Criminals are getting away with their offences as a result of there aren’t sufficient bobbies on the beat, says Home Secretary
Criminals are getting away with their offences because there aren’t enough bobbies on the beat, the Home Secretary said yesterday.
Yvette Cooper warned victims no longer believed police would turn up amid dwindling numbers of officers on the streets.
In her first major speech to police chiefs, the minister said ‘too often people fear that no one will come and nothing will be done’ when they report a crime.
She suggested ‘policing has not returned to our streets’ since the austerity cuts to forces a decade ago, revealing that the number of people who never see an officer on the street has doubled.
Yesterday she promised to rebuild neighbourhood policing, saying even after 200,000 extra officers were recruited during the last Government, the streets are still largely empty.
Shoplifting is at a record high, muggings are up 40 per cent and town centres ‘feel unsafe’, she added.
The latest Crime Survey for England and Wales shows the proportion of people who never see an officer on the street has rocketed from 27 per cent in 2009-2010 to 54 per cent in 2023-24.
Ms Cooper told the National Police Chiefs Council conference: ‘Even after the previous government reversed the reduction in the overall number of officers, policing has not returned to our streets.
Pictured: Yvette Cooper addressing the joint annual conference of National Police Chiefs’ Council and Association of Police and Crime Commissioners at the QEII Centre, London
Criminals are getting away with their offences because there aren’t enough bobbies on the beat, the Home Secretary said yesterday
There are still fewer officers in neighbourhood teams, the proportion of the public who say they never see an officer on the beat has doubled, and the number of PCSOs has halved.
‘Little wonder then that the types of crimes and conduct that neighbourhood policing used to tackle have soared.
‘Shop theft is at a record high, street theft is up 40 per cent in a year.
‘Town centres are too often blighted with persistent antisocial behaviour, leaving residents feeling unsafe.
‘Criminals – often organised gangs – are just getting away with it. We cannot stand for this.’
She described a ‘perfect storm’ in policing over the last decade with ‘visible neighbourhood policing decimated in communities’, crime ‘evolving at breakneck speed and policing struggling to keep pace with fewer crimes solved’ and ‘governance systems failing to prevent abuse by rogue officers’.
In a damning indictment, the Home Secretary claimed officers were stuck behind desks battling bureaucracy instead of solving crimes and said policing is being held back by outdated technology, with the Police National Computer now 50 years old.
She added: ‘The result is that at present, our police officers cannot do the job they signed up for in the way they want to, and cannot deliver for the public as they should.
Labour has been unable to say where the extra officers are coming from, admitting some will be redeployed from existing ranks and others will be new recruits. Pictured: Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer at Parque Lage, Rio de Janeiro, as he attends the G20 summit in Brazil
‘Leaving our precious tradition of policing by consent in peril. Leaving victims and communities feeling let down.
‘I’m not prepared for us to carry on like this. Our police officers deserve better, and the public deserve better.’
Earlier this year, the Government pledged to deploy 13,000 more neighbourhood police, PCSOs and special constables to patrol communities.
But Labour has been unable to say where the extra officers are coming from, admitting some will be redeployed from existing ranks and others will be new recruits.
Ms Cooper was also unwilling to set out a definitive timeframe for the reforms saying only it will take time to get more bobbies on the beat ‘over the next few years.’
