GMP chief tells of ‘gap’ in policing due to funding
HE WARNS THAT PUBLIC WILL HAVE TO BECOME USED TO ‘LACK OF VISIBLE’ OFFICERS
IN 2018 we are all now used to public servants and local politicians telling us that services are unable to do the things they could before austerity hit.
But the chief constable of Greater Manchester’s view of the situation is quite stark even by those standards.
Ian Hopkins argues that such a vacuum now lies between high-level serious crime such as murder, rape or human trafficking and the work police carry out protecting people with mental health problems or other welfare issues, that the force is now struggling to do an awful lot else.
So if you thought officers will automatically show up should your house be burgled or your car nicked, think again.
“There is this growing gap of people in the middle that, you know, expect us to turn up to their car that’s been broken into or their garden shed that’s been broken into or their bike that’s been stolen and they’re then finding out that we don’t,” Mr Hopkins says. “And from my perspective there’s two answers to this. People might accuse me of being simplistic, but either the public have to understand that that’s just the way policing is now in the 21st Century and we make difficult decisions around our resource allocation and what we’re dealing with – or there has to be more police.
“And as I say, that might sound quite simplistic, but I don’t see what the solution is in the long term unless there’s either an acceptance of that kind of policing or there’s an increase in resources.”
GMP has lost 2,000 officers since the cuts started to bite and, according to the chief constable, crime is now having to be so severely prioritised that many people would be surprised by the ruthlessness employed in that process.
While he defends that prioritisation, the result has been rising public anxiety over visible low-level crime, particularly gangs of youths threatening and attacking people.
Earlier in the summer, Oldham West and Royton MP Jim McMahon – who had been pushing for action on antisocial behaviour, muggings, attacks and thefts on both the tram through Oldham and more generally in the town centre for some time – warned in the M.E.N. that ‘justice has left the town,’ referencing not only a reduction in the police response to lower-level crime but also the disappearance of police stations and courts across the wider borough.
Does the chief constable understand why many now feel a sense of lawlessness starting to creep in to their communities?
“Oh very much so. Absolutely,” he says. “It comes from people feeling unsafe because of some of the things they’re seeing.
“It comes from feeling that perhaps the outcomes, even when we do deal with something through the criminal justice system, aren’t what they would expect by that I mean whether they’re receiving a restorative justice or some sort of community sentence or a fine and many people’s perceptions are that this should be much more strongly punished. So all of that adds to that feeling of not feeling safe, of feeling that people are getting away with things. I think it also comes from a lack of visible policing that you see.”
When presented with the growing anger of both Greater Manchester taxpayers and local politicians, the chief constable points to two things.
Firstly, he says, the type of crimes the cops are dealing with have changed out of all recognition.
Last year, the force invested £3.5m ‘just to stand still’ in its capacity to interrogate digital evidence, which now floods in thanks to people sending pictures, video and other material from their mobile phones and devices. Meanwhile, eight to 10 cases of ‘sextortion’ – crimes such as revenge porn or online blackmail through hacking people’s accounts for personal details – are now reported to GMP each day, as well as a vast mass of other cybercrimes.
At the same time there is that reduction in funding: a 23pc cut in officers since 2010, more than the national average, while cases of child sexual exploitation have rocketed and the force has not exactly been short of unforeseen major incidents.
A couple of weekends ago Mr Hopkins released a message to all frontline officers thanking them for their work over what he said had been a particularly ‘complex’ few days.
That included policing the Moss Side carnival, dealing with the shooting that followed in the early hours of the following morning, a murder in Rochdale and the football season kicking off again at Old Trafford.
The statement was doubtless, in part, an attempt to get GMP’s message out to the wider public.
Even if they do hear – and accept – the message, are the government listening to the chief of one of the UK’s largest police forces? “I think that... some of the issues around violent crime have started to bring that home for people,” says the chief constable diplomatically.
It comes from people feeling unsafe because of the things they are seeing Chief Constable Ian Hopkins