Warwickshire police change policy on blue lights

As of this week, there are changes to the way that police officer in Warwickshire use blue lights and sirens when responding to incidents.

The force said that for emergencies, where someone needs help right away, crews will be out ‘on blues’ getting there within minutes.

The change comes for calls that don't need an emergency response, but are still time sensitive, in those incidents cars will be using blue lights to get through traffic or red lights, but once they have passed the hazard the lights will be switched off. 

We wanted to let you all know about this ahead of time. This will help us to deliver excellent service and get to our communities quicker.

-Warwickshire Police Statement

After releasing an initial statement, the force then released further clarification on the changes: 

It said:

"Between these two categories we have priority incidents where we assess that there is a need to attend as soon as possible, but where it is not proportionate to break the speed limit. These incidents are what the change applies to. Some examples may include:

• A victim of domestic abuse where the victim is very vulnerable but there is no ongoing or immediate risk to them
• A vulnerable teenager who has gone missing from school.
• A welfare check on an elderly person who hasn’t been seen for days and may have come to harm.

In these cases, we probably wouldn’t be able to justify driving at excess speeds, or using lights and sirens for the whole journey.

However, this inevitably leads to situations where an officer is stuck in traffic due to an accident or congestion."

We believe our residents would expect the officer to use their lights and sirens just to clear the traffic issue, remaining within the speed limit. Once clear of the traffic jam, the officer would switch off their lights and sirens and drive normally to the incident." 

The statement said that several forces do this already, and police across Warwickshire are now formalising their approach to the rules. 

We believe it is difficult to justify police officers being sat in traffic jams, sometimes for an hour or more, when there a vulnerable person in need of our help. This is about us getting to the people that need us most, fast. It’s about supporting victims as crime as quickly as possible, and with as low risk as possible to the other people using our roads.