Ridiculous increase in council tax for police funding

[NigelGresley]

Last year the increase on our council tax bill for the police was 12%, this year it has increased by 22% !!!

I am furious with the government for cutting central funding and transferring the burden to local people. But at the same time wondering whether our police force is really cutting its cloth accordingly.

Anyone else seen such huge increases?
How much longer can this continue? Some people are really going to struggle to pay.

Tinkerbell
So, in the UK, police are funded by county councils? Councils pass on the cost, obviously? Does seem an expensive way to do it.
No.
Council's collect the council tax and pass the money across
Cheaper to have one collection service per area and one bill to each house
than several

Tinkerbell
There are councils that have no significant elder care social burden. I think York is one (would gave to check) and a council near the north west coast.
Adult social care includes the disabled
and day car to those in their own homes and sheltered flats
NO council that has the responsibility has avoided the rising costs

I agree with the idea of taxes being the price of civilisation but I disagree about police priorities and, while we’re at it, the absence of any real consequences for wrongdoing.

Police don’t investigate theft, burglary and many other crimes - which are just scrubbed after 24 hrs. Look it up. What does get followed up is easy to prove - being rude on the internet, for example.

There’s a private police service in London now which is handy for anyone who thinks thieves and thugs should be arrested.

Yanboo have you ever tried investigating acquisitive crime? Arresting someone is from what I can see the easy part of the job. Proving beyond all reasonable doubt that the arrested party did it is the tricky part.
Crimes are not scrubbed after 24 hours, they may be filed, but that doesn't mean it won't be looked at again if evidence comes to light. If someone breaks into a car parked in a rural location with no houses around, no CCTV and the budgets been slashed so you can't call forensics (but they were probably wearing gloves anyway) what lines of enquiry would you suggest?
Yes I'm sure you can find plenty of 'outrageous' newspaper reports where police have made mistakes, they do happen, they are human afterall, but I doubt there are many working for the police who don't care about doing a decent job.

Chibi
Last summer there was a spate of break-ins of sheds in my road - 15 over three nights.
Items were left that we knew for a fact would have fingerprints on them.
THe police did not even come and look, despite four of us reporting the crimes..

TalkinPaece and that's a sign of the times unfortunately. A few years ago you would have had an officer visit to take a statement, do door to door enquiries and forensics, but this is what you get as a result of austerity. You get what you pay for. It's not right but it is what it is.
Chances are those items left behind had glove marks not fingerprints left on them. Chances are the police and the team of analysts and researchers that work behind them also have a strong suspicion of who is responsible for them as well, but as I say proving that they are the ones responsible is pretty tough.
We also have to look to ourselves and improve our community ties. Neighbours should look out for each other more, people are complacent over security and if you do want a response from the police, report the offences. By your account not even a third of those crimes were reported. Police are led by demand now, they are reactive not proactive. If you want a response then you all have to report it and the 'what's the point they won't show up even if we do report it' is a lazy argument and one people can't prove until they know they have done everything within their power.

Chibi
By your account not even a third of those crimes were reported.
Please do not misrepresent what I said.
I do not know what all of the people up and down the road did
I know that four of us reported

I have to say that when we had issues, police was great. Can't fault them. And their hard work resulted in charges and subsequent prison sentences.
5*

We're all right Jack. Our £12 Council Tax rise is neatly covered by the rise in our State Pensions.

That's not misrepresenting what you said, that is what you said. Had you said I know that four of the fifteen offences were reported then you would have a point, but you didn't.

ForalltheSaints

I agree that council tax increases are a burden for many. I do not blame my local council though, but the Tory chancellors who have cut funding whilst giving high earners and large corporations tax cuts.

I agree and some people will still blame the last Labour government for everything in 50 years time whilst still voting for the toer tories until we are completely ruined bar the rich!

And predictably it turns into a
Police bashing thread where burglary is "scrubbed " and those lazy police do nothing, right?

Wrong. Police rely on evidence. That's hard evidence that links a suspect to a crime.
So identifying a suspect.
Witness evidence?
Cctv?
Forensic evidence? ( no burglar is stupid enough to do this without gloves on- ime anyway and with one csi on duty over 24 hours they are pretty stretched themselves)
With none of that how do you propose that police tie a suspect to a crime? To Prove beyond all reasonable doubt that they did it? The only way to get a job to court is through evidence. If we just grab the nearest scrote and accuse them I think we'd get accused of miscarriage of justice....so evidence it is. 😉

Oh and the consequences for wrong doing sit solely with the courts who impose those consequences.

