Lib Dems pledge more police for Eltham - Gerrard

11.09.45am UTC (GMT +0000) Sat 23rd Apr 2005

Ian Gerrard, Lib Dem candidate for Eltham, in front of the local police station

The Liberal Democrats have pledged to put an extra 10,000 police and 20,000 Community Support Officers (CSO) on the streets of England, Scotland and Wales. This would mean an extra 50 officers for Eltham which would make people safer and reduce crime, by acting as a strong deterrent to potential criminals.

The Lib Dems also want to free up more police time by equipping officers with hand-held computers and the latest speech recognition technology to cut paperwork and increase the amount of time spent on actual policing. This would significantly increase conviction rates and make sure that criminals are punished for their crimes.

Eltham Lib Dem Parliamentary candidate, Cllr. Ian Gerrard commented that:

"This will make a huge difference to the people of Eltham. A lot of the anti-social behaviour which we all suffer from would be prevented by having more police visible on our local streets".

"We need more police officers out in our community rather than stuck in the station doing paperwork. During an 8 hour shift, the average police officer only spends an hour and half on patrol. We must help our hard-working officers to shift this balance".

"Half of the cost of providing more police officers will be met by scrapping the Labour Party's I.D. scheme, which would do little or nothing to reduce crime or the risk of terrorist attack."