GOVERNMENT proposals to substitute fully trained and warranted police officers with volunteers will put these citizens at risk, Essex Police Federation has warned.<\/p>\n
Mark Smith, Federation Chairman, said: \u201cI don\u2019t think the public want volunteers being given extra powers. The public want more police officers.\u201d He added that untrained volunteers could be in danger from violent offenders.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe first volunteer that tries to detain a drunk on the high-street and gets punched in the face. Where do we go from there?\u201d said Mr Smith. \u201cIs that person going to stay in the job, continue volunteering? We shouldn\u2019t be putting public and volunteers in that sort of danger. It\u2019s just crazy.\u201d<\/p>\n
The criticism by the Federation is in response to an announcement by Home Secretary Theresa May that police chiefs would get the power to give more responsibility to support staff and unpaid helpers, without them having to become a Special constable.<\/p>\n
It will open the way for members of the public, who are experts in computing or accountancy, to be recruited to help tackle cyber or financial crime. But there are fears they could also patrol the streets.<\/p>\n
Mr Smith added: \u201cWill these people detain people until we can turn up – because we haven\u2019t got enough resources to be able to detain them ourselves? How long before the first volunteer is stabbed and killed? It\u2019s craziness.<\/p>\n
\u201cI can understand the Government wanting to try and get some expertise around cybercrime but are they actually going to get people to volunteer? These people that may be in the private sector charge an absolute fortune. Who\u2019s going to want to do that for free for us?\u201d<\/p>\n
Steve White, Chairman of the Police Federation of England and Wales, said: \u201cHaving recently had the Government say \u2018the police protect us and we are going to protect the police\u2019, which clearly infers a need for greater resources, we appear to now be looking at a situation where they want to provide these resources on the cheap.\u201d<\/p>\n
Home Secretary Theresa May said: \u201cWe want to help forces to create a more flexible workforce, bring in new skills and free up officers\u2019 time to focus on the jobs only they can carry out.\u201d<\/p>\n
National Police Chiefs\u2019 Council Lead for Citizens in Policing, Chief Constable Dave Jones, said: \u201cThe new approach to designating police powers will help the police service be more flexible when it comes to attracting and deploying volunteers with valuable skills, especially in situations where the full powers of a constable are not necessary.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
GOVERNMENT proposals to substitute fully trained and warranted police officers with volunteers will put these citizens at risk, Essex Police Federation has warned. Mark Smith, Federation Chairman, said: \u201cI don\u2019t\u2026 read more →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1461,"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\/2613"}],"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=2613"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2613\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2614,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2613\/revisions\/2614"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1461"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2613"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2613"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2613"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}