FIGURES published by the Government show Essex Police currently has 2,965 \u202a\u200epolice officers \u2013 that is 641 fewer than there were in 2010.\u202c\u202c\u202c<\/p>\n
The police workforce strength statistics show there are now 125,185 police officers in England and Wales.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s 18,549 fewer officers than in 2010.<\/p>\n
There has also been a 1,893 fall in police officer numbers since this time last year.<\/p>\n
The figures \u2013 from September 2015 \u2013 show that there are also 18,054 fewer members of police staff working in England and Wales than there were in 2009.<\/p>\n
And 1,062 fewer than this time last year.<\/p>\n
There were also 960 fewer police community support officers (a 7.5% fall) and 722 fewer Special constables (a 4.3% drop).<\/p>\n
Mark Smith, Chairman of Essex Police Federation, said: \u201cCuts Have Consequences \u2013 and these continued cuts are going to affect the service the public is going to get.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s going to affect the visibility of police officers out there and I think it already is having an impact. We can see violent crime in Essex is up, I can\u2019t say directly related to fewer police officers around, but it\u2019s not a coincidence.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhile we\u2019re going through these cuts, road traffic accidents and road deaths, serious road collisions are on the up as well. I think this is what we\u2019re seeing, we\u2019re seeing consequences of cuts.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m hoping that within Essex we\u2019ll stabilise on police numbers now, and who knows, in the future maybe when we get to the end of comprehensive spending reviews and we\u2019ve made all our savings, maybe we can start getting some investment in policing again.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt would be nice to get back into the 3,000 area over the next few years, but whether that will happen or not I really don\u2019t know.\u201d<\/p>\n
National policing lead on workforce development, Chief Constable Giles York said: \u201cAlongside colleagues, we must also do everything possible to look after our own people \u2013 avoiding unacceptable levels of stress, investing in them as professionals and offering advice or support where it\u2019s needed.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur duty is to protect and serve. We remain committed to delivering the effective and efficient policing our communities expect.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Police Federation of England and Wales said the public were being \u201cshort-changed\u201d.<\/p>\n
A statement added: \u201cThere is nothing good to say about a cut of nearly 4,000 people from the total \u2018policing family\u2019, at a time when officer resilience should be our main concern.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
FIGURES published by the Government show Essex Police currently has 2,965 \u202a\u200epolice officers \u2013 that is 641 fewer than there were in 2010.\u202c\u202c\u202c The police workforce strength statistics show there\u2026 read more →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2285,"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\/2661"}],"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=2661"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2661\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2663,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2661\/revisions\/2663"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2285"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2661"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2661"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2661"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}