Got any spare change mister?

Apparently, officers in 5 Police Forces are likely to be made redundant.

What do you think? I'll put next months salary on the fact they wont! It's just scaremongering amongst senior officers/journalists.
However, it does make me wonder where all the money goes. If these forces are as good at wasting money as mine is, it's probably all gone on refurbishing headquarters! In the past couple of years, stations have either closed or only have safer neighbourhood teams based in them. On my response team, we now cover an area, that was previously covered by 3 stations. Did we get any extra staff ? Did we fu*k!
I live in a decent sized village, with its own Police Station, which now lies empty. If I actually need to call a Police Officer, they now have to come from 15 miles away! A fact which doesn't fill my wife with confidence, when I'm on nights!
Guess what? Yes you got it. The Police Precept in my council tax bill, went up this year.

I think ACPO have got to realise that the public are fed up with having to pay more, for a poorer service. People need to feel reassured and you wont do that by quoting statistics. They want to know, that when they call for help, someone will be there quickly. Its hard to believe that, if they are coming from miles away!
So stop whinging to the press, because you risk alienating the Police from the public even more. Instead, start taking some common sense decisions. Stop trying to re-invent the wheel and in doing so, wasting public money. Then maybe, once we are doing what the public want, we can ask for more money in the future.