Essex is juggling resources to increase firearms capability

ESSEX Police is juggling its resources to try to fulfil the Government’s pledge to increase the number of firearms officers in England and Wales.

The force has already lost a number of firearms officers to the neighbouring Metropolitan Police – which itself is under pressure to increase its firearms numbers.

And Essex Police Federation Chairman Mark Smith says moving officers from other areas of work into firearms will ultimately reduce the amount of officers who can go out on patrol.

Criticising the Government’s “empty promises” on firearms, he said: “They make all these promises but don’t put any extra money into it, so really they’re making promises that some forces just can’t meet because they don’t have any funds for it.

“In Essex we are struggling at the moment because we’re desperately having to train up more officers and offer incentives to try and get them to stay in Essex, which in turn costs the force more money.

“Essex is having to increase, we’re losing officers, we’re having to increase firearms – where do they come from? Officers who are on frontline duties, answering 999 calls? They’ve got to come from somewhere, child protection, wherever.

“These are people who, rightly so, want to maybe change the way their career is going, maybe do firearms, but they’re not new people coming in so they’ve got to come from somewhere else in the organisation.”

Mr Smith added that replacing experienced officers with newly trained PCs was also starting to cause problems and warned that the force may not be able to respond to incidents because they are so thin on the ground.

He added: “We’re okay firearms wise, as in being able to respond to incident, we’re okay – it’s just it’s now been identified and it’s costing more money to try and rectify.

“As far as the resources go, the resources, as we know in Essex, are shrinking. We’re now on about 2,800 officers, we hope not to go below that.

“But if they are taking them from elsewhere into the firearms area, yes we’ve got probationers coming in to keep us at the 2,800 level, but we haven’t got the experience.

“The probationers who come in are not ready to go out and respond to jobs for a good number of months, so there are dips where maybe there aren’t quite so many people out answering 999 calls.

“Of course there is always an issue where we may not be able to respond to jobs because of lack of numbers but I think that’s across the board anyway, with the cuts. I think this is just another consequence of those cuts.”