Where will funding come from for more armed officers?

SOUTH Yorkshire Police should be increasing its firearms capacity – but will need Government funding to do this.

That’s the message from Neil Bowles, Chairman of South Yorkshire Police Federation who thinks there should be more authorised firearms officers in force to be prepared to respond to a terrorist attack.

But wonders where they will come from.

Mr Bowles said: “We would like to increase our firearms capability, but this is another of the smoke and mirrors that are coming out of Government…where’s the money?

“The Government have promised new money but we haven’t seen any, so until they do, the Chief Constable is not going to commit to training x amount of officers to become AFOs to the detriment of other policing areas.”

News has emerged this month that the Metropolitan Police is to increase the number of its armed officers by 600. Reports are that these officer will cost £25m of the extra £34m that the Home Office has made available for an increase in nationwide firearms capacity.

Mr Bowles added: “Our local policing teams are now so short of staff that we can’t afford to have people taken off that to go and be AFOs unless there’s new money to back fill them.”

National Police Chiefs’ Council Lead for Armed Policing, Deputy Chief Constable Simon Chesterman said individual chief constables and commissioners will take decisions about the number of armed officers required in their force.

He said that these officers “are carefully selected and I am confident in their ability to protect the public.”

DCC Chesterman added: “We constantly review how we would respond to terrorist incidents so that we are prepared to respond to the latest threats. Following the terrorist attacks in Paris in November 2015, as you would expect we closely examined the incident and our ability to respond to a similar attack in the UK, including the numbers of armed police officers available.

“Individual chief constables and commissioners will take decisions about the number of armed officers required in their force. Nationally we are working with all police forces and the armed services to build our capacity at a national level to respond to a well organised, multi-sited terrorist attack in the UK.”