I had a prolific shoplifter who had committed countless thefts to feed his habit.

Loads of work for police. Hours of statement taking and downloading cctv.
Court gave him 9 days in prison. This was about the 10th time he'd done this. He has a heroin habit that he has to fund. So yeah 9 days will sort him....🤔

Chibi

The Met don’t investigate thefts under the value of £50, nor do they pursue many suspects for burglary. You may supply the cctv and evidence of the identity of the perpetrators yourself and see no result.

There is no interest in prosecuting theft and assault. This is also the case in Greater Manchester and Leicestershire. Some of the forces with the greatest number of officers per capita are closing between half and eighty percent of such cases. We might do well to remember Rochdale, where the police dismissed evidence of large scale organised child rape, and similar cases took place in over eighty towns in the U.K.

I’m not unaware of police budgets and workloads. I think it has come to the point where most people realise there isn’t much point in trying to phone the police. 101 is always busy. It takes about ten minutes to fill in your crime report online and that’s how you will get your crime number for your insurance. Yet if someone steals your car, your phone, your tv or jewellery out of your house, stalks you, assaults you without causing life changing injury you can largely forget about any response.

I don’t think giving more money to police forces who aren’t interested in catching criminals is worthwhile.

Wait till it happens to you, and I hope to God it does not, because you’re on your own. I have always supported higher taxes and better public services but there isn’t a service at all in the cases most people are likely to experience.

Police rely on evidence. That's hard evidence that links a suspect to a crime.

Exactly. Because of this it's also difficult to get them for everything they done. Eg, guy did 7 burglaries but evidence properly links him to only 1. Police can't do anything about that.

Oh and the consequences for wrong doing sit solely with the courts who impose those consequences.

Absolutely right. If anyone wants to see what judges can dish out, you can view sentencing guidelines online. They are quite limiting for judges too.

OP, same in Birmingham. Police increase of 19%!!! My mum, 85, partial state pension (which has not been increased anywhere near that) and low level disability payments has to accommodate this, plus massive hike in food and heating costs and her monthly emergency cord alert system has also gone from £100 to £150 over last few years. She pays 75% compared to family over road of four working adults. CT is a very unfair, regressive and inequitable system.

And OftenHangry those figures are pointless without staffing numbers. In 2017 : 2,896 police officers, 364 Special constables, 304 designated officers, 385 Police community support officers and 1,421 police staff- so 5370 staff in total, so nearly 3000 frontline officers. How does that nice infographic look now?

@SurferRona considering that the infographic doesn't include crime like burglary, theft, road offences etc... In December 2018 there was over 12000 reported crimes.16000 in March 2018.

5000 people taking care of Hampshire with over 1 mil population and over 1500 square miles. Cases usually require more than 1 police officer, especially serious ones.

Single officer can't work 24/7. So when you spread it, the realkty is not as great as the "there is over 5k of them" may sound.

@Yanboo if you think I live in some privileged world where I've never been a victim of crime you are very very wrong. If you haven't had the result that you wanted, well it sucks, but to write off every single person working for the police as having no interest in theft and assaults is simply untrue and not fair.

The police are out there day in day out and they are helping people and arresting people and getting prosecutions, but they don't make such juicy headlines and people only see what they want to see.

Where I live the police often make up the shortfall for the 4 hour delays on ambulances getting to people. Does it get reported on, no. Someone having a mental health episode where they're causing a danger to themselves or others, yep that will be the police again. Livestock escaped on to a road, police again, doesn't matter that they may never have seen a cow up close before but let's expect them to herd it away from the road because no one can get hold of the landowner, oh and wouldn't it be fun to film said officer whilst they're doing it and write disparaging remarks about them on social media too.

Now would you kindly tell us what your occupation is so that we can tell you how to do your job, chuck in a few tabloid headlines and make some sweeping generalisations about it whilst we're at.

Lets not forget they have to police football matches, special events and need extra officers on weekends. Because people can't behave like normal people🤷‍♀️

@ChibiTotoro they also have to get to stabbings etc before the ambulance as far as I know. The ambulance crew can't go in because of safety issue.

