Day of social media action for Lincolnshire Police

Forces across the country will be using the hashtags #truepicture and #policiing to show people the work they do for both crime and non-crime related incidents.

It follows a College of Policing report last month which demonstrated that 83 per cent of calls to forces do not concern incidents of crime.

It is hoped the initiative will demonstrate the range of roles officers deal with outside those jobs that are collected in the Government’s figures, including what police call ‘the hugely important things to communities that crime statistics don’t capture’.

Police Federation of England and Wales chair Steve White said: “British policing is about so much more than just dealing with crime.

“At the heart of policing is our relationship with our communities, whether it be dealing with missing people, disorder on a high street on a Friday night, licensing enquiries, or providing support and reassurance to someone who has just been injured in a car crash.

“In addition to this many, many hours of police time are spent protecting the public from crime that hasn’t yet happened – counter terrorism and managing sex offenders in the community being two such examples.

“We police with the consent of the public to the wishes of the public and what we are hearing loud and clear are two things: the public want local visible policing; and police officers want to provide that service.

“But they can’t. They are hampered because no matter how much they want to do there simply aren’t enough of them to do it. With fewer officers they are forced to do less.”

The college’s report calculated what pressures a typical force on a typical day faced.

It said that there would be one officer on duty for every 1,753 people living in the area; that officers would make 50 arrests – with 1.6 for sexual offences; and that officers would deal with – among other crimes – 8 house burglaries, 77 thefts, 11 thefts from a motor vehicle, three thefts from a motor vehicle, 36 violent crimes, one robbery, two sexual assaults including one rape.

It also showed that officers would attend nine road traffic collisions where there were casualties, carry out eight breath tests, carry out 37 stop and searches, deal with 14 incidents flagged as involving people with mental health problems, support 2,700 families in the troubled families programme, manage 1,189 sexual and violent offenders, deal with 101 anti-social behaviour issues among a host of other non-crime issues.