![Violence strains police staff numbers Violence strains police staff numbers](/images/transform/v1/crop/frm/tmUaC97GWTfBTvbgiBtbEs/1c66ddd3-b3ec-4cd6-a93e-d2da4fc38dca.jpg/r0_0_1200_675_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg)
A high rate of domestic violence call-outs is magnifying the need for more police in Maitland, the union that represents the state’s police says.
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NSW Police Association executive member Dean Koenig, who has called for increased police numbers in Maitland and Cessnock, said domestic violence call-outs typically took longer than most jobs for officers to attend.
He said they were also among the most time consuming cases that required police to appear in court.
The latest Bureau of Statistic and Crime Research figures, released at the beginning of December, showed that convictions for domestic violence-related assaults in the Maitland local government area had jumped by 21 per cent in the year to September.
It came after data released earlier this year showed that police in the Central Hunter local area command, which encompasses Maitland and Cessnock, were receiving an average of 20 domestic violence-related call-outs each day – an average of almost one every hour.
Mr Koenig said the region’s high rate of domestic violence and police staffing levels were among the main factors that affected to response times.
“Domestic violence is a matter that the Central Hunter command takes seriously,” he said.
“But the time factors in dealing with those domestics can tie you up. It’s probably the highest cause of hearings at court [that police have to attend], so that takes police out of the community to attend court.
“The flow-on affect from that is the front-line police walk in the station at the start of a shift and they are always prepared that as soon as they walk in the door, they are walking straight back out to their first job. They know that they might not walk back in unless there’s a charge or they are trying to attend to some outstanding paper work.”
While NSW Police said earlier this week that Central Hunter was operating at full staffing capacity, Mr Koenig has argued that the command needed at least an extra 20 experienced officers to serve the community better and reduce the heavy workload placed on police.