London police hires 19 special constables in bid to curb lengthy call response times
Special constables to respond to non-emergency calls, assist officers
London's police force has added 19 new special constables to its ranks as it looks to cut down lengthy response times by relieving frontline officers of lesser urgent calls for service, the department says.
In a statement on Monday, police officials said the new recruits would be out on the streets starting this week, and had been sworn in after completing a "comprehensive in-house training program."
The cadre of special constables will, among other things, help with crime prevention patrol, assist at crime scenes and with investigate matters, and respond to non-emergent calls, said Deputy Chief Scott Guilford.
Special constables will be easy to distinguish, with their royal blue-coloured uniforms, vests reading "Special Constable" and vehicles covered with Battenburg markings, a high-visibility design more common on police vehicles in the United Kingdom and parts of Europe.
"They can help with guarding scenes of crime when we have to wait to get a warrant to do any type of search. They can help with prisoners that we have to guard … They can assist in some searches, assist with road closures," he said, noting they can only take action when directed to by a police officer.
Unlike uniformed officers, special constables don't carry firearms or Tasers.
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Special Constable Kyle Llewellyn is one of the 19 new hires, and says his interest in law enforcement dates back to when he was a teenager and includes a stint as a volunteer auxiliary constable.
"We're able to help [officers] on various tasks with their investigations. So far, everyone's been really enjoying that," he said. "I think it's a very positive thing for the city."
The hiring of the special constables comes as the department works to clamp down on escalating response times for non-emergency calls which have spiked in recent years.
Special constables to help fill gaps as new police are trained
In 2023, calls deemed as urgent, or priority 2, came with an average response time of nine hours and 45 minutes, a 43 per cent increase from the year before, according to the department's most recent annual report.
For calls considered priority 3, or non-urgent, callers had to wait an average of 132 hours or 5.5 days for police to respond, a jump of nearly 23 per cent from 2022, according to the report. For emergency priority 1 calls, the average response time was 10 minutes.
Officers are also spending much more time dealing with each call — an average of three hours and 14 minutes as of 2023, compared with two hours and 36 minutes in 2019.
During municipal budget talks, London Police requested and received an unprecedented $672 million over four years for 97 new officers, body-worn cameras, Tasers, a training facility and a new light-armoured vehicle.
Guilford says the special constables, whose training encompasses eight weeks in-class and a few weeks on patrol, will help fill the gap as officers are trained and hired, a process he says can take up to a year.
"We have people looking at the types of calls they're doing, how it's freeing up our officers. We'll look at if it is reducing our response times to calls for our police officers," he said. "Then see what type of changes we might have to make to it."