Bobbies on beat fall by a third as violent crime doubles

ONE in three bobbies on the beat have been taken away since 2015.

More than 7,000 neighbourhood police officers have left the force or been reassigned to administrative and backoffice roles in the past three years.

Analysis of Home Office statistics by The Sunday Times found the number of bobbies on the beat fell by a third, from 23,928 in March 2015 to 16,557 in March 2018. The number of community support officers also fell by 18 per cent.

Figures released by the Office for National Statistics found that recorded incidents of violent crime in England and Wales had nearly doubled since 2015. There were 778,000 recorded incidents in 2015, compared with nearly 1.4 million in the year to March 2018.

Lord Stevens, the former commissioner of Scotland Yard, said: “If the increase in violent crime carries on escalating, you are going to get a very dangerous tipping point where there is no control, and it is a very difficult thing to bring back. I don’t think we’ve reached that point yet and, God willing, we won’t.”

The number of knife crime incidents has also increased from 26,025 in 2015 to over 40,000 in the year to March 2018. Homicides, meanwhile, rose from 539 to 736 per year in the threeyear period.

The Home Office said: “Decisions about front-line policing, and how resources are best deployed, are for chief constables and democratically accountable police and crime commissioners.”