Cable Forum - View Single Post - Hampshire police force shedding 1400 staff

MovedGoalPosts · 10-09-2010, 16:46

A rather generalised, and biased opinion there.

Simple question. Would you want a job where at any time of the day or night (depending on your shift pattern) you could be sent somewhere where some drugged up idiot is threatening you with a knife and all you've got is a stab vest, batton, and spray for defence (and the latter won't stop someone on drugs, and they are unlikely to feel the pain of being struck by the batton), or being sent to clear up the mess of a fatal car crash involving kids, or .......

The point isn't that the regular police officer is overpaid, but perhaps that the military personnel are underpaid.

But we digress as this thread is about cuts to police force manpower. We know that the books need to be balanced. We know that some tough choices have to be made. What we don't know is how much fat there is still left that can be trimmed away before realistically the services can no longer meet the needs or expectations of the public. Certainly in Surrey (one of the smaller forces), they've been whinging for years that the grants are inadequate relative to those received by other forces, and they've thus been cutting back for years. They already have poilice office counters staffed entirely by volunteers (Cobham), community speed watch using volunteers with radar guns and such like, all things that I would have expected to be dealt with by employed staff. Even so there still seem to be many committees and working groups for this that and the other of which I wonder how many people are really achieving anything?

One wonders if the Hampshire proposals are just the edge of the thin blue line becoming a strand that is ready to snap?

10-09-2010, 16:46	#13
MovedGoalPosts Inactive Join Date: Jun 2003 Location: 127.0.0.1 Age: 61 Posts: 15,868	re: Hampshire police force shedding 1400 staff A rather generalised, and biased opinion there. Simple question. Would you want a job where at any time of the day or night (depending on your shift pattern) you could be sent somewhere where some drugged up idiot is threatening you with a knife and all you've got is a stab vest, batton, and spray for defence (and the latter won't stop someone on drugs, and they are unlikely to feel the pain of being struck by the batton), or being sent to clear up the mess of a fatal car crash involving kids, or ....... The point isn't that the regular police officer is overpaid, but perhaps that the military personnel are underpaid. But we digress as this thread is about cuts to police force manpower. We know that the books need to be balanced. We know that some tough choices have to be made. What we don't know is how much fat there is still left that can be trimmed away before realistically the services can no longer meet the needs or expectations of the public. Certainly in Surrey (one of the smaller forces), they've been whinging for years that the grants are inadequate relative to those received by other forces, and they've thus been cutting back for years. They already have poilice office counters staffed entirely by volunteers (Cobham), community speed watch using volunteers with radar guns and such like, all things that I would have expected to be dealt with by employed staff. Even so there still seem to be many committees and working groups for this that and the other of which I wonder how many people are really achieving anything? One wonders if the Hampshire proposals are just the edge of the thin blue line becoming a strand that is ready to snap?