THE new Prime Minister must \u2018stand together\u2019 with policing and reverse the deep cuts the service has endured over the past decade, according to Essex Police Federation.<\/p>\n
Both Boris Johnson and Sajid Javid pledged to put 20,000 officers back on the streets as part of their Conservative Party leadership election manifestos. While Mr Javid is out of the race to succeed Theresa May, Mr Johnson is involved in a run-off with Jeremy Hunt.<\/p>\n
Essex Police Federation Chairman Steve Taylor is pleased that the issue is being talked about but says that words must be put into action, whoever gets the top job.<\/p>\n
He said: \u201cWe welcome the intimation that the number of police officers needs to grow.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a step in the right direction. It\u2019s our job to try and hold them to those views. We don\u2019t need convincing. We\u2019ve seen the data. We\u2019ve seen the physical effects that austerity has had on the service we\u2019re trying to deliver.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe need to make sure we hold the Prime Minister and their subsequent Government to account for those comments, and that we start to see that growth coming through.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt would be nice to see the Prime Minister standing together with the police service in this country, listening to the police service that has been consistently saying \u2018you\u2019ve cut too deep\u2019, and rectifying that and reversing some of that austerity-led cutting that we\u2019ve seen.\u201d<\/p>\n
Putting 20,000 officers back on the streets would go some way to replacing the 21,500 officers lost to the service in England and Wales since Government austerity measures took hold in 2010.<\/p>\n
The irony of the numbers being talked about is not lost on Steve.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt would return us more to pre-austerity levels,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt would be nice for that not to be not celebrated in terms of, \u2018look at me, aren\u2019t I great\u2019, but acknowledged as, \u2018yes, we did cut too deep, too fast, into police numbers \u2013 we accept that cuts do have consequences and our communities are living those consequences now, and as a reflection we\u2019re going to reverse some of those cuts and return you to pre-austerity levels\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
THE new Prime Minister must \u2018stand together\u2019 with policing and reverse the deep cuts the service has endured over the past decade, according to Essex Police Federation. Both Boris Johnson\u2026 read more →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":137,"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\/57849"}],"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=57849"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57849\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":62457,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57849\/revisions\/62457"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/137"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=57849"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=57849"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=57849"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}