Defunding the police began ten years ago-now our communities see the results.

The news that Metropolitan police officers will not be attending certain mental health call outs as from the end of August has pushed forward the defund the police agenda once again. Critics of the policing system have come forward to say that the Met, by withdrawing their attendance to mental health call outs, adds support to the defund the police campaign.

Interestingly enough, defunding the police, the Met Police in particular began over ten years ago before the ‘defund the police’ campaign was even born. The current state of affairs we have across the capital today is living testimony of how defunding the police works when there are no other provisions made.

In 2012, the Met Police had a budget cut of £340 million which remained until 2017 when it slightly rose. This was the unofficial start of the defund the police campaign.

It was the start of the cutbacks that saw us lose endless officers right across the capital. We said goodbye to our local officers that the community knew, the ability to have numerous patrols out to cover our neighbourhoods and actually we said our farewell to officers patrolling our streets on foot. The defunding process had began.

The consequences of these brutal cut backs, or the start of the defunding process is what we experience the results of today. We all know that policing is reactive now rather than proactive sadly despite our officers doing the best that they can.

The continuous complaining at lack of police officers across our neighbourhood, patrolling our streets or general police presence in our communities has come from the defunding process. The picture is quite clear.

Policing today is often anything other than crime solving. It is as we have all accepted, dealing with mental health calls, undertaking work that is frequently meant for social workers, youth workers, and mental health practitioners. If you remove the little police staff we have, without adding the right measures, how much more will our society decline?

To defund the police means the NHS is funded correctly to provide the right support for all the communities living across London, especially the mental health side that is desperately failing at the moment.

An increase in youth workers and social workers is also urgently required to help support our youth that are currently being let down.

So many parts of our community need urgent funding, the removal of our policing system now would definitely not benefit our communities in any shape or form.

For those who spend a large part of their time knocking our police officers, the work of an officer today is so vast that the community is unaware of just how much they do. The level of stress officers work under and the trauma so many of them suffer as a consequence of the work they have undertaken, is also testimony of how much work goes on in our communities.

Defunding the police has been going on for ten years now and the results are clear for us to see. Our communities are frequently broken by lack of basic funding of so many key components such as medical facilities, youth facilities and educational facilities.

The police are currently the only constant in our society, ask yourself this, if they did not answer the call, who would?

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