Why don’t the police in Greater Manchester turn up like they used to? are government cuts to the force having a dramatic effect on policing across the region?
GMP IS FACING TOUGH CHOICES ABOUT WHICH CALLS TO RESPOND TO AS CUTS CONTINUE TO BITE
ARE police withdrawing from our communities?
To a growing number of M.E.N. readers, it feels that way.
Every week, our newsroom gets calls and emails from people mystified at the response they have received when they have reported a crime.
It’s not just people who have had their homes burgled or cars stolen either. A mother whose daughter was badly beaten up was told police would not investigate because it was not ‘cost effective.’
Another mother, whose underage daughter was being blackmailed into sending lewd pictures of herself to a pervert, told us it took days for police to get back to her after she reported it, in which time the threats continued.
In fact, over the last few months we have reported on several cases in which victims of crime were told police officers were simply too busy to visit them, take statements or investigate.
Are government cuts to the force having a dramatic effect on policing across the region? And if so, where does it leave the investigation of crime?
Certainly, the nature of policing is changing in Greater Manchester. Here, the M.E.N. looks at how and why it is changing - and gets some frank answers from the force. SUZANNE, not her real name, was horrified when she discovered that her 13-year-old daughter had sent lewd photos after being blackmailed by somebody on Snapchat.
The language used in the messages left her convinced the culprit was an adult.
At the police station, her details were taken and she was told somebody would be in touch to arrange a home visit.
But after a few a hours she was told they couldn’t come out after all - because Trafford had four patrols dealing with 54 reported crimes and they had to prioritise.
After two days she still hadn’t seen an officer - but her daughter had received another threatening message.
She finally got to see an officer after marching down to the police station and insisting on it. “I would think that indecent images online of a minor and blackmail would be considered a priority”, Suzanne
said. “It’s rocked my faith in the police. I know nobody was murdered or raped but it could have got that far. I just felt like it wasn’t taken seriously.
“I don’t blame the police, I know they are stretched, but the government needs to fix this.”
Victoria Woods’ daughter Isabelle, 12, was left with scratches, bruises and covered in mud after being punched and kicked in a filmed attack at Wildmoore Avenue Park, Oldham.
But when Victoria contacted the police, they told her it ‘wasn’t cost effective’ to pursue it, suggested she resolve the issue herself by visiting the parents of the attacker, and blamed the government for a lack of police resources, she told the M.E.N.
“(Isabelle’s) school seemed more worried than the police”, Victoria said.
In a separate case, another parent, Aston Coombes, slammed police for their response after her five-year-old son Mackenzie was attacked by a dog.
The little boy needed surgery after he was mauled by the head by the animal in Dukinfield. But Aston was still waiting for police to come and take a statement about the incident more than a day after the attack, and she said officers told her there was ‘not a lot they can do.’
Another reader, Dave, not his real name, was viciously attacked by a gang while out running.
He did his own detective work to find out who attacked him - but was still waiting for an officer to visit him at home two weeks later.
At the time, GMP insisted they were carrying out numerous lines of enquiry to try and mount a prosecution.
But Dave said officers missed opportunities to follow up on key clues because they didn’t visit the scene in the immediate wake of the attack. And he believes his assault was one of three crimes committed by the same gang in Heaton Moor on the same day.
In another case, businessman Alan Baker also turned detective. His wallet was stolen when his £120,00 Porsche Turbo 911 was broken into. So he found out where the thieves had spent cash using his stolen cards, before visiting shops and confirming there was CCTV of them.
Despite all this, police told Alan they couldn’t visit him. He was told that with fewer officers, the force has to prioritise - and is not able to attend every report of crime.
These cases are just some of the calls the M.E.N. has received on this theme.
Last year, a senior officer, speaking anonymously, told us
criminals were taking advantage of lower police numbers and that officers ‘can’t keep up.’
In the year up to June 2017, violent crime alone rose by 46 per cent, burglary by 14 per cent. IT IS not only M.E.N. readers who feel things could be better.
Earlier this year, inspectors reported that despite ‘outstanding’ work to tackle organised crime, Greater Manchester ‘requires improvement’ because officers fail to attend incidents quickly enough and their initial investigations are not always good enough.
But Chief Superintendent Neil Evans, who chairs the Greater Manchester Branch of the Police Superintendents’ Association, said the report had failed to describe the ‘wider context’ facing GMP.
“We dare to suggest that the issues they raise may have something to do with the approximately £180m reduction in funding over recent years”, Chief Supt Evans said.
“A reduction of nearly 2,000 officers and 1,000 police staff – nearly 25pc of the workforce. GMP receives 186 emergency 999 calls per 1,000 of the population, where the national average is 135,” he added.
During his tenure as Chief Constable, from 2002 until his death in 2008, Michael Todd claimed that in order to make the region safe he needed 10,000 officers. He managed to acquire a contingent of 8,000.
