Cuts Mean Fewer Bobbies on the Beat, Says Senior Policeman

London bobbies show their support for London's bid for the 2012 Olympic Games in London's Trafalgar Square, 06 July, 2005. . (ADRIAN DENNIS/AFP/Getty Images)

LONDON—There will be less police on the streets due to post-budget spending cuts, said a senior police chief on Tuesday.

With all government departments facing reductions of 25 per cent, Sir Hugh Orde, president of the Association of Chief Police Officers, said that as 83 per cent of the police budget is for wages, some positions would have to go. “Some services will be reduced - I think I am very clear on that.”

“Our role is to make sure they are the less critical ones, the nice-to-do things rather than the essential-to-do things,” Sir Hugh told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

“We have to make sure the building blocks of British policing – the local police service providing to local communities – is maintained but we also have to share the cake out, if you like, around the national and international responsibilities we have to police and, indeed, plan for things like the Olympics.”

The Prime Minister and the Home Secretary have refused to say that police numbers could fall.
On the same programme, the policing minister, Nick Herbert, said, “We do look to police chiefs to prioritise and protect the front line. The people’s priority is to see police officers in their communities.”

Colin Talbot, professor of public policy and management at Manchester Business School, on his whitehallwatch blog, wrote that over 70,000 jobs will be lost in the Home Office: “35,000 police officers, 4,000 community officers, nearly 20,000 police administration staff, 6,500 Home Office staff, and 4,500 from the Borders agency plus some from the smaller agencies and units.”

However, there is much debate about whether increased “bobbies on the beat” is anything more than a populist gimmick. Their visible presence reassures the public, but many police chiefs are said to believe that it is backroom staff who close most of the police work.

The BBC’s home editor, Mark Easton, points out that, for the last 50 years, police numbers went up as crime did.

 “It is only in the last 15 years that we see a period of increasing police numbers and falling crime,” he writes.

“It is impossible to know whether crime would have risen even further and faster if there hadn’t been all those extra uniforms, but the experience from 1960 to 1995 does not provide particularly compelling evidence that more officers cuts offending.

“One is not to know, for example, to what extent having more police increased the amount of overall crime they recorded,” he comments.