Former Tamworth police officer Mark Hamlin – outraged by what he says were “misleading” comments from the spokesman for Police Minister, Tony Kelly, in a Sunday metropolitan paper – has urged stakeholders to stop lying about police numbers.

The minister’s spokesman was quoted as saying the September intake of police recruits at Goulburn’s NSW Police Academy had been limited deliberately because the NSW Police Force was over strength.

“Walk into any country police station and ask if they are overstaffed,” Mr Hamlin said.

“Front-line police will tell you they would give anything for more staff.”

Mr Hamlin claims police are so understaffed in the country that it has become necessary for smaller out-

stations to go without police for long periods so those officers can be sent to fill holes in the numbers at larger stations.

“Nundle is a perfect example of this,” Mr Hamlin said.

Mr Hamlin also claimed Tamworth and Gunnedah police stations were so understaffed they could not meet their first-response agreements.

“As a result the general public are put at risk every day of the week and front-line police are working without sufficient back-up,” he said.

Tamworth-based Nationals MLC Trevor Khan backed up Mr Hamlin’s claims.

“What (Mr Hamlin) knows is there is a scarcity of general duties police, with officers being regularly unavailable to attend incidents,” Mr Khan said.

“Even on heavy Friday and Saturday nights, police are overstretched.”

Mr Khan said that all too often, experienced officers like Mark Hamlin were leaving NSW Police because of their frustration at the way the the force was being run.

“The comment that has been made to me frequently is that the NSW Police Force is now ‘managed’ as opposed to commanded, and that it has become a bloated civil service with too many chiefs and far too few Indians,” he said.

Mr Khan and Mr Hamlin agreed there were ongoing problems of imbalance between full-strength police numbers on the books and the number of boots actually on the ground.