THE Police Federation says violent crime will continue to rise unless police cuts are reversed.<\/p>\n
The worrying prediction comes after Home secretary Amber Rudd said this week that cuts were not to blame.<\/p>\n
She’s pointing the finger at rising drug use in affected communities instead and says the use of social media is inflaming the issue.<\/p>\n
The Guardian<\/em> reports that it\u2019s seen a leaked document from the Home Office revealing that cuts have \u2018likely contributed\u2019 to the rise in violence in the capital in particular.<\/p>\n However, Rudd has denied seeing the report and instead asserted that the evidence \u2018does not support\u2019 the claim.<\/p>\n The number of officers fell from 143,734 in 2010 to 123,142 in March 2017 according to official figures – London has seen more 60 murders this year alone including the fatal shootings of two teenagers.<\/p>\n The Government recently launched a new \u00a340m strategy aimed at tackling the issue which would ban \u2018zombie\u2019 knives and knuckle dusters, while providing an additional \u00a311m to promote youth and community centres.<\/p>\n The Police Federation says it strongly disagrees with the Government\u2019s view that cuts are not to blame.<\/p>\n \u201cEven the Minister Nick Hurd has said that police are overstretched,\u201d it said in an official response to the Home Secretary\u2019s claims.<\/p>\n \u201cThe fact is very simple \u2013 this Government has recklessly cut police numbers and funding and now we have significant increased in violent crime \u2013 you do the math.<\/p>\n \u201cThe public understand this, the police know this, so how come the Home Secretary can\u2019t see this?<\/p>\n \u201cWhy are the Metropolitan Police having to cancel officer rest days, to put an additional 300 police officers out every day of this weekend, to deal with the epidemic facing the capital?<\/p>\n \u201cThe issue here is that this Conservative Government cannot admit they got it wrong and it\u2019s costing lives.\u201d<\/p>\n The Federation says the issue with policing is backed up by the recent HMICFRS PEEL report which revealed that a quarter of forces in England and Wales are struggling to cope with the demands placed on them.<\/p>\n \u201cOur evidence clearly shows that officers are under immense pressure and the reduction in officer numbers is impacting on the ability to respond to rising crime,\u201d the Federation\u2019s response continued.<\/p>\n \u201cAll our previous warnings are now coming to light as we see an increase in violent crime and victims of crime not getting the service they deserve and expect.<\/p>\n \u201cUnless the Government addresses these issues and provides the police service with the funding it needs we will continue to see the impact.\u201d<\/p>\n Rudd told BBC Radio that \u2018it\u2019s not all about police numbers\u2019 and that violent crime was complex.<\/p>\n \u201cYou cannot arrest your way out of this,\u201d she said on the Today Programme.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s up to different police and crime commissioners to make their decisions about how the money is spent.<\/p>\n \u201cSome forces are increasing their numbers of PCSOs, some are cutting them in order to have more funds available for local policing of a different type.\u201d<\/p>\n Both Met Commissioner Cressida Dick and her predecessor Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe have previously said the force would struggle with further cuts and that \u2018warning lights are flashing\u2019.<\/p>\n For more on this story visit; https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/uk-news\/2018\/apr\/09\/amber-rudd-home-office-violent-crime-report-leaked<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" THE Police Federation says violent crime will continue to rise unless police cuts are reversed. The worrying prediction comes after Home secretary Amber Rudd said this week that cuts were\u2026 read more →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3235,"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\/4255"}],"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=4255"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4255\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4278,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4255\/revisions\/4278"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3235"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}