Following the book

ST FORUM, Jan 15, 2009
Police responses no slower than before

I REFER to the letter, 'Are responses slower now?' by Mr Yong Sing Wee (Dec 27).

Police patrol officers arrived at the scene 30 minutes after receiving Mr Yong's call as all nearby officers were engaged in other ongoing incidents.

The officers conducted a thorough search of the area and made inquiries in the vicinity, but there was no sign of any person in distress. The search was called off after 11/2 hours.

We assure Mr Yong that the closure of neighbourhood police posts (NPPs) has not affected police response times. NPP officers are now redeployed on active patrols instead. (Like guarding the minister car for up to 4 hours)

While we take all calls seriously and strive to respond to urgent cases within 15 minutes and non-urgent cases within 30 minutes, there will be unavoidable instances where we are unable to meet our target response times due to abnormally high incident loads.

This reflects the uncertainties and realities in the nature of policing.

DSP Paul Tay
Assistant Director, Media Relations Singapore Police Force


This is quite funny.

From the headline the first thought that come to my mind is that the police is admitting their responses are slow and they are happy with it as long as is it within their service level and they are not trying to improve on it.

I think 15min response time for urgent cases is way too slow. The robber or rapist could be half way to JB by then. Remember certain politician in Singapore said it only take 20min for you to get from one point to another in Singapore. Hehehe…..

Also note how it takes 19days for the police to response to this ST Forum letter. Needless to say how long they take to response to other normally letters send to them.

I have written to the Police for a couple of time and needless to say they never did reply.

Note from SPC website:

"Service Pledge: To respond to letters from the public within 5 working days

Our aim is to reply to your correspondence, including letters, facsimiles and emails, within 5 working days upon receipt of the correspondence. We expect to meet that standard 90% of the time. At the very least we will let you know if we need more time to give you a full reply. "