CUTS to local policing are endangering national security, one of the service\u2019s most senior officers has warned.<\/p>\n
Neil Basu, the Senior National Counter-Terrorism Co-ordinator, said funding cuts for local policing will harm intelligence efforts and hamper vital preventative work.<\/p>\n
His comments came as a number of senior officers spoke out about their fears over police budgets.<\/p>\n
Mr Basu said two decades of progress in neighbourhood policing were at risk and that withdrawing police on the ground would mean losing the relationships and trust that yield crucial intelligence when it comes to fighting terrorism.<\/p>\n
He said neighbourhood policing was vital in preventing attacks, adding: \u201cWe don\u2019t police by coercion, we police by consent. I don\u2019t win that trust and confidence \u2013 it\u2019s all the local bobbies on the street who win that trust and confidence.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen we don\u2019t have those people we will become so divorced from the frontline, and the frontline of communities, that [it] will be a disaster for policing in this country.\u201d<\/p>\n
At least one plot was thwarted earlier this year because of a tip-off from within the Muslim community and came hours before the alleged terrorist was planning to strike. He said this was the result of trust and confidence in the police from Muslim communities, although he acknowledged that the trust level could be higher.<\/p>\n
The senior Met officer told The Guardian that Britain could not arrest its way out of the high level of terrorist threat by building a \u201cbigger and bigger [counter-terrorism] machine\u201d. The country had to build confidence and trust among communities and redouble efforts to prevent young people from turning to terrorism.<\/p>\n
He also criticised a Government decision to cut police funding to specifically fight terrorism. A planned funding cut of 7% was based on the lower level of threat in 2015, he said. \u201cThe threat has changed. It went absolutely stratospheric.\u201d<\/p>\n
See full story here: https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/uk-news\/2017\/nov\/10\/police-cutbacks-threaten-national-security-warns-counter-terrorism-head-neil-basu<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
CUTS to local policing are endangering national security, one of the service\u2019s most senior officers has warned. Neil Basu, the Senior National Counter-Terrorism Co-ordinator, said funding cuts for local policing\u2026 read more →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2897,"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\/3886"}],"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=3886"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3886\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3887,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3886\/revisions\/3887"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2897"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3886"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3886"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3886"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}