Latest figures released by the Mayor of London show that 463 police officers have been cut in Westminster, a drop of 28% since May 2010. The latest figures show that despite the Mayor’s pledge to increase police numbers, the opposite is happening on his watch. The cut in police officers comes after criticism of the Mayor’s new Local Policing Model which Murad Qureshi AM argues is eroding neighbourhood policing in the borough.
The number of borough-based police officers in Westminster has dropped from 1628 in May 2010 to 1165 in January 2014. Across London, the number of police officers has declined by 3,111 (9%).
Murad Qureshi AM, London wide Assembly, said:
“Despite promising us there would be one thousand more police officers in London, the truth is the Mayor has failed to deliver. We have lost over 3,000 police officers in London. In Westminster we have lost 463 police officers and 292 PCSOs. The Mayor has already admitted that there may be flaws in his new community policing plan; the HMIC has reported that the Met now has the third lowest visibility of officers in the country. The Mayor needs to act on his promise and get officers into our neighbourhoods.”
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Notes
- Murad Qureshi AM is a Labour London wide Assembly Member.
- The statistics for policewere taken from the Mayor’s datastore, see http://data.london.gov.uk/datastore/package/metropolitan-police-service-recorded-crime-figures-and-associated-data
- At a policing plenary on 5th March, the Mayor admitted that ‘there may be unintended consequences of the Local Policing Model that are leading to problems on borough boundaries’. At the same meeting, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner Bernard Hogan-Howe confirmed that he would be reviewing the model in the coming months. The transcript can be found on page 12 here.