The Metropolitan police commissioner has said it is “incredible to think” that the force she runs is being asked to save hundreds of millions of pounds more and warned it would make it harder to fight crime.
Cressida Dick told reporters it would be “incredibly demanding” for the Met to find £400m more in annual savings on top of the £600m a year of cuts it had already made.
She added: “I find it incredible to think that anybody would think that over the next four or five years we should lose that much extra out of our budget.”
Dick accepted the force could be more productive and said she would continue to fight the financial squeeze with evidence “as strongly as I possibly can”.
Her remarks came as a number of public figures complained about the prospect of further funding cuts. London’s Labour mayor, Sadiq Khan, is opposed to a funding squeeze on the Met, coming at a time of rising violent crime and heightened terrorist threat.
On Monday, Dick’s deputy, Craig Mackey, said the budget squeeze could mean officer numbers falling to 27,500, 4,000 officers fewer than now.
The government will deliver its budget next month and is trying to assess growing demands from a number of police chiefs who say they need more money to tackle crime.
Privately, police chiefs across the country say their forces are having to become reactive – responding to emergency calls and crimes reported to them.
What is being dropped is preventive work and the building of community links, actions whose results are hard to measure but which are believed to have contributed to years of falling crime.
Dick said: “There is a risk that we will have to be less proactive and less in the prevention sphere and more in the enforcement sphere.”
One of Dick’s big ideas when she became commissioner was more emphasis on prevention asa strategy to reverse the trend of rising violent crime. She feels the budget pressures, leading to the loss of officers, puts that in jeopardy.
For now, on issues such as moped crime, the Met is using new tactics, such as using a special chemical spray to identify suspects.
The new tactics have contributed to a 24% fall in moped-enabled crime from June to September 2017, following sharp rises for the preceding two years.
Undercover officers deployed in moped crime hotspots or uniformed officers will fire the invisible spray at suspects, who can later be identified under an ultraviolet light.
In one case a suspect changed his clothes thinking he would avoid detection but managed to smear it over his face.
Supt Mark Payne said: “It’s a spray officers use to spray offenders with an invisible identifying liquid that is very hard to remove. They spray it at the offender at the time the offence is being committed or shortly afterwards.
“The spray adheres to the offender and the bike. We can then attribute the bike and the offender to that particular crime at that particular time and place.”
Crimes committed by youngsters riding mopeds are so lucrative that thieves were practising swiping mobile phones at speed, before setting out to steal for real, Payne said.
He said Apple iPhones were the target in two-thirds of thefts, followed by Samsung Galaxies. Youths behind the thefts could make £2,000 an hour by getting £200 per phone they steal.
The crime spree is being driven by a market in spare phone parts, with some youths, all male, in some cases stealing makes of phone to order.
Police are also using new lighter, more agile, motorbikes to pursue suspects and special remotely controlled spikes on the road to burst tyres of stolen mopeds being used to stage crimes sprees.
Dick said: “I think we are stemming the rise but I want sustained reductions.”
The commissioner added: “I have been clear that tackling violence is my priority. I was angered by the apparent perception among some criminals that they could operate with near impunity, committing strings of offences using scooters.”
