DEMAND on the police service is already exceeding the resources available, the Chairman of Essex Police Federation has warned.<\/p>\n
Mark Smith was responding to comments from HM Chief Inspector of Constabulary Tom Winsor, who suggested demand on the police service had dropped.\u00a0\u201cDemand exceeds the resources that we have got,\u201d said Mr Smith. \u201cLocal policing areas are struggling with demand for 999 calls.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr Smith described Mr Winsor\u2019s claim that police need to \u201cwork smarter\u201d as a\u00a0\u201csoundbite\u201d.<\/p>\n
HMIC also said that the police service needed a better system of prioritisation so that the most serious crimes, which do most harm to victims and communities, receive \u201cthe attention they deserve\u201d.<\/p>\n
However, Mr Smith raised concerns about how the service would decide which crimes are more important than others.<\/p>\n
He agreed that some crimes, such as rape and murder, are more serious than others, but disagreed with Winsor that an offence such as shoplifting was necessarily less serious than assault, pointing out that it was not a victimless crime.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo the local corner-store owner, who feeds his family with his shop’s takings, that stock is precious,\u201d said Mr Smith. \u201cIf someone is taking his stock, that\u2019s quite a serious crime. He could lose his house, lose his shop. To me, how do you decide what crime is more important than another crime?\u201d<\/p>\n
The Essex Chairman insisted that generally demand was going up and not down.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople say policing is different, crime is different. Yes, we have got more and more online crimes but that doesn\u2019t mean the old crimes have gone away,\u201d he said. \u201cFor example, in times of hardship, shoplifting goes up. The old crimes are still there. We\u2019re just getting new crimes, while resources are going down.\u201d<\/p>\n
Earlier this month, Steve White, Chairman of the Police Federation of England and Wales, said: \u201cBy suggesting that forces merely need to \u2018work smarter\u2019 to deal with the most savage cuts to funding in living memory, Mr Winsor has demonstrated he is completely deluded about not only the nature of crime but also about what the police service needs from the government to keep the public safe.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
DEMAND on the police service is already exceeding the resources available, the Chairman of Essex Police Federation has warned. Mark Smith was responding to comments from HM Chief Inspector of\u2026 read more →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1280,"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\/1705"}],"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=1705"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1705\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1743,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1705\/revisions\/1743"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1280"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1705"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1705"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1705"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}