Labour Crime Surges - So Tories Cut Police

7.18.04pm GMT Mon 15th Feb 2010

Only weeks after our report on the shock surge of serious crime involving knives and firearms in Lambeth and a massive wave of residential robbery across the borough breaking all attempts to contain them, Tory London Mayor Boris Johnson has just announced a cut in the operational budgets of borough Police Commanders.

Stunned critics at City Hall, including Lib Dem spokeswoman Dee Doocey, say that the £27 million budget cut (roughly 5%) which the Mayor wants to see being directed at office and backroom staff will actually lead to more front-line police officers being taken away from patrolling the streets and covering for them.

In an astonishing double-whammy the Mayor also wants to cut 455 police officer posts between now and the 2012 Olympics with the axe expected to fall most heavily on the Neighbourhood Policing Teams that were meant to be the friendly face of the Metropolitan Police working in the community.

The Tories say that the cuts, which one senior officer described as painful, are to be delivered by individual Borough Police Commanders in conjunction with their Local Authority partners. The worry is that in high-crime areas like Lambeth, where resources are already stretched, crime will rocket.

Lambeth Liberal Democrat Leader, Cllr Ashley Lumsden, said, "Residents will quite rightly feel let down by Labour's surging crime wave and unnerved and puzzled by the Tory's axe on police spending. These are political parties that constantly bang-on in the media about tackling crime but their words now sound increasingly hollow."

"Liberal Democrats are committed to providing more police patrolling our streets not less," Cllr Ashley Lumsden added, "so in the elections in May there is now a clear choice. Two major parties, acting like Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee, and waiving the white flag on crime, or the Liberal Democrats."