Labour fail to get tougher on crime

JUST one out of every eight police recruits has a frontline role protecting the public, a Sunday Express investigation has uncovered.

TRAGIC Fiona Pilkington killed herself and her daughter after being terrorised by youths TRAGIC: Fiona Pilkington killed herself and her daughter after being terrorised by youths

Despite widespread fears about the rise in violent crime in towns and cities, Britain’s overstretched police forces are failing to hire enough officers to bring order to streets terrorised by yobs.

The shocking findings make a mockery of Labour’s claim to be “tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime” and show how cash has been misdirected for office jobs when communities such as Barwell, Leicestershire – where yobs terrorised tragic mother and daughter Fiona Pilkington and Francecca Hardwick –  are crying out for bobbies on the beat.

A study of the figures obtained under Freedom of Information laws reveals how communities are being deceived  by a deliberate policy of hiring cheap armchair police while costs soar. It is the taxpayer who foots the bill via the police precept, the element of council tax bills for policing, which has in some cases

risen by as much as 79 per cent.

Over the past four years, when the public has seen police pre- cepts rise to help fight the war on terror, the statistics show for the first time how our cash is spent.

The payrolls of the 43 forces in England and Wales grew by 22,229 between 2005 and 2009 but just 2,710 of those vacancies were filled by police officers while the remaining 19,519 were filled with civilian staff.

The biggest rise has been in the introduction of Police Com- munity Support Officers (PCSOs), uniformed civilians tasked with dealing with low-level crime and anti-social behaviour.

In 2007 two PCSOs from Greater Manchester refused to help a drowning 10-year-old boy Jordon Lyon who was trying to save his sister who was in difficulty in a pond. Instead they called for extra help.

Greater Manchester’s Assistant Chief Constable Dave Thompson said they were not expected to rescue people. PCSO numbers have almost trebled from 6,214 in 2005 to 16,507 in 2009. The number of officers has risen just two per cent from 141,060 to 143,770. The numbers of civilian staff doing desk jobs, answering phones or being on the front counter of police stations has soared 11 per cent over the same period from 71,208 to 79,296.

Simon Reed, vice chairman of the Police Federation, said the “civilianisation” of police forces at the expense of the taxpayer, who believes the money is for officers, is wrong.

He said: “This is extremely worrying and a major concern because people are paying these precepts on the back of promises about better forces and better policing.”

Precepts have been responsible for hiking many council tax rises to over five per cent, the level where they are capped. 

Typical for major city police authorities for the average B and D council tax is £118 while the average for shire authorities for the same bands is £157.

Last year Lincolnshire Police Authority boosted its precept by a whopping 79 per cent, lifting household bills by £100 per year. Matthew Elliott, chief executive of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, added: “It’s right that police paperwork shouldn’t have to be done by front line officers, but that doesn’t justify recruiting seven times as many paper pushers as policemen.”

Equally alarming is a report last week by the Home Affairs Committee into policing strength which said provisional financial estimates for next year have left many forces preparing to cut officer numbers even further.

It is predicted forces may need to impose a 10 per cent budget cut to slash costs by £260million, the equivalent of 5,800 officers from the current force of 144,770 officers in England and Wales. Some police authorities now have as many civilians as officers on the payroll.

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