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

London Police Services (LPS) said that response times for calls from Londoners have, in some instances, jumped from hours to days. 

The reasons for this? An increase in workload for front-line officers, according to the police service. 

The issue was debated at length on Nov. 18 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 one' calls, which involve in-progress crimes or emergencies. However, according to a memo presented by Chief of Police 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 in order to deal with the same number of calls as last year. Response times for 'code two' calls -- crimes or urgent issues not currently in progress -- have gone up 96 per cent, which means it could take days for the police to respond. 

There was an instance where a not-in-progress sexual assault took four days for the police to respond, which Williams said was "not acceptable."

According to Williams, these challenges have a negative impact on the wellbeing of their officers, leading to things 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 three' calls, which are issues that don't pose an immediate threat to the public, have gone up 25 per cent in the last year, too. 

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 that it's a "deployment" and "human resource" related problem.