The bedrock of community policing is under threat, ministers have been warned, as one of Britain’s biggest police forces drafted in specialist units to help solve everyday crime.
Detectives from Greater Manchester police’s serious and organised crime unit have been deployed to tackle a huge backlog of non-urgent cases that have built up since the Manchester Arena bombing.
The force, which has lost a fifth of its workforce since 2010, is understood to have moved assistant chief constables away from its headquarters and on to divisions as part of a two-week “Team GMP” scheme, in an attempt to ease the pressure on community policing.
Ian Hopkins, chief constable of GMP, had previously warned that Britain’s third biggest force has been under “real strain” since the terror attack that killed 22 people and injured 250 others on 22 May.
The force said on Tuesday that five officers a day would be dispatched from its serious and organised crime unit, which usually deals with gang violence, robbery and drug dealers, to tackle a backlog of smaller cases. Other elite divisions are also helping to lift the load.
Vanessa Jardine, an assistant chief constable at GMP, said: “Over the next two weeks, we’re running a forcewide operation to support frontline staff in meeting the demand.
“People from across the force, including those from specialist divisions, are responding to the significant demand that we’re seeing on policing from local communities.”
Figures released by Hopkins in June showed that by March 2020 the force will have 24% fewer employees than March 2010: a bigger cut than the England and Wales average. In March 2010 GMP’s workforce numbered 13,189. Ten years on that figure is projected to be down to just 10,108.
Numbers of officers will be down 1,800 over the decade to 6,348, according to figures from Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary. As of March, GMP had 6,297 officers, down from 8,148 six years ago and a figure Hopkins described in the aftermath of the arena bombing as “the lower end of reasonable”.
Senior officers point out that Greater Manchester has seen an increase of 2,500 registered sex offenders in the region since 2010, plus the increased threat of terrorism as well as key priorities in serious and organised crime, cybercrime and the recent Spice epidemic that has ravaged the city’s homeless community.
In the same time the force has shed 500 neighbourhood police officers, which has seen response times to grade two level crimes – where officers should attend within the hour – fall by 20%, so the target is being met in 58% of cases, according to senior officers.
Jim McMahon, the MP for Oldham West and Royton, described the level of police resources as “absolutely desperate” and said his constituents were losing faith in GMP’s ability to tackle crime – but stressed the force was not to blame.
The Labour MP said his neighbour had called the police earlier this week when their car was stolen but no officer turned up. The possible suspect was spotted again loitering in neighbouring gardens in the early hours on Tuesday, McMahon said, and the police were called again but no officers turned up.
“It’s absolutely desperate out there,” he said. “The public are losing confidence but this is not the fault of the police in Greater Manchester – the coppers here do a good job – it’s really a dire situation. Incrementally, we’ve got to a position which is just not tenable.”
Tony Lloyd, the Labour MP for Rochdale and a former police and crime commissioner, said the cuts were threatening the bedrock of community policing. “Like police forces up and down Britain, but to a greater extent in this region, GMP has been hard hit by systematic government cuts. They’ve lost a quarter of police officers and that’s bound to have an impact,” he said.
“We’re a city that’s had to cope with two sizeable demonstrations recently on the back of the Manchester bomb and that’s bound to take its toll. When you speak to ordinary police officers many are working extremely long hours and you can only get so far by cancelling people’s rest days and taking them off regular duties.
“Community policing does matter, it’s the bedrock of policing, and if you take that away then you’re beginning to unwind the policing-by-consent model that’s served this country well for many decades.
“The numbers game, in the end, does matter. As many have said, it’s time to recognise that the government has gone too far.”
