Putting Londoners first, fighting crime, not cutting police

Under Boris Johnson’s mayoralty Londoners are less well off and less safe. London’s police are being stretched just as they face some of their biggest challenges in the aftermath of the riots.  

Boris Johnson has tried to strike a pose about national police cuts, but has been cutting police himself. Metropolitan Police Authority (MPA) figures say Boris Johnson is cutting the number of police officers in London by 1,800 to 31,460 in 2013/4 from 33,260 in 2010. This is an average of 50 for every London borough. 

In July 2011 Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary estimated the number of officers who will be lost at 1,907 police officers, 920 community support officers and 374 police staff. The Met confirmed the HMIC’s figures. 

Under a Tory Mayor community policing is under threat. Every ward in London had a minimum Safer Neighbourhood Team of beat officers comprising one sergeant, two police constables and three PCSOs to patrol local streets. Mayor Boris Johnson has attacked this minimum deployment of neighbourhood teams, saying ‘I have no intention of imposing a one-size-fits-all model across the whole of London’, and describing it as ‘a pointless piece of top-downery’. 

The Tory Mayor is forcing 600 London police sergeants to reapply for their own local jobs and cutting 300 sergeants from London's 630 safer neighbourhood teams. 

And Boris Johnson first proposed a cut of 455 police officers in December 2009, five months before the Tory-led government came to power.

Under Boris Johnson London has had three Police Commissioners in three years – bringing instability to the country’s biggest and most important police service.

Despite his promise to cut crime the figures for August are that murder is up 3.1 per cent on a rolling 12-month basis, residential burglary up over seven per cent, rape up 10.4 per cent and robbery against the person up fifteen per cent.

Ken Livingstone will put Londoners first and protect policing, not least because it would be folly to cut police and damage neighbourhood policing when London has seen the worst civil disturbances since the 1980s. Londoners are less well-off and less safe. Ken Livingstone will work with the police and end instability.