‘Hang your heads in shame’
DEPARTING BOBBY SLAMS GOVERNMENT CUTS AS HE QUITS POLICE AFTER 12 YEARS ON THE FRONT LINE
A BEAT bobby has told how GMP is at ‘breaking point’ and struggling to answer 999 calls in a heart-felt resignation letter to Chief Constable Ian Hopkins.
Father-of-three Joseph Torkington, 37, who used to patrol Offerton in Stockport, has resigned after 12 years as a police constable.
The son of a police officer, from Buxton, blamed savage cuts and said government leaders should ‘hang their heads in shame’ for the current state of GMP.
The picture of him published on GMP’s website which states he is a ‘dedicated local officer’ is ‘beyond misleading,’ he writes before going on to argue that community policing exists in name only.
“Indeed, I firmly believe it was this continuing deception to both staff and the public alike that gave birth to my now deep rooted mistrust of the government and our entire organisation. Other factors followed further compounding my lack of faith and belief... Windsor (the review of terms and conditions); the pay freeze; the demolition of the terms and conditions of our pensions; the heavy cuts to frontline resources; the increasing bureaucracy despite constant promises for its reduction; the constant changes of systems, focus, direction, priorities, shift patterns, teams, geographical beats, policies, process, protocol, all without any apparent benefit to anyone other than those in the upper echelons of the promotion system. The result of the aforementioned? Plummeting morale.
“I can only truly speak for myself, but I am fairly certain my views are shared by the many not the few, that the Police Service is, all clichés aside, at breaking point.”
He describes a crisis where ‘response’ officers are sometimes not available for even the most serious 999 calls and how bosses ‘give out jobs to patrols that don’t exist.’
It leaves officers ‘being sent to dangerous jobs with little or no back up’ and he reveals he spent his last three years ‘in a permanent state of anxiety.’
He concedes to the chief constable that ‘you lead us in difficult times’ but delivers a withering judgement on the Coalition and Tory governments which have seen the force slashed from 8,200 officers to almost 6,000.
He concludes: “To the government I have nothing good to say whatsoever, they should hang their heads in shame.”
Mr Torkington emailed the letter to colleagues in Stockport which was then shared on social media. He told the M.E.N. he had been off at home since March 31 with work-related anxiety and depression.
He said: “I just felt like I needed to be honest. The chief constable needs to know in case he doesn’t know, so he understands. This is probably the biggest decision I have ever made.”
A Home Office spokesman pointed to a fall in crime recorded in the British Crime Survey since 2010, adding: “We are sensitive to the pressures the police face.
“That is why we have announced a pay award worth a total of two per cent to frontline officers, and ministers have begun a programme of engagement with the police to better understanding the demands they face and how these can best be managed.”