Met Police faces lowest staffing levels in decade, says chief
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cl55jk0j2jjo
Posted by tylerthe-theatre
Met Police faces lowest staffing levels in decade, says chief
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cl55jk0j2jjo
Posted by tylerthe-theatre
12 Comments
Only going to get worse as university places reduce.
I can see them dropping the bachelors degree requirement eventually.
‘On reflection maybe we shouldn’t have offered low wages that drove away most people with other options, been institutionally racist and driven away minorities, harboured racial predators to drive away women. We may have to look at giving new recruits a free fridge magnet or something’
It’s a shit job that pays shit. No wonder they’re struggling for staff.
Why would someone get spat on, beaten or worse when they can just sit in an office all day and make the same if not better wages? If you want to hire people to deal with the worst that society has to offer then you’re going to have to pay them well.
Police perspective.
Complete failure of SLT over multiple years. Few major issues such as:
Terrible pay for the job done.
Unsocial shifts including nights.
Days off cancelled for court and events.
Frequently assaulted.
Genuine risk of injury/Mental health issues.
Seeing some truly harrowing shit.
High and demanding workload.
Constantly on guard for fear of being thrown under the bus.
Absolutely crap IT systems which make everything take 5 times longer than it should.
Having to deal with the general public who all think they can do the job better. You wouldn’t tell an electrician how to do their job or a doctor but everyone watches police interceptors and is suddenly a 20 year veteran.
You can go manage an Aldi for the same money without any of the same drawbacks. Last week I had to fish a bloated corpse out a river, I had to go into a flat with the information given to me that the man inside has a knife and seeing blood all over the floor as I went in (I was fucking shitting myself, if you want to experience it try going room to room in your house clearing it and have your partner jump out at you randomly and try to poke you, see just how fun it is).
Anyone who thinks that’s worth the pittance we get paid is off their nut.
Who’d *want* to be a copper? What are the “good parts”? Putting your life and mental health on the line every day.
The last Labour govt. has fucked us over once again, hey?
Don’t help when all the police look like 5 foot nerds
I’d love to be a police officer! If I wasn’t 7000 miles away I’d sign up in an instant.
Had the opportunity to speak to a couple of coppers recently about this. The number of officers they said were on duty, total, for the borough that night was alarmingly low.
They also said that the last decade of cuts to “back-office staff” had been crippling because they are the people who help build cases.
In addition officers who have special skills, like policing protests, are apparently seconded to those duties so often it disrupts staffing in their home boroughs.
They said they often feel like apologising to members of the public for the state of the service. I offered my sympathies for the position they’ve been put in by the government cuts, for what that was worth.
So yeah, that’s why so many lower-end crimes fall by the wayside I guess. Tories trying to do a(nother) key public service on the cheap for ideological reasons.
Well, for starters, they need to stop discriminating against white people with DEI And racial quotes.
Fixing that will probably sort out some of the morale issues then just let them do some actual police Work, instead of targeting people for saying things online!
All I ever wanted to be was a police officer. Literally wasted years trying to get in and dealing with multiple cancelled intakes due to the recession. Looking for a way in, I finally joined as a special constable, and my word, what an eye opener. A truly awful job in every sense of the word.
If only we had a Tory govt these last 14 years, you know the party of law and order. We’d be in a much better state….. What???? We HAVE had a Tory government?!?!
The Tories have failed utterly on even areas that they are supposed to be strong. Such a failure of a party