Aussie police unable to attend one quarter of top priority calls: report

Victoria's police shortage has forced officers to ignore calls where lives could be at risk, the police union has said.

A record crime wave in the state, where the crime rate between 2015 and 2016 increased by 11 percent, has left Victoria 3,300 officers short of what is required, according to the union.

One in four senior sergeants surveyed by the Police Association of Victoria said they "regularly" held off on Priority One jobs, including armed robberies, serious car accidents and home invasions, due to being inundated by other calls.

Ron Iddles, Police Association secretary, said that there were 115 fewer first-response police in Victoria now than in 2014 and that officers were being put at risk.

"A fix to this police numbers crisis cannot be delayed any longer," Iddles told News Limited on Wednesday.

"It is plain dangerous when first-response police are spread so thinly that their response to urgent jobs is being delayed.

Of the sergeants surveyed, 89 percent said they believed the jobs being held were risking public safety and 84 percent said that call-outs were regularly being completely unattended.

Graham Ashton, Chief Commissioner of Victoria Police, said that while work is being done to deploy more officers he rejected the findings of the union survey, citing Emergency Services Telecommunications Authority (ESTA) data that showed 1 percent of 139,000 police call-outs in the last 12 months were held.

"We know we are stretched in a range of areas," Ashton told News Limited on Wednesday.

"The (staff) modeling is around avoiding getting to this situation again.

Police Minister Lisa Neville told News Limited that the state had set aside funding for an additional 1,156 police officers. Endit