What Has Happened To The Old Bill?

[ToraToraTora]

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/add5defe-335f-11ec-a1f1-3deca2439cf5?shareToken=70f1e03881bb5d5267f4f295eaac3dc2

[dannyk13]

It's become the inefficient new bill.

[jno]

their numbers were run down and have yet to be made up again?

[sanmac]

There's really not too much sense in hiring more police if they don't do any actual policing.

[douglas9401]

All the burly, steely-eyed ones are up in Glasgow protecting the great and the good at COP-26, the global jamboree for democrats, dictators and despots.

I'd like to give a personal vote of thanks for their sterling work in closing main roads through the city, including the Clydeside Expressway, lest an incident occurs involving those most important people.

The rest of us just have to suck it up and sit in the jams while nothing of value is achieved.

[royfromaus]

Very Keystone compared to what I remember of them during the miners strike.

https://twitter.com/themetskipper/status/1452201911273365505

[Gromit]

Upon being elected in 2010, an idiot called Cameron sacked 23,000 police personnel.
Then he introduced Police and Crime Commissioners, effectively politicising the police. The PCCs followed the Governments’ austerity orders and decimated the ability of the Police to do their job.
Now if you want to report a crime you are directed to a website. If you need help, they tell you to post on FaceBook.

[sevenOP]

It got extended again, with great jovial, unrepresentative democratic aplomb:

[davebro]

They are bunch of wussies - "Tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime." PMSL (not forgetting our non-functioning, ineffective courts of course!)

[jno]

that was Blair's slogan. It was Cameron and May who cut police numbers.

[gulliver1]

Gromit 14.31. "Upon being elected in 2010, an Idiot called Cameron sacked 23,000 Police personell ".
Upon being elected in 2019 along came a bigger idiot called Johnson who promised to put 20,000 Police back on the streets but he never did
..Just another one Boris's lies ,.... that people believed in......Suckers!

[youngmafbog]

//"Upon being elected in 2010, an Idiot called Cameron sacked 23,000 Police personell ".//

Utter rubbish, why do you have to mis use facts all the time? All you do is undermine the real issues.

Police numbers were dropped from circa 140K in 2010 down to 120K in around 2016 although this was not across the board and some forces actually increased.

The real problem though is not the number of Police Officers but the number of effective Police Officers. Front Line numbers have been dropping in the main rather than back room/top officers and that is the problem.

Too much time is spent chasing nasty things written on Twitter, too much time is taken on paper work that takes front line off couple this with dire Management from some Senior Officers who openly state they are not upholding certain laws and we are in the situation we are in.

[youngmafbog]

Gully, you really should get your facts straight before spouting nonsense.

Police numbers have been increasing over the past couple of years. Unless you are Diane Abbott you will realise you cant just take an additional 20K of officers into the Force just like that. They need proper training and that takes time and there are not an infinite (means they are limited) number of places available on the training sessions.

[Peter Pedant]

Nothing
Jeremy C didnt get any service
what is new about that

shouldda viddied them.

lordy lordy - empathy is dead - you have to have it happen to yourself before action - in this case writing about it

[Peter Pedant]

oh dar you seem to have touched a very raw nerve
too-shay - end of as you might say yourself !

[gulliver1]

11.27 ,Take your blinkers off YMB , and stop spouting nonsense yourself, Ok! .

[jno]

you will realise you cant just take an additional 20K of officers into the Force just like that

and that's why you don't just cut numbers, leave them depleted for a while, then have to start over with new ones. Did nobody in the government think of this in advance? Of course not - they didn't plan to replace them at all; it never occurred to them that fewer police would swiftly lead to more crime: quelle surprise!

[dannyk13]

Gulliver, take your blnkers off for a moment to read this:-
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/police-officer-uplift-quarterly-update-to-june-2021/police-officer-uplift-england-and-wales-quarterly-update-to-30-june-2021

[Paul22118]

As a retired police officer of thirty plus years service, this is my opinion. Society wants proper, firm, honest service. MOST officers give this but the senior strata has changed and is pandering to pc issues. I am all for proper policing but it is not the same today from when I knew it. You will always get the police service that is asked for not desired.

[dannyk13]

Paul//it is not the same today from when I knew it.//
Nor when I knew it either. Some of the blame lies with the accelerated promotion scheme which resulted in senior officers who had never 'walked the streets'.

[Gromit]

At the election Boris pledged 20,000 extra Police. But there was a catch. Not immediately. So two and a half years after the election we have got 10,000 to replace the 20,000+ cut since 2010.

// The population of England and Wales is estimated to have gone up by around 3.5 million people since 2010. //

So if officer numbers returned to the exact levels they reached in 2010, there would still be fewer per head of population.

// Other parts of the service like police staff, PCSOs and special constables have also seen their numbers fall significantly since 2010.

The total police workforce – including officers and all those other categories of people – has actually fallen from 245,000 in March 2010 to just over 202,000 in March 2019 – a fall of more than 40,000 people. //

So if we hired 20,000 more police officers but no other members of the police family, total police workforce numbers would still be considerably down on 2010.