Police versus crime

sir – I was a Metropolitan Police sergeant in charge of a safer neighbourhoods team in Croydon when Theresa May became Home Secretary in 2010 and set about making her series of police reforms.

She was warned that her planned police budget cuts were too much, too soon, but she arrogantly dismissed this and said crime was falling. Crime had been steadily falling for number of reasons – including an adequately resourced and supported police force.

In 2015, after her budget cuts had resulted in the loss of officers, the closure of police stations and the decimation of neighbourhood policing, she was further warned that the police service was at breaking point and could not cope. These warnings were dismissed as crying wolf.

We now have the same number of police officers as we did 30 years ago and crime has risen for the past two years. A leaked Home Office report suggests that police cuts are likely to have contributed to this increase (report, April 10).

Many of the young people killing and being killed or injured in knife attacks were not even teenagers when Mrs May became Home Secretary, but we are now reaping what she sowed in 2010. Clifford Baxter

Wareham, Dorset

sir – Nick Hurd, a Home Office minister, is quoted as saying the police are “stretched” and that he doesn’t dispute “the pressure on the front line” (report, April 9).

Policing is a fundamental service and, while more money is going into policing, it is clearly not enough. Contrast this with the aid budget – much of which is spent on projects of questionable worth – which rises automatically in line with GDP, without scrutiny.

One has to ask where the sense is in this and where the Government’s priorities lie. Cdre Malcolm Williams

Southsea, Hampshire

sir – What’s this codswallop about Glasgow teaching London how to deal with violent crime (report, April 8)?

Glasgow’s violent crime statistics only crashed because one particular shop, which provided the armoury for every tuppenny thug, stopped selling lethal weapons that did not require a firearms licence. This has still done nothing to reduce the appalling casualty figures in A&E departments after every Old Firm derby.

London, meanwhile, has seen Islamist terrorism result in police on standby night after night. As I discovered, this means that simply rummaging through your rucksack on a litter bin can result in poker-faced police officers in stab vests appearing and asking you to explain your business.

Impressed? Not as much as the newsagents and shopkeepers around London Euston and King’s Cross (who told me they had previously been easy prey for casual armed robberies), or the residents basking in the safety of walking London’s streets. Mark Boyle

Johnstone, Renfrewshire