Local policing 'non-existent' due to terror response
Local policing is 'pretty much non-existent' when officers are deployed to react to terror incidents, the West Midlands Police and Crime Commissioner has warned.
David Jamieson said the force was 'buckling under the strain' of cuts that have seen its budget slashed by £140 million over the last seven years.
It comes after Metropolitan Police Commissioner Cressida Dick said British counter-terror agencies had been 'stretched' by the recent spate of atrocities, potentially compromising efforts to quash future threats.
Mr Jamieson said that the fact that the service has lost 1,746 officers since 2010 meant that 'when there is a major public order deployment, or in this case a reaction to an act or terror, local policing is pretty much non-existent'.
He said the force was facing another budget cut of £6m this year and added: "We simply do not have enough people policing our streets. The police will always rise to challenge and do all they can to protect us, but we need a government that will give them the resources they need to do so.
"Everyone can see that with the current situation it is not the time to cut police budgets.
"The threats we face are not reducing like our budget is."
Meanwhile Ms Dick told a meeting of the Police and Crime Committee that other criminal investigations had been paused or delayed out of 'necessity' in the wake of four terror attacks in the UK this year.
The country's most senior officer said: "The counter-terrorism network is certainly stretched. Before 12 weeks ago, they had a set of people and they still have a set of people across the country in essence.
"They have now had four major attacks to deal with and also disrupted a number - five - other plots.
"Those all take a great deal of backward-looking investigative resources and it takes potentially away from the proactive and forward-looking intelligence work.
"We have supplemented the national counter-terrorism network from some of our crime resources nationally and within London and we need to do that.
"We are shifting resources and people across the Met.
"This does have an impact on other, for example, investigations, we have had to pause some, we have had to slow down on some, and that is just a necessity."
