There have been 11 gangland killings in the last two years in Sydney’s southwest, with police admitting the situation is “unacceptable”.

The number of murders was revealed at a NSW budget estimates hearing on Wednesday by Investigations and Counter Terrorism Deputy Commissioner David Hudson.

“I share concern in relation to the activity that’s going on – all police officers do,” Mr Hudson said.

“It’s unacceptable and we understand that.”

His comments came a week after Mahmoud ‘Brownie’ Ahmad became the latest underworld figure to die in a hail of bullets on a Sydney street.

It was well known two families were connected to gang-related crime in the area, but it was not as simple as just arresting those people, Mr Hudson said.

“There are over 300 individuals involved,” he said.

“Many of the particularly violent actions of these groups is outsourced to other people.”

Asked if there was a “war” or “conflict” between the families, Mr Hudson said they were in an “escalated dispute”.

Earlier, it was revealed NSW has the fewest police per capita of any Australian state, with officers failing to meet their own benchmarks for urgent calls.

“NSW has the fewest number of police officers in Australia – 244 per 100,000 residents,” Labor police spokesman Walt Secord said.

Victoria has 312 operational staff per 100,000 residents, Queensland 285, Western Australia 291, South Australia 210 and Tasmania 275.

Deputy Premier and Police Minister Paul Toole, who took over the portfolio four months ago, was asked about claims by Premier Dominic Perrottet that NSW had more police officers than any other jurisdiction.

“That’s not true,” Mr Secord said.

“This is your own data, provided by your police service to the federal government.”

Mr Toole responded saying the government had made the largest commitment to additional police officers in 30 years with its 2019 pledge for 1500 new recruits over four years.

Six hundred non-probationary constables would be allocated to commands in coming months, he said.

Meanwhile, police data for the 2020/21 financial year showed people in western Sydney requesting urgent police help faced some of the state’s longest wait times.

At least one in five urgent calls were going unattended across three quarters of police regions, Mr Secord said.

The top 20 areas with the highest percentage of urgent calls not attended are all in the Sydney region, the majority in the city’s west.

NSW Police set their own benchmark of responding to urgent calls within 12 minutes.

Of the state’s 57 policing regions, 43 failed to respond to a fifth of calls within that timeframe.

Parramatta topped the state for slow response times with a 30 per cent failure to respond within 12 minutes, followed by Campsie and Liverpool City with 27 per cent.

Outside of the city, residents in the Lake Illawarra and the Manning-Great Lakes regions faced the longest waits, with responses to 23 and 22 per cent of calls respectively failing to hit time targets, while 21 per cent of Coffs Coast calls missed the benchmark.

Police received 158,773 urgent calls, with 75.7 per cent of those attended within 12 minutes.

Police Commissioner Karen Webb said Parramatta may have been affected by light-rail construction as well as pandemic lockdowns.

“You may also recall that police played a critical role during COVID in enforcing public health orders in highly populated areas in western Sydney,” she said.

“The health orders that were in place for 12 LGAs were all in western Sydney.”