Constantly Criticising The Police Isn’t Right

“NOT only are officers working their backsides off, but they feel like they’ve been criticised constantly for doing so.”

South Yorkshire Police Federation Chair Steve Kent was commenting on the pressure police officers are feeling at the moment.

He was reacting to an article by PFEW Chair John Apter, who said that “no matter what happens within society, the finger of blame always leads itself towards policing, before the facts are known”.

The police have been attacked by the media in connection with several recent high-profile events, including the Plymouth shootings.

Steve said: “The drip effect of this is enormous. It’s constant. The media jumps to quick conclusions, that policing has done this, policing has done that. The horrendous situation in Plymouth and the first questions are not the actions of the man, it’s the actions of the policing authorities and criticising the process in terms of that.

“It’s constant and it becomes tedious. It’s always so easy to kick and attack the police without being cognisant of all the hard work that our officers do day in and day out, and it has a massive negative effect.

“Cops read the papers, cops read social media. They look at all this and they’re just fed up of it, because not only are they working their backsides off but they feel like they’ve been criticised constantly for doing so. It’s just not right. It’s about time everybody gave us a bit of a break.”

In his article – which you can read here https://www.polfed.org/news/latest-news/2021/policing-under-the-pressure-of-current-events/ – John Apter also calls on the Government to increase police numbers to make sure that officers can be fully proactive to protect the public and are not constantly “chasing their tails”.