I knew that cuts would be coming but not necessarily this financial year - things must be really bad. A extra 10% hit to an already non existent overtime budget means there is less than 2 hours per officer available each month.
The main savings will be made by scrapping civilian staff posts, those individuals will be deployed elsewhere within the force. Who will be back filling their jobs?, who but my team officers from the front line shift, which means less time off all round to maintain minimum staffing levels on normal working days. It's all to do with different budgets and police officer numbers having to be maintained.
I fully expect rostered days off to be cancelled with more than 15 days notice to save cash too. Not a good week you understand to be hearing advertisements about the Policing Pledge on the radio and watching them on TV. How much money is this all costing? Alright it might be Home Office money but I think they may have been better off channelling this towards improving visibility on the streets and not just promising it. That 80% patrol promise is only for community teams anyway. I worked on community and believe me that's an empty promise. If they were not red circled you just get the feeling up above would like to sacrifice a few PCSO's at 25k a pop.
The bosses are now pushing cash savings and not arrests alongside other targets. The dreaded hand over of prisoners between shift officers to save a few pennies can't be too far away. I've even heard one budget holder talking of bringing his cars in early on the last night shift to avoid the risk of overtime payments into rest days.
I'm not saying the police per se should be immune to cuts. We have grown fat under NuLabor like most in the public sector, but maybe we should be looking at some of the non jobs in existence. We don't tend to have them at the lowest levels.
Meanwhile the CID will carry on as normal, " You can't put a price on justice Bruv !! "
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