Never Seen A Police Officer On Your Street?

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Then maybe this is why.

It’s old news but slow old me has only just caught up with it.

Our dear friends the NPoCC in the form of @CmdrChrisGreany has issued a paper following on from a study following on from a nonsense.

Apparently/allegedly in the first 3 months of this financial year Mutual Aid shifts across England and Wales increased by 87%. For anybody interested in the numbers they rose from 1383 to 2576.

For those of you non-Police persons unsure what a Mutual Aid shift is, it’s where your officers are sent to Police in somebody else’s County to help out in a (normally) Public Order scenario, e.g.  Strikes, Sporting Event, Civil Disorder.  This is nothing new, it has been going on for years, but the size of the increase this year disturbs me.

Only last week we learnt how, admittedly only 2, officers have been sent to Spain to assist with drunken British yobs, now I stumble across this which is much more disturbing.

Am I being thick here?

We are suffering the most brutal onslaught on Policing in living memory from our own bloody government.  17,000+ losses in 5 years with the same to come.

I have to confess that I’m not familiar with the current size of a PSU (Police Support Unit) is but it used to be 1 Inspector, 2 Sergeants and 20 PCs, or 1 Sgt and 10 PCs depending upon the scale of the event and the Aid requested.

Again, possibly I’m being thick and missing the point but that’s a MINIMUM of 1 and 10 missing from your Police Area.  Your depleted Police Force is now losing more men and women (temporarily) to another Force, EVEN LESS Police Officers on YOUR street.

“WAIT!”  I hear, being cried from Duties Offices across the UK.  “It isn’t like that, we’re only sending officers who are on their Rest Days”  Maybe that’s true, I doubt it, but it might be.  If it is true those officers are entitled to recompense either by being paid overtime in real money, or given a day off in lieu at some other time, another day when they won’t be available to patrol YOUR streets.  If they are paid overtime, even if that overtime is reclaimed from the Host Force, someone’s budget is suffering.  Why is it suffering? #Simples. Not enough cops available to meet the demand on Policing. As simple as that.  Why aren’t there enough?

Ask Mrs Bloody May or Uncle Tom Winsor. They started all this off, let them tell us why.

Before anybody remoinds me that the majority of these deployments might not actually be to another Force but merely to another town or city within your Force artea, the basic principle still holds true.. It represents an overall loss to the Policing of your streets, in one way or another.

#ReverseTheCuts before it’s too late

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2 thoughts on “Never Seen A Police Officer On Your Street?”

  1. A PSU nowadays has 1 Insp, 2 Sgts and 12 PCs.

    Some county forces appear happy to provide Mutual Aid to urban areas, citing the need to have PSUs better trained. Plus there is a payback mechanism. One small county though found its PSU-trained officers (Grade One) handing back their “tickets” as mutual aid was neither enjoyable or paid as overtime.

    1. Thank you for that, as for deployment of PSUs is concerned, payback or no, it’s still an overall loss, Neighbourhood Policing receiving the last rites?

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