Police unable to meet response time standards in over 300 municipalities
Last year, the police failed to achieve its response time standard in 307 of the 342 Dutch municipalities. That is the worst result in ten years, according to an RTL Nieuws analysis of police figures. The broadcaster previously reported that ambulance response times are also deteriorating.
The police standard is to arrive on site within 15 minutes in 90 percent of emergencies. Last year, the police were on the scene within 15 minutes in 83.7 percent of emergencies. The police response times were worst on Terschelling, Vlieland, and Tholen in Zeeland. In these municipalities, the police arrived on site within 15 minutes in just over half of the cases.
The police still say that they are “satisfied” with their response time. Staff shortages combined with an increase in emergency reports related to traffic and violence means that the police sometimes have to make choices, spokesperson David Howes-Smith told the broadcaster. “Emergency aid is still a priority. It is the first pot that is filled. But staff can only be in one place at a time.”
Longer response times in rural and widely spread areas are also influenced by rivers, bridges, and railways, the police added. The police will discuss improvements at a local level but added that blindly adhering to the standards will come at the expense of other police work. “We could choose to deploy a lot of extra capacity for emergency aid, purely to achieve our objectives, but that will always be at the expense of something else. We also want to deploy the police to prevent calamities.”
Fire brigade
The fire brigade was the only emergency service to have fewer emergency calls and improve its response times in recent years, according to RTL Nieuws, based on figures from the Netherlands Institute for Public Safety (NIPV). Last year, the fire brigade took longer than the standard 18 minutes to respond to 600 fires.
When responding to calls with the highest priority, for example, for support with accidents or deployment of divers, the response time was longer than in previous years. According to fire commander Anton Slofstra, that is due to more traffic and traffic measures. “Think of the increase in traffic hills, 30 km/h zones, road closures, and other speed-reducing measures. This affects both the fire brigade unit that has to move quickly through traffic, and the volunteer who has to drive from home or work to the station.”
According to Slofstra, the fire brigade is investigating preventative measures in areas that are hard to reach, such as installing smoke detectors to detect fires earlier. “There are simply places where it takes longer. Sometimes, there is simply no other option. We are looking at what facilities we can provide in those areas, knowing that the fire brigade takes a little longer to get there,” he told the broadcaster.
