ESSEX Police will be retaining a \u201cpunchy\u201d dog unit but economic reality means it needs to reduce in size, the area\u2019s police and crime commissioner has said.<\/p>\n
Nick Alston said plans in the force to scale back the unit from 52 dogs to 40 and have 25 handlers working from one central hub rather than four were \u201call about the money\u201d as the force \u201chave to find savings.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr Alston said: \u201cWe have to get Essex Police the right size, with the right resources in the right place to do the right job at the right time and the specialist units have all been looked at.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to Essex Police constable Stephen Kavanagh, the force needs to save in the region of \u00a336 million over the next three financial years. It also announced last week that it would be scrapping its marine unit.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe horses went more than a year ago now,\u201d said Mr Alston. \u201cI think the dogs were looked at then and they weren\u2019t cut. With the dog unit, we have got really good dogs handlers, I have seen them at work.\u00a0 We\u2019ve got a good spread of dogs, we\u2019ve got drugs dogs, we\u2019ve got money dogs, we\u2019ve got behaviour dogs and general purpose dogs. But we have to be as efficient as we can and the judgement of the Evolve team [looking at savings in the force] is that we can lose twelve dogs, by fifty two to forty.\u201d<\/p>\n
He added: \u201cForty is still a punchy dog unit. They\u2019re going to be rationalised, move their location and base and I actually worry a little bit more about that than I do about the numbers but I think giving them one base probably makes them slightly easier to deploy.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut those are operational decisions for the Chief. This is the line between the Chief and my responsibility. He consulted me about the dogs and boats before taking the decision, but I think it has to be his decision but one I would want some influence over and I think that\u2019s worked out quite well in this case.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s convincing me that bringing it down to forty\u2026 is more than lots of other forces.\u00a0 So I don\u2019t feel that is too bad an outcome, although with individual dogs and their handlers and you will always regret that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr Kavanagh said the changes to the two policing specialisms would achieve savings of more than \u00a3750,000 a year.<\/p>\n
He added: \u201cWe need to be realistic about the services we can continue to deliver in the current economic climate \u2013 and focusing on our priorities for local communities and minimising threat, harm and risk means that we have had to re-evaluate some of our more specialist areas of operations.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mark Smith, Chairman of Essex Police Federation, said that while any cuts to policing were unwelcome, the force was making the best use of its resources.<\/p>\n
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ESSEX Police will be retaining a \u201cpunchy\u201d dog unit but economic reality means it needs to reduce in size, the area\u2019s police and crime commissioner has said. Nick Alston said\u2026 read more →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":644,"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\/642"}],"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=642"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/642\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":695,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/642\/revisions\/695"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/644"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=642"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=642"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=642"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}