POLICE officers are professionals who are \u2018doing their best with the tools they have\u2019, says Essex Police Federation.<\/p>\n
Federation Chairman Steve Taylor says officers are having to work harder every day to deliver the best service they can for their communities after the ravages of austerity.<\/p>\n
Steve was reacting to a recent HMICFRS report into policing, which suggested that the public had given up reporting some crimes because they know the service just doesn\u2019t have the resources to investigate them.<\/p>\n
The report also concluded that faith in the criminal justice system was taking a battering with the chances of some suspects being tried in the courts seen as being \u2018slim\u2019.<\/p>\n
The PFEW says officers are in a \u2018soul-destroying position\u2019 and are as frustrated as the public are at not being able to offer the service they once could.<\/p>\n
\u201cOrganisationally we\u2019ve been stripped as a result of austerity,\u201d Steve said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re starting to see a return, and we\u2019re starting to see a growth in terms of finance, which is leading to better numbers, and we\u2019ve seen the exploration of better working practices and techniques.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut we\u2019re in a lean place. If you look at a lean animal, you might be forgiven for thinking it seems a bit unhealthy, depending on which side of that fence you look, which view you take.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wouldn\u2019t want to paint every officer as being down in the dumps and miserable because my experience locally on the ground is it\u2019s not always the case. We have difficulties, but we\u2019re professionals, we\u2019re trying our best with the tools available,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cDay to day officers are working harder. They\u2019re trying their best to deliver locally for their communities.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you want to bring on the criticism then it must be towards those that have put us in this position, not those that are trying to make the best of it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Some of the issues can come down to public perception, and the new types of crime officers are expected to deal with Steve added, and a lack of visibility of officers on the street doesn\u2019t mean crime isn\u2019t being tackled.<\/p>\n
\u201cSome of the new forms of crime and the new methods of investigating them mean, arguably, we don\u2019t need to come out and see people,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cTake some of the desk-based stuff, some of the fraud, some of the online stuff. You don\u2019t need a police car driving past your house to make you feel safe about online crime or to actively investigate it.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a whole debate feeding into the royal commission on policing argument. There\u2019s a whole debate to be had here around the police service we are and the service we deliver and what that looks like on the ground.<\/p>\n
\u201cI could walk past your house in my cape and my custodian helmet, and you\u2019ll feel physically safe, but I\u2019m not doing a jot to keep you safe online or to keep your kids safe on social media,\u201d Steve added.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is a myriad of other crime and offences that the police rightfully have to be visible and involved in, but that visibility isn\u2019t always physical.\u201d<\/p>\n
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POLICE officers are professionals who are \u2018doing their best with the tools they have\u2019, says Essex Police Federation. Federation Chairman Steve Taylor says officers are having to work harder every\u2026 read more →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":110698,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110567"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=110567"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110567\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":110779,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110567\/revisions\/110779"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/110698"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=110567"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=110567"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=110567"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}