The Green Party has slammed Boris Johnson’s for already backtracking on a pledge to increase police numbers.
One of his first policy announcement was “funding for 20,000 extra police officers” but a letter written by the home secretary, Priti Patel, last week to the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, states that new officers will be spread “between territorial, regional and national policing functions” .
Matt Edwards, The Green Party’s Prospective Parliamentary Candidate for Bradford South, has hit out at the new prime minister for making bogus pledges to increase police numbers.
“The people I speak to across Bradford are fed up of politicians saying one thing and then doing another. They just want their elected representatives to be honest and do what they say they are going to do – what’s so hard about that?
“When you make a statement like 20,000 new police officers, people, rightly, assume you mean bobbies on the beat – but it’s clear that the Conservatives really mean ‘employees of the police force’.
“Fighting crime is one of the top priorities for people I speak to and its clear we need more police on the street. Last year, we saw crime in Bradford South increase by 20% with the Tong Ward particularly being affected by the increase in reported crime.”
Analysis by The Independent newspaper also suggests that 20,000 new police recruits won’t be enough.
They claim actually, the police force will need to recruit 46,000 new officers to meet the new target and replace officers leaving the service over the next three years.