There are officers in Local Policing Teams dedicated to dealing with emergency and priority calls from members of our community. They are based in locations across Northern Ireland and provide an initial and rapid response to calls, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. These types of calls range widely and can include on-going domestic incidents, injury road traffic collisions or detained shoplifters. These officers are first on the scene to almost every emergency (999) or priority call (101) that comes into the Police Service of Northern Ireland. They operate in Call signs, normally containing two Police Officers.
There are officers in Local Policing Teams dedicated to dealing with emergency and priority calls from members of our community. They are based in locations across Northern Ireland and provide an initial and rapid response to calls which require a fast time response, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. These types of calls range widely and can include on-going domestic incidents, injury road traffic collisions or detained shoplifters. These officers are first on the scene to almost every emergency (999) or priority call (101) that comes into the Police Service of Northern Ireland. They operate in Call signs, normally containing two Police Officers.
In 2017/18 Police Officers attended 23,045 Emergency Calls and 256,505 Priority calls.
Every 24 hours across the province Police recorded;
In 2017/18 Police detected 49,811 motoring offences in Northern Ireland, the largest offence group recorded were insurance offences with a total of 8,598 (17.3%). Speeding offences accounted for 6,737 (13.5%) of all these detections. There were a further 4,748 detections related to mobile phone offences and vehicle test certificate offences have seen an increase 96.6% to 4,270 in 2017/2018.
During 2017/18 there were 6,046 injury road traffic collisions recorded by the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI). These collisions resulted in 9,051 casualties of whom;
This equates to 17 injury road traffic collisions attended every day resulting in 25 injuries in the 24 hour period.
Neighbourhood Policing Teams consist of officers that are linked to a specific geographically area. These officers work together with the local community and partners to prevent and reduce crime and disorder, improve neighbourhood conditions and feelings of security. Whilst they will attend emergency and priority calls for service, their core aim is to make communities safer through an approach that is focused on visibility, engagement, problem solving and understand communities needs and concerns.
ASB covers a vast range of problematic and troublesome behaviours that impact on quality of life. As your police service we are committed to ensuring that anyone who comes into contact with us receives the necessary and appropriate level of service and support.
In 2017/18 the PSNI attended 61,239 anti-social behaviour incidents in Northern Ireland, a decrease of 1,285 (2.1%) on the previous 12 months.
There are teams in Local Policing called Repeat Offenders Unit, it is their role to look after priority offenders; those being prolific offenders, who bring themselves to the attention of Police on a regular basis. These Officers work closely with partner agencies such as Probation Service and Youth Justice Agency to reduce reoffending and promote rehabilitation.
Last year Repeat Offender Units managed 296 young persons and adults deemed to be Priority Offenders.
They were able to conduct 645 investigations leading to prosecution files which reduced the workload of frontline local Police answering Emergency and Priority response calls, allowing them more time to spend patrolling local communities.
Every year the PSNI provide support to hundreds of Events across Northern Ireland including Sporting events, music events, parades and agricultural events to name a few. These require a large amount of resourcing and planning to keep people safe and allow them to enjoy these events.
Education is a critical aspect of keeping people safe, the PSNI puts a great deal of time in to educating the community on how to protect themselves, whether that be Social Media posts, attending schools, community workshops or public advertising. This is normally conducted by Neighbourhood teams and Crime prevention Officers working closely with Policing & Community Safety Partnership’s, Neighbourhood Watch Groups, Schools and Community Groups.
Domestic Abuse can have a devastating effect on individuals and wider families. Police help anyone suffering domestic abuse and are committed to bringing offenders to justice. They work closely with our partner organisation’s to provide help, support and guidance to those in need. Police respond to a domestic incident every 18 minutes with an increase of 84% in sexual offences involving children since 2010.
Within the Police there are specialist teams who conduct investigations following domestic incidents. Although these teams take on investigations it is still Local Policing Teams who are the first to attend, assisting the victim and apprehending the suspect and at times ensuring children who may be in the home at the time are safe and well and left in the care of someone responsible.
Children and young people can suffer abuse in many settings, for example, in a family, or in an institutional or community setting. Often the abuse will be committed by someone who is known to them. However, sometimes the abuse may be committed by a stranger.
The term ‘child abuse’ includes physical abuse, sexual abuse, including sexual exploitation, emotional abuse or abuse through neglect, of a person under the age of 18.
