Police numbers at “38-year low”

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Friday, 30 November 2018 07:12

By Alex Moore - Local Democracy Reporter

Police numbers are at their lowest since the 1980s and the numbers of PCSOs plunged 12% last year, a councillor has claimed."

West Mercia’s commissioner disputed the claim about full-time officers, raised at his monthly Police and Crime Panel, but admitted force resources had fallen to the point where they had “just enough” to cope.

Panel member Councillor Roger Evans said rural crimes were getting “poor responses” from police.

He referred to research published by the House of Commons Library, which showed the total number of police officers in the UK had plunged from 172,000 in 2010 to 150,000 this year.

Cllr Evans, a member of Shropshire Council, pointed out that officer numbers in the West Mercia force – which also covers Herefordshire and Worcestershire – were down to 1,974.

He added: “If we take the long-term sicknesses out and look at full-time equivalence, it drops even lower to 1,879, which is the lowest level since 1980.”

He said numbers of Police Community Support Officers fell from 239 in 2017 to 210 in 2018.

“So, all round, the police force that we see outside the front line is at its lowest level ever,” Cllr Evans said.

“I understand the 100 that is going to be recruited, but that doesn’t get anywhere near where it was before.

“Why are we down at this sort of level? And is that reflecting in the poor responses that we, in the rural areas, are getting when we report crime?”

Police and Crime Commissioner John Campion said: “You asserted we’re down to the lowest ever levels of police officers. We’re not. We have been significantly below where we are now.

“If you’re asserting that we had more resources and now we’ve got less – yes, we have.

“I can’t change that. All I can do is work with the resources I have at my disposal, and you’ve seen me invest some in frontline officers that will take our established posts back up to 2,031.

“We also have to remember that the world has moved on. Mobile working, technology and the way that we work as a society is very different now.

“You are far more likely to be a victim of a crime online than you are to be physically. And yet we, as a society, are obsessed around the number of physical police officers whereas, actually, if we were doing it by statistics, we should be wanting people fighting cyber-crime.

“Do we want to do more? Yes.

“But if the premise of your question is, as I am assuming, ‘Have we got enough to cope?’ the answer is ‘Yes, we have’ – but, as you heard the chief constable say at Worcestershire County Council recently, ‘just’.

“Could we do more with more? Absolutely.”

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