Police officers can no longer act as a taxi service

Mark Smith said he was pleased to see forces and chief officers starting to admit that the service will not be able to maintain all of its responsibilities as cuts bite even further into police budgets. 

“From the start of the comprehensive spending reviews, the Police Federation has said that you cannot continue to do what you do with less. You don’t get more or the same for less, you only get less for less,” said Mr Smith.

However, he said the task of choosing what police should stop doing was a “difficult” one.

“I’ve heard other chief officers who have said ‘We’re going to stop acting as taxis’ and I think that’s correct,” said Mr Smith.

However, he said that helping to find vulnerable people who have gone missing was still a police responsibility.

He added that Essex Police is dealing with anti-social behaviour very differently now. “We’re not attending everything,” he said. “It depends on the threat, harm and risk. So if it’s just an annoyance factor then we probably won’t attend anymore.”

Mr Smith said that more and more things within Essex “probably at the lower end of the crime and disorder scale to begin with” may become stretched as more officer posts are cut.

“We know we’re going to lose more and it gets even harder to attend everything,” he said.

The chairman stressed that it was important to manage public expectations about the future.

“What I am pleased with is that Essex Police is now starting to admit that we can’t do everything and also the message that they’re taking to the public is trying to manage expectations,” he said. “We have been waiting for that for a long time.”

Essex Police Federation has been trying to send out a similar message to the public with its #CutsHaveConsequences campaign. “I think that that’s very important, we need to manage expectations,” said Mr Smith. “Because I think the public will accept it to a certain extent.”