Police pay cuts and reductions in police numbers have hit the headlines this week, but just what is it that the police do, writes West Mercia’s Acting Chief Inspector Keith Gee.

The police service finds itself in unprecedented times of change with massive budget cuts across the public sector.

This means that West Mercia is one of many police forces critically reviewing how it delivers it services.

Thankfully not many people have the need to call the police, but when they do they expect a prompt and efficient service.

Getting that right all the time is not an easy task, as the demands on what are limited resources are many and varied.

The popular view of the police has been shaped by the many TV cop shows over the years – The Bill, The Sweeney, Morse, Frost and more recently the many documentary style shows – Traffic Cops, Road Wars, etc.

I admit that even for me, when I should be at home and off duty, there is still a certain fascination in watching these reality style programmes (much to my wife’s annoyance).

However, it is difficult for the both these documentaries and dramas to reflect just what the reality of policing is.

Hopefully, in future blogs, we will be able to give you an insight into some of these specific areas of work by hearing from some of those specialist officers involved.

The truth is that we deal with such a wide variety of incidents, people, crimes and situations that it would be impossible to capture it all in just one programme.

There are many specialised branches of police work – serious crime investigation, child abuse, domestic abuse, anti-terrorism, surveillance and covert work, roads policing, firearms, fraud, dog handlers.

All of those key to keeping people safe and bring offenders to justice, but few of those roles involve officers being on the streets all the time.

In Telford, there are just under 300 police officers in total divided up between local policing, locally based CID and 24/7 response teams.

We are well supported by officers from other departments around the force, but it is the response teams who work round the clock answering calls for service and are the ones most likely to turn up when you call us.

These are the officers who come to work not knowing what they will be tackling next.

We can do our best to predict our busy times – Friday and Saturday nights for example – but some days are just busier than others and we on these days unfortunately we don’t have boxes of spare officers in store cupboards we can bring out.

It is at these busy times that we have to make some tough calls about what jobs we go to first. For example, which of these would be your priorities?

* The child who is missing from the care home?
* The report of the old lady who has fallen over and carers can’t get in to her home to help her?
* The road traffic collision?
* The neighbour dispute that is getting heated?
* Following up the leads from yesterday’s job?
* Helping out with house to house following a serious incident?

I hope this is just a small demonstration that prioritising the incidents we are asked to deal with can be really tricky.

Matching unpredictable and heavy demands to limited resources is never going to be easy and it is undoubtedly going to become even more of a challenge over the coming months.

There is a lot of talk about reducing our paperwork – something I know would be welcomed in any line of work – however, without some paperwork criminal cases would not get the courts and offenders would not be brought to justice.

Taking a written statement from a witness or victim is one of those key pieces of paperwork, but can take up to several hours for the most complex cases – they never show that in The Bill do they?!!