Public’s expectations of police ‘will have to change’

THE expectations the public have on the police are going to have to reduce if crippling cuts to Essex Police continue, the Police Federation has said.

Despite saving £72.5 million since 2010, the force is expected to need to find a further £60 million over the next five years. Mark Smith, Chairman of Essex Police Federation, said this means “it’s going to be harder to attend all the incidents the public would like us to attend, or expect us to attend.”
Mr Smith said: “It means that the service that’s being given to the public at the moment is going to go down, it’s going to get worse.

“I think expectations are going to have to change again. People are already noticing the lack of police around, and we’re already, at this time, having to change what we attend.

“We’re not attending as much anti-social behaviour, and other incidents. And that’s now. In five years’ time, come 2020, at the end of the next Comprehensive Spending Review Essex alone could be down, worst case scenario, to about 2,300 officers.

“That’s another 600 officers.

“So from where we are now to there, with a drop of 600, things are going to have to change yet again. And I think that people are going to have to change their expectations yet again. And the public are going to see we can’t do everything, we can’t attend everything.”

Mr Smith added: “I don’t know exactly what it’s going to look like but, God forbid come the day that we just haven’t got enough resources to attend the amount of emergency calls that are coming in, let alone other jobs.”

Mr Smith said he was pleased that more Chief Constables – including Essex Police’s Steve Kavanagh – have been more vocal on the dangers of cuts.

“We’ve seen and heard the Home Secretary accuse us of scaremongering; the Federation have been saying since 2010/11, ‘What are we going to stop doing? We will need to stop doing certain things’, and we’ve been saying that from the start.

“We’re five years into it and the forces, and Chief Constables, are now starting to say that we are going to have to stop doing things. So they’re playing catch up really. If they’d made this decision five years ago when we first said about it, then I think we would be in a better position than we are now.

“That said, they have now identified that we need to stop doing certain things, and in Essex we have made decisions and are acting on those decisions, and things are starting maybe to get a little bit easier here and there. But more needs to be done.”