Missing teen cases ‘not a police issue’ - Fahy

Sir Peter Fahy

GREATER Manchester’s chief constable has said his force’s work is being compromised by the number of missing children cases it deals with.

According to Sir Peter Fahy, missing children cases could be better dealt with by social workers.

He has warned that time spent tracing missing teenagers is “an unsustainable burden” for his officers.

Tracking down missing children costs the force £30million a year. UK forces dealth with 306,000 missing people in 2012/13.

Many cases involve young people who repeatedly run away from care homes, with some found and returned by police officers hundreds of times.

Although Sir Peter stressed the importance of protecting children, he questioned whether police officers were the best professionals to be dealing with the problem.

Sir Peter added: “Every single day, sergeants and inspectors have to make hard decisions about what they are going to do, and missing children will always be top of the priority list.

“That means there will be other calls that we can’t attend to, where we try to deal with them on the phone and where, perhaps appointments get cancelled, where crimes are put off to be investigated on another day.

“When you have somebody who constantly goes missing, it is not really for me a police issue. It is really, absolutely, a social work issue. There are other professionals who are really better trained to deal with this.”