Time For Proper Investment In Police Service

POLICING needs to have proper financial investment to reverse a worrying increase in crime figures.

That is the view of South Yorkshire Police Federation Chairman Steve Kent, who was speaking after the publication of the latest crime statistics.

The latest Office of National Statistics figures reveal there has been a 13% increase in violent crime in the region from 2017 to 2018. Drug offences are also up 16%.

Steve said the increases were not surprising given the swingeing cuts policing has had to endure over the past decade.

He said: “It’s an inevitability of having officers cut and budgets cut, but there just needs to be a wholesale change in attitude from central Government.

“Policing needs to be reinvested in and, as with knife crime, our partner agencies need to have some investment as well.

“If we can all work together on it then it will hopefully change the landscape. But we need to see a massive investment in policing and to go back to the old days of the old funding, which I think the public now would broadly support and want.”

However, the fear remains that the Government will continue to play politics with policing, Steve added.

“They need to be [investing] billions not millions from the bottom upwards,” he said.