MPs are refusing to admit that Government cuts to the police service are having a direct result on the number of officers patrolling the streets.<\/p>\n
Conservative Party MP Nigel Evans took to Twitter this month to call on his local force to provide a greater level of police on the beat in rural areas across his constituency. While Witham MP Priti Patel last year criticised Essex Police over criminal incidents in her constituency town.<\/p>\n
Essex Police Federation Chairman Mark Smith said: \u201cCuts have consequences. They were told it would happen and I still don\u2019t think that they\u2019re admitting that their cuts have had consequences.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s time for the MPs to open their eyes and realise what\u2019s happening, because they are having severe consequences on the people that vote for them, and now they\u2019re finally starting to see. How long before they actually realise that they need to do something about it?<\/p>\n
\u201cI think what they need to do is start listening to the Police Federation, certainly locally. The Federations locally tend to have a fairly good working relationship, passing information to MPs. I\u2019d like to see them start listening to those that are actually there, those that know, and those that have been doing it for a good number of years.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe \u2018Cuts Have Consequences\u2019 campaign wasn\u2019t scaremongering, it was done because we said what was going to happen \u2013 and it has happened.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe can only stop the wheel from falling off so many times, sooner or later the wheel will fall off.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut the Government and certainly the press as well are very good at blaming the police whenever anything goes wrong, so I think the police will probably be the scapegoat again. What really needs to happen is for the public to wake up and stop voting for MPs that are voting for the cuts.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe MPs aren\u2019t listening and they should be the representative of the public, so the public are the only ones who can stop it. When they realise they\u2019re losing votes, that seems to be when they start listening.\u201d<\/p>\n
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MPs are refusing to admit that Government cuts to the police service are having a direct result on the number of officers patrolling the streets. Conservative Party MP Nigel Evans\u2026 read more →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2986,"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\/2985"}],"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=2985"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2985\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2987,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2985\/revisions\/2987"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2986"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2985"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2985"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2985"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}