Officers redistributed to safety-critical areas

Extra officers are to be moved into areas to address immediate threat, risk, and harm.

Senior leaders in Lincolnshire Police have taken the decision to move officers to make sure the Force continues to deliver a safe and effective service.

Police officers are to be moved from areas around the organisation into Response, the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) and the Protecting Vulnerable Persons (PVP) team to make sure Lincolnshire Police deals with incidents that pose the most immediate threat, risk, and harm to the public.

Deputy Chief Constable Chris Davison said: “We have identified three key areas that we need to reinforce with our existing resources to make sure they continue to keep people in the county safe. We are recruiting for police officers but there is of course a time gap while they undergo training to be able to be completely deployable, so we know we will soon experience a real gap in the service we’re able to offer if we don’t make some changes now. Our Response officers are the ones who are deployed at a moment’s notice to people urgently in need, CID is the team that investigates serious and complex crimes such as robbery, violent crimes, sexual assault, and fraud, while PVP deals with crimes that effect some of the most vulnerable people in our communities. These are scenarios that can have immediate and long-lasting harm if they are not properly dealt with and which the public rightly expects us to address in an effective and timely way.

“We of course only have finite resources, so we are looking at moving a total of around 50 officers out of some areas – we plan to do this for six months and review, then make any necessary changes. We have identified pockets in Neighbourhood Policing, the Tactical Support Team (TST), Roads Policing Unit (RPU), Rural Crime Action Team (RCAT), and Crime, and have focussed on these areas as we know we have a small amount of flex in these teams right now. It of course doesn’t mean that we disable these functions, simply that officers will be contributing into these areas of business in a different way if they are redeployed.

“Our communities will continue to see Lincolnshire Police responding to crimes in a timely and effective way and making sure we prioritise those most in need of our help.”