Teams who investigate offences of child abuse are made up of male and female Detectives who work in plain clothes and who have received special training in talking to children and in investigating this type of crime. These teams work very closely with Social Services in the process of their investigation.
Police have a duty and responsibility to investigate criminal offences committed against children. The child’s welfare is the overriding consideration and investigations should be carried out sensitively, thoroughly and professionally.
Just over 1 in every 3 calls for service Police receive relates to someone with an identified vulnerability. Over the next 5 – 7 years this is likely to increase as our partner agencies also deal with significant budget cuts and with unresolved mental-health issues generating repeat demand. If not solved this could play a significant role in how our resources are used in the future. Everyday resources are dedicated to dealing with incidents which consume at times a large proportion of their duties, the PSNI deal with around 157 calls for service every day linked to a vulnerable person.
All our analysis indicates that demands in this area are likely to increase, for example demands linked to indecent images of children have increased 739% since 2010. These crimes are complex to investigate and some present a significant threat requiring substantial proactive investigation to uncover the crime and bring the victims to safety and offenders to justice. These crimes are normally conducted in private, on the internet and investigating these crimes effectively moves staff and officers from the front-line into a less visible role. The victims of these crimes normally require specialist support from multiple Governement and charity agencies.
The PSNI investigate approximately 12,000 missing persons every year, this equates to Police looking for 35 missing persons every day with this figure thought to increase by 5% every year. A search for a missing person, especially a high risk missing person, uses police officers from all over Northern Ireland and various departments including Search coordinators, press/ media liaisons, and even outside agencies.
The most common element of vulnerability dealt with by officers and staff is mental health, with approximately 154 calls a day being dealt with by officers and staff linked to a person with identified mental health issues.
This equates to 56,210 mental health incidents across the province in 2017/18.
These can include instances where people;
Serious and Organised crime can be defined as serious crime planned, coordinated and conducted by people working together on a continuing basis. Their motivation is often, but not always, financial gain. Organised criminals working together for a particular criminal activity or activities are called an organised crime group.
There are assessed to be in the region of 140 organised crime groups operating in Northern Ireland. This crime-type is not constrained by borders.
The threats of Orgainsed crime cover:
The consumption and distribution of illegal drugs impacts on the social and economic wellbeing of Northern Ireland, the lives of those involved are at times put at grave risk and is linked highly as a motive for further offences. The PSNI deal with persons that are in possession of small quantities of drugs as well organised crime groups that are involved in the widespread distribution of drugs to our communities.
Terrorism is the use of intentionally indiscriminate violence as a means to create terror among masses of people; or fear to achieve a financial, political, religious or ideological aim. This includes the growing threat of international terrorism, as well as local violent extremism. In Northern Ireland we see wide spread disruption and criminality in communities caused by Paramilitary threats between Republican and Loyalist groups.
Local Officers in local areas are reducing community tensions, and disrupting, deterring local paramilitaries on a daily basis. This is conducted through Proactive stop and searches, high visibility patrolling of key locations all while improving Community confidence.
Organised crime has been quick to take advantage of the opportunities offered by the Internet, particularly the growth in e-commerce and online banking. Specialist criminal groups target individuals, small businesses and large corporate networks to steal personal information in bulk in order to profit from the compromised data available to them. They can also use the internet to commit child sexual exploitation and abuse. The PSNI has seen a 59% increase of cyber motivated crimes in the last three years, incidents linked to indecent images of children has increased 739% since 2010.
The role of the PSNI Cyber Crime Centre is to develop capability, capacity and connectivity in respect to the prevention, protection and detection of cyber-crime to keep people safe in Northern Ireland.
Local Policing role conduct all initial investigations in to cyber crime and fraud, they will be the first person victims of these crimes see, the first person to collect evidence and conduct initial enquiries before specialist departments continue the investigation. This means that Local Police are critical in collecting initial evidence critical to the investigation, specialist training is provided to officers to enable this.
In simple terms a burglary is when a person breaks in to a property and either steals items from the property, damages the property or assaults a person in the property. Theft is usually the motivation for most burglaries. Bogus Callers may pretend to be from utility suppliers and other reputable organisation’s in order to gain access to a property. Once access has been gained they will steal money and other valuables. Rogue Traders will try and talk householders into paying for the services they are offering. They both can be persuasive and will target vulnerable members of society.
