Essex can only respond to half its calls, says chief

ONE of the country’s most senior Chief Constables has spoken out about how his force only has the resources to respond to half the calls it receives.

Steve Kavanagh, Chief Constable of Essex Police, explained that with “fewer police officers – cuts [are] beginning to bite”.

In 2010, Essex Police had around 3,600 police officers. There are currently around 2,900. It is feared that this will have fallen to 2,300 by 2020.
CC Kavanagh said: “We get 1,200 calls a day but we can only respond to about 600 of them. [We need] to prioritise.

“Burglary, robbery, assaults, sexual crime – those are the kinds of incidents we are going to have to focus on.”

He added: “The crimes which cause the greatest harm to people… we are going to be there for them. There is a set of crimes that do not cause the same level of harm that we are now having to say we might not get to.

“We’ll be there for serious issues but noise and nuisance [are] not police issues.”

CC Kavanagh was on BBC Radio Essex talking about cuts. The show heard the force had saved £70 million since 2011 but that another £60 million needed to be found.

“I’ve got 700 fewer officers and I will lose even more. That means we have to change the way we do things,” added CC Kavanagh.

The show heard that Essex Police costs the public 43p per day.

He added that officers are “better trained, more productive than ever” but that you “can’t take £50 million plus out of [an] organisation without it having an effect”.

Mark Smith, Chairman of Essex Police Federation, said: “It’s almost impossible to police in the way we are policing.”

He added: “Chief officers and police forces across the country are playing catch up. The Federation right at the very start said, ok these cuts are coming, what are we going to stop doing?

“Forces are starting to wake up to that we are going to have to stop doing things – demand is outstripping the resources we have.”

When asked what police officers would stop doing, Mr Smith replied: “We will not be attending every burglary, we will not be attending every anti-social behaviour.

“If the public are not happy then they have to go their MPs… they are the only people who can stop this and the MPs in this county are simply not listening.

“They will spin it and say crime is down. Well I am sorry but we don’t only deal with crime.”