Recently the responsiveness of police to local crimes has come under a great deal of scrutiny.
Some residents have said the police have asked victims of crime to actually investigate criminality against them and others have said the police simply won’t investigate some crimes. This feedback from residents has come alongside a 9% increase in recorded crime across Swindon and Wiltshire in the 12 months up to March 2017. In particular there have been spikes in burglary and vehicle crime. This compares with a national trend of reductions in crime over the previous two decades.
I appreciate Wiltshire Police are doing all they can to reduce crimes in the town (nationally there has been a reduction of 20,000 police officers since 2010), but it is clear that government cutbacks have left the police force without the necessary resources to tackle the scale of the crime in the town.
Some people who support the government have chosen to defend the government’s cuts to the police. However, despite our political differences, I choose to support the Conservative Police & Crime Commissioner, Angus Macpherson, who has called on more police investment. This is why Labour proposed in the General Election to reverse this trend of police budget cuts and invest enough in the police to afford 10,000 new police officers.
Such an increase would have had a significant impact on the police’s presence on our streets. For residents concerned about the lack of police presence on our streets to prevent crime, I would suggest writing to our two MPs to lobby for more investment in our police force. Labour locally stands ready to put aside party differences and support our two Conservative MPs in this endeavour in order to achieve the best outcome for Swindon.
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