

You think about it - this mental health call-out I’m talking about was happening at around 4:30 this morning. The time when the ram raiders love to strike because they know, and we know, that that’s kind of around the time when police shifts are swapping over and there are less cars out on patrol.

If you heard the Deputy Police Commissioner talking on Newstalk ZB this morning, you would have heard him say that he thinks the health workforce plan that the Government’s come out with this week will help.

He seems to be of the thinking that if the plan delivers what the Government thinks it will, then Police will be relied on less to deal with things that aren’t strictly policing matters - such as mental health call-outs.

But irrespective of all that - especially given that the health workforce thing is going to take years - this change to response time targets undoubtedly impacts my confidence in the Police. Not my co confidence in the people on the frontline doing the best they can do with the limited resources they have.

It impacts my confidence that, if I need the Police, that I’m going to get the response I need.

I understand that something that has happened already - such as a burglary - doesn’t need an emergency response.

But is 45-to-60 minutes really the sort of response time you’d be happy with? 

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