How to address the crisis in policing.

The police has once again been subject to politics as the prospective new leaders give their view on policing.

One view being that police ‘must’ cut crime, ‘must’ cut homicides, ‘must’ cut neighbourhood crime and will have targets imposed on them.News I bet is really improving police morale.

Once again the police is a political pawn for politicians to throw about without really considering the realities of policing today.

Police must cut crime. Let’s begin with the fact that endless police calls responded to are not police related but there is no one else in our community to deal with them, so the police attend.

Perhaps if funding had not been axed to so many other vital areas of our community, police officers would not have to deal with these calls. So first point- fund other vital community groups.

Next point, police must cut homicides. If police forces were funded as they should be, more officers would be available to cut homicides but due to police cuts, officers have been reduced across all departments.

Next point police must cut neighbourhood crime. We have amazing neighbourhood officers across London when they are not removed from their area due to police shortages. The Met has fantastic Safer Neighbourhood officers that have great relationships with their community and when they are in their area, they do vital community work. But again, due to police cuts, these officers are regularly moved to other areas due to staff shortages.

Again the solution is fund more police officers.

Retired former Met Police officer Chris Hobbs told the Havering Daily: “One of the aspects the new Met Commissioner will have to look at is improving police morale. Every department is run ragged. They all have increased work loads and less officers to deal with the increase in these heavy workloads.

“The Met are having to cope with far too much. Every month there is a new list that they have to deal with.”

After being knocked at every possible opportunity, officers are struggling with low morale which really is no surprise when you look at their heavy workloads and daily police bashing, especially from social media geniuses who obviously know everything about everything.

Chris continued: “There is a crisis in policing, started by the endless cuts.

“Not having canteens has really had a huge impact on officers. They used to be places officers could go and share with others. Now they almost work in isolation.

“When I was an officer in Southall in the 70’s we would have had between 17 to 20 vehicles in the area. Now, they are lucky to have 7!

“We started to see the cuts start in 2011 and they have increasingly deteriorated. The public are being short changed. They want to see police officers on the streets of London.”

Another vital point is the strain these cuts have made to officers’ mental health.

“We know people react in different ways but we can see the impact this is having on officer’s mental health and sadly the awful increase in suicide.

“Policing is getting tougher and things have to be urgently addressed”.

Police officers do not need to be told they have to cut crime, they know that. What they need is to be able to do their job properly. They also need to be paid properly and not face endless bureaucracy when doing their job.

The Met police has amazing officers that do such vital work across our community everyday. Despite the endless negative media, the majority of our community actually does support them, let’s get that straight.