Specialist safer schools officers have been removed from many London schools and redeployed into neighbourhood policing as part of Metropolitan Police staffing cuts driven by a £260 million shortfall. Teachers no longer receive daily briefings about pupils' police interactions or exposures to domestic violence. A headteacher reported sending welfare staff to a truant's home who had recently been charged and bailed for an attempted murder, illustrating lost information flow. Safer schools officers, introduced in 2009 to de-escalate peer conflicts and prevent youth offending, are now fewer, while other units such as Royal Parks protection have been merged into local ward policing.
Teachers no longer get daily briefings of interactions between police and young people, either as victims or perpetrators, as well as them having witnessed domestic violence. Ms West grew gasps after telling how she sent two welfare staff to a teenage truant's home unaware he'd he been charged and released on bail over a blade-wielding attempted murder. Scotland Yard is being forced into substantial tough choices amid a 260 million budget shortfall.
Of 1,700 staff being axed, 371 safer schools officers have been transferred into neighbourhood policing teams. Children pass through a knife arch at a London school Asked by member Leonie Cooper what the immediate impact had been since May, Ms West said: In the spirt of being brutally honest on behalf of those children, I think this is the single most catastrophic decision in keeping children safe in the last 10 years of my professional experience.
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