This evening, Wednesday January 11, I watched the local BBC SE Today news. I was dismayed to hear about the generally poor morale of police officers in the SE Region including Sussex, Surrey, and Kent.
Much of this is about poor pay and a general decline in their conditions of service. However, sadly it also reflects the lack of political support and the constant media sniping that the police service has suffered in recent years leading to a loss of public confidence. I joined Sussex Police in June 1978 at a time when police pay was considered to be poor. Officers were leaving in their hundreds across the country for very similar reasons. This led to the Edmund Davies report which recognized the unique position of police officers in terms of the restrictions placed on their private lives which included the fact that they did not enjoy the same ability to withdraw their labour as other workers did and still do.
This led to a considerable improvement in police pay and their general conditions of service. We were told that the situation that existed prior to Lord Edmund Davies reporting would never occur again. Indeed, this was the case until relatively recently. During more recent times, successive governments under the leadership, if you can call it that, of David Cameron and Theresa May, when she was Home Secretary and then Prime Minister, have sought to undermine and demoralize the police service. Numbers of officers were cut by over 20,000 nationally. Police pay has been whittled away and terms and conditions of service made far less attractive. The extent of this we are told is that some officers are actually having to live in their vehicles or with their parents and that there are foodbanks being set up in police stations for officers to utilise. Yes, things are as bad as that!
We now know this is the case because of a survey conducted by the Police Federation. It also reveals that up to a fifth of officers in the SE Region are intent on leaving policing within the coming 12 months. This comes as no surprise to people like me. I have been writing and commenting in interviews with the media for some time now, that despite the government’s recruitment drive to achieve an additional 20,000 officers to replace those lost due to austerity cuts, officers are leaving in droves, a considerable number with fewer than two years of service.
So what is Katy Bourne our Tory Sussex police and crime commissioner doing about all of this? Well, as far as I can see, like many of her colleagues across the country together with chief police officers and politicians, very little! Sadly, they all seem to be content to allow the police service to sleepwalk towards a nightmare situation where at its worst our streets will simply no longer be policed. Believe me, this is already the case in some areas.
We all have a duty to recognise that this situation now prevails and do our utmost to ensure that we lobby councillors, MPs, and police and crime commissioners and get them to act as soon as possible to put this situation right. Sadly, in my experience, it takes the death of a police officer on duty to stir the public into realizing just how essential our police service is. Please act now before that happens again!
Image Credits: Police library .
I am not a Police man but know a number professionally . Its my understanding that a large part of the low morale is because the Govt reduced and reduced the numbers of Police nationally over a decade or more so that those who remain don’t have the man( person) power to do a proper Job .
The recruitment drive much vaunted by Boris J when PM hasn’t gone well either .