{"id":2240,"date":"2015-08-26T16:03:54","date_gmt":"2015-08-26T16:03:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/?p=2240"},"modified":"2015-08-26T16:03:54","modified_gmt":"2015-08-26T16:03:54","slug":"persistent-missing-teens-are-not-really-a-police-issue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/?p=2240","title":{"rendered":"Persistent missing teens are ‘not really a police issue’"},"content":{"rendered":"
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TIME spent tracing missing teenagers is an \u201cunsustainable\u201d burden for police, one of the UK\u2019s most senior chief constables has warned.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Greater Manchester Police Chief Constable Sir Peter\u00a0Fahy\u00a0said other police work was compromised by thousands of calls that would be better dealt with by social workers.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Police in England, Scotland and Wales dealt with 306,000 missing people in 2012\/13, according to the latest UK Missing Persons Bureau figures.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Each missing person call costs an average of \u00a31,325, said researchers at Portsmouth University.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Sir Peter (pictured) said the priority must be to protect children, but questioned whether police officers were the best professionals to do that.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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He told the BBC: \u201cThe public and politicians have made it clear that they don\u2019t want to see young people being put at risk in these situations because of the concern about what happened in places like Rochdale and Rotherham.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cWe need a different approach.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Sir Peter\u2019s comments on what he called an \u201cunsustainable\u201d situation follow comments by National Police Chiefs Council Chair Sara Thornton, who said that the public should no longer expect to see a police officer following crimes such as burglary, and encouraged a \u201cconversation with the public\u201d over priorities.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Sir Peter added: \u201cEvery single day, sergeants and inspectors have to make hard decisions about what they are going to do, and missing children will always be top of the priority list.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cThat means there will be other calls that we can\u2019t attend to, where we try to deal with them on the phone and where, perhaps appointments get cancelled, where crimes are put off to be investigated on another day.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cWhen you have somebody who constantly goes missing, it is not really for me a police issue. It is really, absolutely, a social work issue.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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He added: \u201cThere are other professionals who are really better trained to deal with this. And that is really part of the discussion we have to have with other agencies.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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See the full report here:\u202fhttp:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/uk-england-manchester-33738908<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

TIME spent tracing missing teenagers is an \u201cunsustainable\u201d burden for police, one of the UK\u2019s most senior chief constables has warned. Greater Manchester Police Chief Constable Sir Peter\u00a0Fahy\u00a0said other police\u2026 read more →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2241,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2240"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2240"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2240\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2243,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2240\/revisions\/2243"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2241"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2240"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}