A police force is going to send bills to the city after revealing that officers spent more than 50,000 hours handling crimes last year. mental health related calls.
Bedfordshire Police said the demand for non-crime-related phone calls meant officers were unable to do the work they had signed up for.
Festus Akinbusoye, the local police and crime commissioner, said the force had received more than 10,000 calls for mental health-related cases by 2021, equivalent to 53,000 police hours.
He said that the situation could not continue and that in the future he planned to send the bill for the lost police hours to the competent authority.
Police react when social services can’t
To give an example, Mr Akinbusoye said two officers had spent nine hours of their shift driving a vulnerable child to another part of the country because social services had been unable to help.
And he said thousands of police hours went missing every year during “hospital watch,” where officers were forced to sit in accident and emergency rooms with people injured in the incident but not arrested.
Mr Akinbusoye said such distractions prevented officers from chasing criminals and it was unfair to taxpayers.
He said: “If you ask a member of the public what they think the police should do, they will tell you to chase down criminals, catch them and lock them up.
“In 2021 there were 10,000 calls for mental health jobs, which amounted to 53,000 police hours.
“Police services don’t say no. They say yes to everything. But some troops are now refusing to take those jobs and the demand for those jobs has fallen by 70 percent.
“Police officers now provide the service that local authorities and mental health services should provide for free, and my taxpayers, who pay for the police regulations, that’s not what they want the police to do and so someone has to pay for it.”
“So. I already announced at my supply board meeting this week that I’m going to send the bill to the local authorities and the mental health clinical principals. It just can’t go through.”