Leicestershire  Police Federation

Federation Chair: What should the police service do? What should it not do…?

25 March 2022

 

Federation Chair: What should the police service do? What should it not do…?

 

What should the police service do? What should it not do…?

Adam Commons, Chair of Leicestershire Police Federation responds to comments from the new head of Her Majesty’s Inspector of Constabulary, Fire and Rescue Services.

Andy Cooke told MPs this week that up to 40% of officers’ time is taken up on mental health calls. Mr Cooke – former CC of Merseyside Police - told the Home Affairs Select Committee: “An awful lot of Police Officers' time is taken up looking for children missing from home and absent from care.

“If that's what the public and Parliament want Policing to do, that's fine. But you must bear in mind while they're doing that, they're not doing other things that they should be doing, like detecting crime.

“With the wide scope that Policing has, in my view there needs to be a decision made in relation to what we want from our police service moving forward, and whether other agencies need to step into some parts of that sphere.”

Adam said: “These are promising comments from Mr Cooke, he is someone who has the experience and background to know exactly the problems that my colleagues face on a daily basis.

“For too many years the police have had to take on complex safeguarding and mental health work, amongst so many other areas, because services can’t cope – we cannot keep going as we are and in Mr Cooke we will hopefully have a head of HMICFRS who will tell it as it is to the Government rather than pandering to their requests.”