I would just like to thank the Police Officers on this thread, and in general for all the amazing hard work they do

A PP who I think is a PO said the lack of Social Workers, mental health provisions etc causes a drip down effect (or rather a flood down effect, my words not hers) and the police are the last and only help some people have or can contact. I'm ashamed that the UK has become the Country it is and the Politicians on both sides should be even more ashamed.
I hope this time in UK history will go down as a terrible time and future generations will learn from the mistakes we made.

I would like to thank the police officers who were essential in helping me gather enough 'evidence' to prove that my Dad needed to be sectioned. He suffered with serious mental health issues which meant that he could be a danger to both himself and others. When he committed offences against others people had no qualms about telling me that I needed to sort my Dad out, but despite my pleading with people to report what he did I always got the response of I don't want to get involved. Understandably the CMHT were reluctant to do anything when I was the only person reporting his behaviour as afterall I could be biased. As soon as the police got involved things moved along, my Dad got the treatment he required and was able to go back to some semblance of normality again.
This was a good few years ago now and given the overstretched resources for both the police and the health service now I doubt we would have the same outcome if it happened again.

The reality is that police are filling the gaps in all other services that are failing - social services, mental health and ambulance.

Some forces had to make tough choices. Where I am now they are talking about not investigating shop theft or petrol forecourt drive off because a) we don't have the staff and b) both avoidable and business could do much more to help themselves. Pay at pump prevents petrol drive offs, or pay up front. If someone pulls up with a Ford Focus with a tank in the back and and then forecourt staff press the button for them that should be their look out.

We have a system where one officer is allocated all crime investigation over a 48 hour period.
The others week one officer was allocated 60 crimes to investigate. He had 6 days to concentrate on them before going back to normal response duties. 60 crimes. That's thefts, shop thefts, drive offs, public order offences, assaults, sexual offences, domestic abuse cases, harassment and probably a few race hate crimes thrown in for good measure, car theft and break ins, burglary, and our brilliant command team have dictated that every single victim of crime gets a visit in person. Now given most work that narrows opportunity somewhat. Half the time the phone number is wrong in the crime report. We cover a massive area. How many man hours lost chasing a victim just to say I'm really sorry, there is no evidence or line of enquiry . I had one car break in where he reported a cardboard box stolen from the boot ....it contained a can of Coke, some wet wipes and not much else. No cctv. No witnesses. How much man power and time should go into solving that? As opposed to a burglary from an elderly vulnerable victim? (Tho still not much chance of catching anyone unless there is a forensic hit). Or a domestic abuse job that needs sorting properly?
These are the choices we have to make every day now because there simply are not the staff or resources to investigate everything to the nth degree. It's soul destroying for cops too. I know only maybe a third of my crime list will be detected if I'm lucky. And some of the "crimes" reported really shouldn't be crimes at all. The "he said this about my second cousin twice removed on Facebook" type jobs have no place being crimed in the first place.

Cops are leaving response in droves or going off sick . I feel we are flogged and flogged. More and more is demanded with less and less to do it with and it's breaking people.

I left response 2 weeks ago. After 9 years and I swear if I'd not applied for something else within the job and could see a way out I'd have left the job /force altogether.

Luckily I got it and although still front line I'm now not slave to the radio with a crime list of 60. That was killing me.

As I left I got notified I'd won an award for going above and beyond for my victims of crime. I really do and did care. I gave up days off to take victims to court if they couldn't drive. I worked long hours and often was late off to try and get them results they deserved.

And....here's a funny 😂

My OH is so dedicated he even fights crime while asleep. As he grabbed hold of me this morning and kicked me in the shins I awoke somewhat alarmed....and shouted something along the lines of WHAT THE FUCK!?"

He was dreaming he had apprehended a group of youths causing criminal damage to a window sill 😳🤔🤷🏻‍♀️
😂
I have the bruises to prove he is very pro active. Even when asleep.

It’s ridiculous isn’t it . I’m going in this afternoon on my day off ( unpaid) to try and catch up with some of mine , because we get virtually no time to investigate . We have to do our investigations between calls , so you can just imagine how successful that is , particularly when two out of six shifts are nights, when you can’t progress anything at all . Two years . Two years to go and I’m out.