Alarm over policing cutbacks as total of arrests falls by half
THE number of suspected criminals arrested has halved in eight years, figures revealed yesterday.
Police detained 658,113 people in 2016, compared to 1,273,104 in 2008.
That raises fresh concerns over the impact of police cuts, with 20,000 fewer officers on streets since 2010.
Experts warned 999 calls were going unanswered, with officers prioritising the most urgent requests.
Former Scotland Yard deputy assistant commissioner Lord Paddick said “criminals are getting away scot-free”.
Former police officer Graham Wettone, who wrote the book How To Be A Police Officer, said: “You need officers available to make arrests and if you have reduced officer numbers then you have reduced arrests and criminals going undetected and unpunished.
“There are occasions outside London where literally a handful of officers are covering huge areas of the country and busy towns where some calls go unanswered. Response officers are hugely over-stretched and even with some community teams being directed to help out, that still isn’t meeting the shortfall due to the numbers that have been cut and the increase in demand.”
Hampshire Constabulary arrested 35,000 fewer people in 2016 than they did in 2008, according to a Freedom of Information request. But the crime rate in the county had fallen by just 12.8 per cent.
Unsafe
Gloucestershire and Northumbria were other police forces to record 60 per cent falls in arrest rates. But in Northumbria, the crime rate rose by 8.2 per cent in 2016, compared to 2008.
Lancashire – where Chief Constable Steve Finnigan last week admitted cuts had left people feeling unsafe – saw a 57.4 per cent fall in arrests. Mr Finnigan warned the focus on police funding has intensified since the Manchester and London terror attacks.
He said: “Any society deserves safe and confident communities and I have no doubt that those poor people who have been affected by the events in Manchester and London now feel less safe.”
Former Special Branch detective Chris Hobbs said officers face long queues to book suspects into custody suites because cells across Britain have been closed.
He said: “There is no doubt if you have fewer officers on the street, there will be fewer arrests.
“In the Met they are going full out on the investigation into London Bridge, preventing further terrorist attacks and investigating the stabbings. CID are just drowning and hoping to keep themselves out of trouble because someone has slipped through the net who they are responsible for.”
IT IS deeply worrying that as police numbers have fallen arrests are down by 600,000 in less than a decade, a sign that cuts in this area have gone too far.
This newspaper believes that in many areas public spending remains far too high and needs to be brought under control, but at this time of heightened terror alerts and with a summer of unrest the objective of the hard Left, we need to ensure the safety of our streets.
The duty of every government is to protect its citizens against danger, whether that be from external concerns or from upheaval within our own borders and we need the police to keep us safe.
The public mood is febrile at the moment, always a worrying development. By all means cut wasteful spending elsewhere but we need police patrolling our streets.