Facing the facts of rising crime levels
IREFER to reports in the Weekly News that there was a 36.4% increase in overall recorded crime between December 2016 and December 2017 and changes in recording practices can ‘partly’ explain this increase.
I am growing pretty tired of hearing such news being put down to recording practices changing and the ease by which people can now report crime, and we must face the facts.
The truth is the Cheshire police budget has endured over £60m of Government funding cuts since 2010, which means the force is spending 37% less on policing, in real terms, than it was eight years ago.
The Police Federation, which represents tens of thousands of rank-and-file officers, has repeatedly warned rises in crime can be closely linked to a decline in police resources.
Last year, the Police Foundation, an independent policing think tank, published a study on neighbourhood policing that concluded austerity has substantially diminished the effectiveness of neighbourhood policing.
The fact that burglary has doubled in Halton in such a short time is not because residents have improved access to phone the police it’s because the force has dwindling resources to handle the worst serial offenders who commit these offences.
Local councils, housing associations and even the NHS are critical partners to helping tackling crime, yet combined over the last eight years they have faced hundreds of millions in cuts in Cheshire.
This Government has repeatedly refused to acknowledge the evidence staring at us, Government cuts to the police and wider public sector are fuelling a rise in crime that shows every indication of worsening as austerity continues to deepen.
When she was Home Secretary, Theresa May had more to say about the ethnicity of Cheshire police officers than she ever did about their numbers or the resources she would commit to allow Cheshire police officers to do their job.
Despite every warning being made by David Keane, the police and crime commissioner, his Cheshire force is currently faced with finding a further £13m worth of cuts to services over the next three years, that’s on top of the £60m already lost.
This Government needs to be held to account for the shocking increase in crime that we are seeing in Halton and the wider Cheshire area. ●