THE Government needs to \u201cstop attacking police officers and making them feel like second class citizens\u201d, the Chairman of Essex Police Federation has said.<\/p>\n
Mark Smith (pictured) said \u201cit\u2019s very easy to destroy the police service, it\u2019s very, very hard to rebuild. And it\u2019s the same with morale and the way officers feel.\u201d<\/p>\n
He was responding to a national Federation survey on morale.<\/p>\n
\u201cMorale in Essex is extremely low,\u201d said Mr Smith. \u201cIt\u2019s a hard job to do at the moment. I wouldn\u2019t recommend anybody to do it at this time.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople are considering going in to different jobs, I can\u2019t blame them, when we see the way that officers are being treated.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re not getting pay rises whereas there\u2019s now movement again in the private sector with pay rises. But all of this really, I think, falls into what the government want, and what the Government want is not to actually have to pay pensions.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd if people are coming in to the police and not staying for very long then they won\u2019t be having to pay pensions and I think that\u2019s exactly what the Government want.\u201d<\/p>\n
So what does Mr Smith think can be done to improve morale?<\/p>\n
\u201cStop attacking police officers! Stop making them feel like second class citizens. They\u2019re out there trying to look after the public, do the best job they can and we\u2019re forever being attacked by the Government.<\/p>\n
\u201cGive us a decent pay rise. Maybe put some funding back into policing so officers aren\u2019t out there with no back up. So officers are getting their rest days. Officers are able to take annual leave, which they\u2019re not able to at this time.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s very easy to destroy the police service, it\u2019s very, very hard to rebuild. And it\u2019s the same with morale and the way officers feel.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou keep putting them down, it gets to the point where it\u2019s very, very difficult to then start bringing them back up.\u201d<\/p>\n
More than 32,500 police officers took part in a survey by the Police Federation of England and Wales, with 76.3% saying they would not recommend policing as a career.<\/p>\n
The national poll also showed that more than 15% of respondents were planning to leave the service within the next two years.<\/p>\n
Officers told the Police Federation of England and Wales survey that low morale and the impact of the job on their health and personal or family life were all major factors in their decision to leave.<\/p>\n
Over 95% of the 15.6% of officers who said they were planning to leave also cited \u2018how the police as a whole are treated\u2019 as having either some or a major effect on their decision.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
THE Government needs to \u201cstop attacking police officers and making them feel like second class citizens\u201d, the Chairman of Essex Police Federation has said. Mark Smith (pictured) said \u201cit\u2019s very\u2026 read more →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1051,"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\/2133"}],"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=2133"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2133\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2136,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2133\/revisions\/2136"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1051"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2133"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2133"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2133"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}