A shortage of officers in the Newcastle Local Area Command has resulted in police failing to meet a benchmark response time of 12 minutes in nearly 25% of emergency calls.
Despite the number of calls for police assistance falling in recent years, the performance target of 80 per cent of calls responded to within 12 minutes has not be reached in the past three years.
State Member for Wallsend, Sonia Hornery, is calling on the NSW Government to allocate more resources to the Newcastle Command to help resolve this issue.
"I have repeatedly called on the Government to provide more police to the local area. Across the state, an extra 247 officers are needed each year just to keep pace with growth," she said.
"These delays could cost lives. NSW Police do the best they can with limited resources and it doesn't help when no new officers are allocated to the Local Area Command."
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| Wallsend MP Sonia Hornery |
