- Thursday, April 25, 2024
By: Keerthi Mohan
LABOUR has accused prime minister Boris Johnson of misleading the public after leaked correspondence between home secretary Priti Patel and London mayor Sadiq Khan showed that new police officers will be allocated “between territorial, regional and national policing functions.”
Johnson had promised to recruit 20,000 police officers in a bid to tackle a rise in violent crimes, but it now appears that thousands are likely to be recruited away from frontline roles.
Shadow policing minister Louise Haigh said the letter between Patel and Khan “clearly shows that Boris Johnson’s grandiose pledge of 20,000 more frontline police officers was absolutely nothing of the sort.”
“A huge proportion of the new recruits won’t be in the frontline and people simply won’t be seeing the extra police officers on the streets that they were promised,” she was quoted as saying by The Guardian.
Meanwhile, a Home Office source slammed Khan for allegedly leaking the contents of the email to the media.
“It’s sad to see Sadiq Khan is once again more focused on playing politics and leaking the contents of letters to the media than backing the government’s drive to recruit the police officers he claims to want,” the source was quoted as saying.
Johnson had earlier implied the new recruits would be “bobbies on the beat.”
Shortly after assuming office in July, the prime minister said that recruitment for new officers would “start in earnest.”
He said: “People want to see more officers in their neighbourhoods, protecting the public and cutting crime. I promised 20,000 extra officers and that recruitment will now start in earnest.”
Echoing Johnson’s sentiments, Patel said recruiting additional police officers would send a clear message that the government was committed to tackling crime.
She said: “Officers up and down the country put themselves in danger every day to keep us safe, they deserve our support.
“The rise we’ve seen in serious violence is deeply worrying. An additional 20,000 officers sends a clear message that we are committed to giving police the resources they need to tackle the scourge of crime.
“This is the start of a new relationship between the Government and the police working even more closely together to protect the public.”
