Where have all the "P" calls gone?

Table and Graph of the total number of CAD incidents in a London borough

in 2009 collated by month and urgency

I ended my last post commenting that I should try to keep data about the the public's demand data the police activity data separate. In this post I have shown a table and graph of the total number of incidents recorded on the MPS CAD system each month in 2009. The table and graph also shows how the police treated these calls. The most urgent are graded "I" for immediate and shown in green in the graph. As I have discussed these calls have a target time of 12 minutes. The calls that are of lesser urgency are graded "S" for soon and have a target time of one hour. These are shown in orange on the graph. The red "E" calls are extended calls, where it is known that police will not be able to attend within the hour. "R" calls (blue) are calls that are referred to non-response police officers and staff to deal with. "P"calls are those that originate from the police themselves. An MPS wide policy decision was implemented in April 2009 removing the use of the P grade. This can be seen very clearly in the graph where the purple colour stops.

What is interesting is how the calls that would have been graded as "P" are now being graded. Initially "I" calls increased but by the end of the year they had decreased. There appears to be a greater use of the "S" and "E" grades but the main increase has been in "R" calls.

Despite the complication of interpreting the data because of the removal of the P grade I think what the figures indicate is a changing police style that is gradually moving its resources away from Response Policing to Neighbourhood Policing.