What’s happening with local policing?
There’s a lot of stuff on the Essex Police website at the moment.
The number of officers has been cut:
?By December 2011, Essex Police had reduced the number of police officer posts by 187 and the number of police staff posts (including PCSOs) by 484 across the organisation. Some of the work historically undertaken by police staff was directly involved in the progress of investigations, and this work is now shared between the remaining staff and officers. The budget cuts faced by forces across the country are unprecedented, and reductions in officer and staff numbers can never be ?pain free?. However, Essex Police continues to monitor and review every aspect of our organisational processes with a view to delivering the most efficient and effective performance possible.”
One of the new approaches is ‘borderless policing’ (doing away with ‘borders’ between different parts of Essex, so that patrol cars go to different parts of Essex as needed)
?One of the key changes introduced in the Blueprint was the concept of borderless policing, and this will continue. The Force Control Room will continue to risk assess incidents and allocate the nearest available and appropriate police resource to respond. This is the true meaning of borderless policing. In March 2012, three Local Policing Areas (LPAs) were created, and senior officers in each of these LPAs will continue to manage and drive our response to crime and Anti-Social Behaviour.
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?As part of borderless policing, Response and Patrol officers begin and end their shift duty at a particular ?hub? station. However, once they are on duty, these officers will spend most of their time on the road responding to incidents as they occur, and as directed by the Force Control Room.”
Meanwhile the Echo reports that we have a new police inspector for our district:
A NEW police inspector has taken over in Rochford district….and has burglars, shoplifters and graffiti taggers firmly in his sights.
Insp Jeff Appleby is hoping to use his 28 years of experience to tackle key issues in Rayleigh, Rochford, and Hockley.
He had previously worked as Shoebury?s neighbourhood inspector, before spending two years planning transportation for the Olympics.
He takes over from Inspector Chris Higgins, who had only been in the post since March, and is now moving to neighbourhood policing in north Essex……
Chris,
Your comments are a little out-of-date. The police have just moved their AIT (Area Investigation teams) back to local control. This is a major U turn from their “Blueprint” and reflects low crime solving rates.
As part of the changes, PCs are being taken from Neighbourhood Policing. So Rayleigh and Hullbridge have been merged with just a single PC and 3 PCSOs. Hockley/Hawkwell has been merged with Rochford with a single (new) PC and 2 PCSOs. The Police also state very clearly that the PCs will NOT be dedicated to their ‘beats’.
PCSOs will now be the public, proactive face of the police force, as it turns increasingly in to a reactive organisation. That may be OK if clear-up rates improve dramatically but if crime rates worsen, as the result of fewer officers on the streets, then the current spiral of decline will worsen.
These problems are largely the result of Government imposed budget cuts and there are still large personnel reductions to come. The outlook is not positive and this makes the forthcoming elections on 15th November for the new role of Police Commissioner even more important. Nominations close tomorrow (8 Oct)but it looks as if there will 8 candidates; 4 party representatives and 4 independents. I hope everyone will look very carefully at what the candidates have to offer.
Well the quote from the Essex Police was lifted off their website today!
Re the Police Commisioner Elections , we will be looking at them later !