CUTS to officer numbers in South Yorkshire are to blame for a rise in violent crime, police leaders have said.<\/p>\n
Steve Kent, Chair of South Yorkshire Police Federation, and Police and Crime Commissioner Dr Alan Billings have said that the loss of hundreds of officers has left people getting away with crime.<\/p>\n
Steve said: \u201cIf you lose a third of your force, the effect is going to be that people get away with more crime and that sort of crime is more prevalent on the streets, there are fewer officers to go out there and tackle them. Unfortunately the Government has to share the responsibility for that.\u201d<\/p>\n
South Yorkshire Police currently has around 2,370 police officers.<\/p>\n
Steve called for officer numbers to return to pre-austerity levels, which in South Yorkshire was around 3,500, to enable officers to be proactive in fighting crime again, instead of \u201cjust chasing our tails\u201d.<\/p>\n
The Government has recently announced another 20,000 officers will be recruited to redress the balance.<\/p>\n
Steve said: \u201cTo be fair to our command team, as well as the proportion of the 20,000 new police officers we\u2019ll be getting, we\u2019d already sort of earmarked enough [new] officers, between 200 and 300.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s about numbers, investment and establishment. There also needs to be investment in our partner agencies as well because we\u2019re having to plug the gaps from our partner agencies in terms of mental health, ambulance incidents and health matters. We\u2019re not only chasing our own tails, we seem to be chasing everybody else\u2019s as well.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere needs to be a fundamental long-term investment to get everything back up to line, to give us the resources that we need. Obviously with those officers, officers will need the equipment, traffic cars will need to be purchased for that department and so on. It\u2019s just a massive sea change that we need in funding.\u201d<\/p>\n
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