But, as a result of cuts, the force is now expected to operate with 4,000 officers less than Mr Todd insisted was necessary. As of June 2018 there were 6,199 officers on the force and 4,129 staff. This is a 25 per cent decline on the peak, when Greater Manchester has an estimated population more than 2.5m.
This means dealing with serious crime - like terrorism and serious and organised crime - has to take priority, the man in the top job today, Chief Constable Ian Hopkins, has said.
And, it has to be said, even while downgrading its performance from ‘good,’ to ‘requires improvement,’ Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMICFRS) has described GMP’s work to do with organised crime as ‘outstanding.’
But the fact remains that the so-called ‘low level’ crime that is being deprioritised has a serious effect on victims. AGAINST this background people - from neighbours, to traders, to faith groups – are increasingly organising to keep watch.
Take Tameside. There, traders were hit by tens of thousands of pounds worth of thefts from a key circle of ‘known’ shoplifters.
So, businesses took matters into their own hands and set up a dedicated WhatsApp group to circulate images of shoplifters and anyone engaging in anti-social behaviour. This action gave traders a collective voice, an effective outlet to share information and provided vital evidence for police.
Deputy Chief Constable Ian Pilling told the M.E.N. that there was a place for Whatsapp watch schemes, but not for vigilantism.
“In some of our areas our neighbourhood officers are engaging with Whatsapp groups and Twitter, I am never going to say you shouldn’t use technology - if we can link into that somehow, we can pick up on that intelligence”, he said.
“If you go back years ago we had Neighbourhood Watch schemes, where you would ring two people and they would ring four - that’s just the modern version of that.
“I can understand the frustrations of the public when they don’t get a police officer. At the end of the day I would not want them to put themselves at risk - give us the intelligence, give us the information and put the responsibility back on us, and make me accountable for what we can do with that intelligence.” IN a candid interview with the M.E.N. Dep Chief Con Pilling indicated that while policing for emergencies had been ‘ring-fenced,’ the public would have to change their expectations of how policing was done nowadays. “We have to try and prioritise and that means on occasion that someone who rings up and reports a crime won’t get a police officer. And it also
means that if someone rings and reports a crime, and we don’t believe we will be able to solve it, and we are saying that.
“That is a difficult message for people to understand because traditionally in this country we expect a police officer to come and see us if we have been the victim of a crime.
“What the evidence shows is that sending an officer to every crime does not produce more of a chance of catching the culprit.
“What we have got to do is send out limited police resources to crimes where there is the greatest vulnerability - sometimes we get that wrong.”
The response to the case of Victoria Woods, the schoolgirl attacked in an Oldham park, was one that gave pause for thought. Mr Pilling conceded: “Sometimes I look at that and think, do you know what, maybe we should have investigated. But every day they have a situation where they have more incidents to resource than officers to resource them. You have to make some decisions around that. We can’t send a police officer to every incident. It’s not possible.”
Nevertheless, Mr Pilling told the M.E.N. the force did a good job of balancing competing challenges while at the sharp end of cuts.
He said GMP had ‘a lot’ of serious crime and responsibilities to deal with that smaller forces didn’t.
“We have lost a quarter of our force. No matter how efficient we are, that’s going to have an impact,” Mr Pilling said.
“We still do that pretty well, you ring 999, and GMP will answer your call within 11 or 12 seconds at the most and we will get to you in 10 or 11 minutes.
“I think the public would expect me to deal with gun crime robustly, but they would also expect to have a local officer when they are in a town centre, and expect us to react really quickly when they call 999.
“The biggest challenge we have as a management team here is balancing those things.” GMP gets 3,500 phone calls a day, up to 4,000 on a busy weekend.
Over the last year, police have been called upon to deal with the aftermath of the Manchester Arena bombing, some major football and entertainment events and the Conservative Party conference.
Most recently GMP has cancelled days off in order to send 250 officers to police President Trump’s visit to the UK. At the same time, dealing with historic sexual offences has become a much bigger priority.
In this climate, people are being asked to, where appropriate, report crimes online rather than over the phone.
The force says the new LiveChat service is staffed by specially trained advisors available between 8am and midnight, and that the service is aimed at easing pressure on the 101 and 999 services.
Also, with a backdrop of cuts to other public services the police are having to pick up the slack. As Chief Constable Peter Fahy said before his departure in 2015, officers are increasingly called upon to act as ‘social workers,’ and from this summer mental health workers will be introduced into the 999 control room. Mr Pilling admits the force has to work hard to keep public confidence as it is stretched across different priorities. “We have some great community officers and some great PCSOs, because there are less of them they are not able to report intelligence back in the same way,” he said. “But we have got to make sure we do something when that intelligence does comes in. “If we are not doing anything when someone calls to say there is drug dealing on the street corner they will stop calling us - maybe for something even more serious because they will lose confidence in us. “So that’s the balance we have to strike in keeping the public on board. Over the last 12 months in particular the public have been very supportive of GMP. But because of our resource issues I think we do let them down on occasions.”