David Blunkett: Criminal damage as coalition axemen recklessly target the thin blue line

LAST Thursday, I was campaigning for Labour in the Barnsley Central by-election. I had the good fortune to meet the parents of a young woman who had applied for – and won – a place as an officer with West Yorkshire Police.

She was understandably delighted, as it was all she had ever wanted to do in life. But her delight turned to disappointment as the force, faced with mammoth cuts imposed on it by central government, told her that it was imposing a recruitment freeze this year.

That young woman is just one of the casualties of the Tory / Lib Dem coalition’s incredible disregard for the safety of our communities. It isn’t just about the numbers. Astonishingly, Government tell is that their 20 PER CENT reduction in spending on the police service will not affect public protection.

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This comes after years of (quite legitimately) arguing that we needed to put more police on our streets and invest in the back-up and support services that would allow trained and uniformed officers to do the job for which they were recruited in the first place.

As Home Secretary, I was proud to increase the service in England and Wales by 15,000 uniformed officers – and to introduce Police Community Support Officers, which provided that visibility on the streets and that relief so that the police could investigate and detect crime and, of course, arrest and prosecute the perpetrators.

Much of that progress now appears to be going into reverse.

Across the four forces that serve Yorkshire and the Humber, there is a projected loss of some 775 uniformed officers and the dismissal of 1,570 support staff.

It isn’t simply that we’ll be losing that neighbourhood policing – or that Nick Clegg will once again be breaking a pledge he made in opposition (this time the claim that his party were committed to 3,000 extra police officers).

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No. It’s much more about what will happen behind the scenes – and the devastating effect this will have on the remaining uniformed officers trying to do their job.

The modern police service depends on a high degree of technical and forensic expertise.

Putting powder on the door handles of burgled homes or retrieving telephone numbers from the local exchange are a thing of the past. We now have forensic science at its best – trained officers who specialise in particular areas, such as e-crime (the most rapidly growing form of crime, in cyberspace, with fraud and deception costing the nation billions).

And, yes, we’re talking about those developing knowledge in areas such as domestic violence, child abuse and counter-terrorism.

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So there is a combination of specialist, non-uniformed, often civilian officers, working with and providing support to those uniformed staff that we want to see on our streets. Scene of Crime officers; analysts; computer experts; and the much-maligned administrative staff who relieve trained officers of routine duties – all face the axe.

That is why Theresa May should have fought much harder with the Treasury for funds to maintain our police service. Goodness knows how David Cameron took his eye off the ball.

Meanwhile, it appears that Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats have reverted to their old antagonisms against providing security for the public.

Once again, we have the Lib Dems blithering on about how dangerous CCTV is, whilst most of our communities clamour for effective and carefully utilised technological ways of keeping us safe on our streets.

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The threat to our well-being comes from criminals, not from modern, technologically-advanced policing methods. The victims are just that, the victims of crime. It’s not the perpetrators and their rights that should be at the top of our list of concerns.

The nub of it all is that, just at the moment when unemployment is soaring and despair amongst the one in five young people who are out of a job or training is at its worst, the coalition is cutting one pound in every five currently going to the police service in our region.

Yes, we can recruit more volunteers to become special constables. We can work together to be more vigilant and help the police by being active citizens in our own cause.

But we could have done it a lot better were the police service not to be devastated, the progress made undermined and the promises broken.

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For a Conservative-led government, this is really extraordinary stuff. Who would have expected that this of all governments would’ve been the one to pull the plug?

What makes it worse is that the Communities Secretary, Eric Pickles, is revelling in the enormous cuts being made to local government services. They include funding for community safety, including the PCSOs and wardens who have supplemented and underpinned the work of the police.

All in all, the only people cheering are those on the wrong side of the law. And that has to be bad for us all.

David Blunkett is the Labour MP for Sheffield Brightside and Hillsborough. he was Home Secretary from 2001-05.