POLICE pay does not currently reflect the difficult and dangerous job officers do, South Yorkshire Police Federation has said.<\/p>\n
Chair Steve Kent said the dangers that officers face on a daily basis must be reflected in the amount of money they take home every month.<\/p>\n
He said: \u201cPeople may look at the figures of top-rate constables and draw a conclusion on that, but in reality, there is no job in this country, frontline-wise, which is as dangerous as policing.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe sadly see officers lose their lives in the line of duty. We sadly see officers who are assaulted literally on a week-by-week basis in our own force, so that\u2019ll be replicated across the country.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd also you\u2019ve got the constant risk that your decision making or your trying to do the very best is going to go under scrutiny and you\u2019re going to end up in a courtroom, in the hands of the Independent Office for Police Conduct.\u201d<\/p>\n
Steve (pictured) said officers are operating under a \u2018constant fear of litigation and a constant fear of scrutiny\u2019.<\/p>\n
He added: \u201cSo when you talk about pay under these conditions, you need to understand what our members are dealing with. Currently police pay is just not good enough to reflect that.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s the thing with policing, a lot of the public think we go out there and just arrest shoplifters and stop speeders \u2013 there\u2019s a real misconception about that.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are, essentially, security for the country. We are a backup to the NHS. We\u2019re also quasi-solicitors because of the case files that we have to write and prepare. We are so multi-skilled and we have so much pressure on us that I don\u2019t think we\u2019re paid anywhere near enough for what we do, and I\u2019ve always been outspoken about that.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said compared to police colleagues across the western world, UK pay is among the lowest. He added: \u201cThere are very few countries in the G12, I believe, who are lower paid than what we are.\u201d<\/p>\n