Police work pro-actively to detect and prevent such crimes; from highly visible operations to the building of case files so that we can successfully prosecute those who choose to enter homes and businesses, leaving victims in their wake. This is why burglary levels have decreased by 60% since 2001 but still remains high at 19 burglaries reported every day.
Homicide includes unlawful killing in numerous forms; ‘corporate manslaughter’, ‘murder’, ‘manslaughter’ and ‘infanticide’.
Investigations in to these crimes are extremely resource intensive from an early stage, they require initial responders in Local Policing Teams who will deal initially and then set up a scene, cordons and conduct searches until Murder Investigation Team (MIT) investigators arrive. These scenes can be held for days or weeks until all relevant investigative enquiries are completed.
When a crime is reported, the police decide if they can investigate the case. Investigations can take a long time and some cases are never solved. However when an offender has been identified, the police must gather all of the evidence to enable them to be brought before a court. This section covers the processes necessary to bring offenders to justice.
When someone is arrested they are usually brought to the nearest designated custody suite in order to ensure their arrest has been lawful. If necessary, they are held in police custody while police gather enough evidence to charge or report them for the offences. Some examples of evidence gathering techniques are the collection of statements, suspect interviews or identification procedures.
Once a detained person has been charged or reported, police are required to prepare a file for the PPS to make a decision on whether they should be brought to court or not.
The Police have some dedicated teams who compile investigations once all investigative enquiries have been conducted and produce the case files for frontline officers. This allows frontline Officers to spend more time on the street rather than in station in front of computers.
If a file is not processed correctly, it can mean the alleged offender may not be brought to justice. 2017/ 2018 seen approximately 23,000 files submitted to the Public Prosecution Service by Police, average time of report date to final court appearance is currently 162 days.
When an alleged offender or a witness is required to attend court, a summons must be served on them to attend. Warrants can be issued if they fail to appear at court or if they fail to pay any fines that they have been ordered to pay by the court. Taking action on a warrant could mean arrest and transfer to a custody suite, court or straight to prison.
The Police currently are sent the warrants or summons from the courts if they cannot be conducted by the courts themselves. They must be obtained, processed adding all details to Police systems and disseminated to be actioned by Local Police.
Legacy Investigation Branch has four overarching strategic objectives all of which are ultimately focused on keeping people safe today through detecting offenders, preventing crime and protecting communities. They are:
Legacy Investigation Branch engages with families to provide information about its work and also cooperates with other statutory bodies.
Between 1 January, 1969, and 1 March, 2004, there were more than 3,200 homicides in Northern Ireland. The review of these cases and where credible evidence exists, the further investigation of them, is the responsibility of Legacy Investigation Branch.
The PSNI is sitting on a mountain of 45 million documents pertaining to legacy matters, but does not have the resources to deal with it.
Policing the issue will cost the PSNI more than £25 million in the next financial year; this is enough to pay the salaries of around 1,000 new police constables earning a starting salary of £22,443.
A lot of work in Policing goes on behind the scenes whether that is answering 999 or 101 calls, planning events, co-ordinating resources or ensuring information is correctly added to Police systems.
When someone rings the police for assistance their first point of contact is the call management centres. These centres risk assess each call and decide which police resources attend the call and how urgent the response should be. Dispatchers then communicate with Local Police on the ground; they provide critical information and assistance when required. Police call handlers and dispatchers answer 783,586 calls every year including 999 and 101 calls.
These units allow our officers and staff to remain in the communities they serve for as long as possible throughout their duties. Contact Management Support Unit (CMSU) update every item of data from front line officers on to Police systems, this is critical to the development of case files, intelligence and information development to assist in risk assessments and incident management. They take details of calls and perfect records to ensure we have a clear audit trail of how we dealt with each incident. Telephone Resolution Unit has been recently implemented within the Police Service of Northern Ireland, they deal with some crime reports from members of the public over the phone instead of sending Police out they gleam information from them when it is possible and provide relevant advice on how to proceed with the matter.
Units also exist which help support victims and witnesses through the investigation and court phase, this includes providing the victim with updates at key times in the investigation.
Every year Police provide their services to 100's of events across Northern Ireland, this is extremely resource intensive and requires at times such as; Sporting and Entertainment events, 100's if not 1000's of Officers and Staff to organise and Police such events.
At present charges are levied where private income is generated. Police do have a statutory obligation to police events where there is a need to protect life and property. The policy in place currently precludes charging for the policing of parades.
To earn more resources would you have Police charge for their services?
To see the current policy around charging for services click here.