Are police numbers at record levels or are they not?
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According to Dubbo MP Troy Grant there has never been more police on the beat in the Orana region while his opponent at the upcoming state election, Labor candidate Stephen Lawrence, says there has.
The latest figures available from the NSW Police Force suggest police numbers in the Orana Local Area Command have declined from a peak of 133.4 in late 2013.
The number of full-time equivalent police officers in December 2014 was 128.4, a decrease of five in 12 months.
Mr Grant said police numbers have improved since the Coalition took power from Labor in 2011 but that is hard to prove because of a restructure that removed Highway Patrol officers from individual LACs and put them in their own department.
The Deputy Premier said vacancies can cause numbers to fluctuate, but at the time he went on record, claiming police numbers "have never been higher", the numbers in the Orana LAC and western region were both lower than 12 months earlier.
