Cops can make

cuts - they

just don't want to

The latest stunt by Lincolnshire Police to persuade us that they can’t make cuts comes in the form of a “budget simulator,” which is accessible through the Police Authority website.
Participants have a budget of just over £125 million and have to choose how to cut or enhance services by up to plus or minus 25% in areas of local policing, dealing with the public, criminal justice arrangements, road policing, specialist operations, investigative support, national policing, support functions police authority, intelligence and specialist investigations.
The force needs to make £11 million of savings in the next two years, which means that 130 officers need to be axed.
Amazingly, Lincolnshire County Council – which itself is facing major cuts – has agreed to find £1,500,000 to continue funding police community support officers, of which there are now 150 across the county.
On a local level Boston has just acquired another six of these chocolate soldiers – and we would love to know where they are found to be on regular patrol.
A couple of years ago a cost analysis of PCSOs in Lincolnshire showed that they issued just 15 fines in three years - which at the time meant that each fixed penalty notice cost more than £650,000 in public money.

Do they expect us to take them
seriously with illustrations like this?

Here, clearly is an area where the force could save money – but instead it chooses to pick the pockets of council taxpayers by trading on the entirely illusory notion that these people do some good.

Back to the “budget simulator”. If you want to have a go, the requirement is to cut costs by five per cent before your calculations are analysed and turned into a graphic to illustrate the effects.

Invariably, it produces something like the picture on the right. The name of the game appears to put people in fear that cuts will bring chaos to policing in Lincolnshire – but we think that this is being disingenuous.

Lincolnshire Police are well able to absorb cuts – just like other organisations in the county.
They recently produced a 24 hour “diary” of the demands on the service for a 24 hour people beginning at noon on Saturday November 27th.
Boston featured 41 times out of 133 events.
Two of these calls were for the heinous crime of throwing snowballs at cars. The more serious involved traffic accidents and - inevitably for Boston - public order offences such as drunkenness and assault.
Of course, no two days are the same, but we suspect this diary of the “demands” on our local police is fairly typical.
Please, Lincolnshire Police, don’t try to tell us that you can save money fairly easily – especially in Boston.

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