Pressure on officer numbers in policing has broken the workforce, PSNI Chief Constable Jon Boutcher has said.
The north’s top police officer said he wants to see PSNI numbers rise to 8,000 over the next five years.
He said that period would be vital for the future direction of policing, describing it as a “watershed moment”.
Mr Boutcher was speaking at the launch of the draft Policing Plan 2025-2030, published by the Policing Board and the PSNI.
The force currently has about 6,300 officers, well below the 7,500 level recommended in the Patten Review.
Mr Boutcher has consistently raised concerns about manpower levels and budget challenges facing the PSNI.
One of the targets of the plan is to deliver a “representative, valued and enabled workforce”.
The chief constable said: “Our workforce is at the lowest numbers that it has ever been at in modern policing in Northern Ireland.
“Unimaginably low numbers that nobody, no professional lay person, would say are sufficient for Northern Ireland.
“Not sufficient for us to keep people safe, not sufficient for us to be victim focused, not sufficient for us to be communities focused.
“What our workforce on a daily basis do is, I have to tell you, quite remarkable because I’ve been out there almost every day seeing it.
“I get countless testimonies about what our officers do, often very young officers with very little experience doing an unimaginably difficult job in an incredibly professional way.
“But we are at such low levels that it has affected the wellbeing of the workforce.”
Mr Boutcher said officers are “literally breaking” due to their workload.
He added: “We have got to make sure we look after that workforce.
“We have got to make sure we get the numbers back to what the numbers should be because in effect we have broken that workforce.”
He said the next five years were of vital important for the force.
He added: “I’ve said this financial year is the year that the PSNI, I want us to survive it, because we have not been supported as we should have been.
“We need to ensure that we survive this year, we get recruits in to replace those people who have left the organisation or are leaving the organisation.
“But we need to have a programme of work from April 2025 which fits in with this five-year plan which ensures that we recover the PSNI.”
He said: “My ambition is to get back to 7,000 police officers in the three years from April 2025; that is not over-ambitious, that is simply putting back some of what has been taken away.
“In years four and five we should then be looking at getting the organisation to the numbers that we should be at, which on any reasonable assessment is probably around about 8,000 police officers.
“That is what we want to do.”
Mr Boutcher said a priority of the policing plan would also be focusing on communities.
He said: “We have seen tragically recently what can happen when there isn’t a respect and admiration and appreciation of different communities within society.
“The hateful actions, the criminality we saw with the disturbances in England and tragically in Northern Ireland after the awful attack on the little girls in Southport.
“We need to make sure as an organisation that the PSNI is in all of our communities.
“Both the two traditional communities, that we are talking to them, listening to them, understanding their needs, understanding their concerns.
“But we are also talking to, listening to the emerging communities in Northern Ireland who bring a range of diversity, skills and richness that we should appreciate.
“Because far far more joins us together than separates us. So we need to be communities-focused.
“To be communities-focused we need to be in those communities and we need to have the numbers to do that.”
Mr Boutcher said the next five years would be “pivotal” for the future of the PSNI in the next two to three decades.
He added: “We really are at a watershed moment.”
