111 calls to the Police Communications Centres have increased by approximately 20 percent and so too have the number of P1 events between 2004 and 2005.
Deputy Commissioner Steve Long says it is believed that most of this increase is reflected in calls from the Auckland urban area but further work needs to be done to confirm this.
"At the same time, it is inaccurate to report that the average time taken nationally by police patrols to attend these calls has reached 15 minutes. The actual figure is 12 minutes.
"The Police national standard for P1 urban jobs remains 10 minutes," he says.
From Taupo south the general attendance time is around 8-9 minutes.
North of Taupo the average response time is around 12-13 minutes. The rise in response time appears to reflect increases in population and resulting call demand and also traffic congestion in the Auckland area in particular.
Deputy Commissioner Longs says the reason for the three minute increase in the national average time statistics is down to one non-urgent job which was miscoded as a top priority job.
"The job was never closed off by the operator which meant that its time clock kept on ticking throughout the period and completely blew out the district and national average.
"The effect on this district was profound. It normally achieves a 13 minute P1 average. In the 6 month period under consideration this time leapt to 31 minutes."
Deputy Commissioner Long says another by product of this story has been that some journalists are mistaking the P1 attendance time (which relates to police cars getting calls on the radio and travelling to addresses to attend the called in job) with the time taken to answer the 111 calls which remains a matter of a few seconds.
"Police are asking for more staff, particularly in the Auckland region and the Government has indicated that more police will be allocated to meet the growing needs."
Police are also reviewing the way this call attendance statistic is recorded and captured.
ENDS