50 signatures reached
To: Home Office
Stop the cuts to the police
Stop cutting the number of police officers and police staff in our country. We are already at tipping point and even more will send us into a downward spiral which we cannot control.
Why is this important?
The British state will no longer be able adequately to protect the public from criminals and the growing threat of homegrown terrorists if the Conservatives push through their plans to cut further into police numbers.
The coalition has already slashed the police budget by around 26% over the last five years, at a cost of 35,000 officers, and has signaled its intention to maintain that rate of cuts.
New figures from the House of Commons library show that if Tory spending cuts announced in last year’s autumn statement – which would lead to public spending falling to just 35% of GDP – were applied equally across un-ringfenced departments, they would lead to the loss of 29,900 police officers and 6,700 community support officers by 2019/20, bringing the ratio of officers to population to its LOWEST level since records began.
David Cameron says "But crime has fallen". I think you will find "Recorded Crime" has fallen. This is because of a loss of faith in the police by the public to report crime, officers managing to tactically write a job off as their workload is already piled sky high and with response times dropping massively the incident is normally done and dusted before an officer is ever on scene. The police rely on metal "Operation in progress" signs instead of physically patrolling an area as they don't have the resources. Villages at left in harms way with a response of 20 minutes at times due to shutting local police stations and removing the community's sense of being "safe". Unpaid special constables are being relied on to back up the front line, they are merely paving over the cracks as they are under-trained.
The police is at breaking point, stop the cuts, before its too late.
