Police cuts will be disaster for national security, warns counter-terrorism head
National security is being endangered by cuts to local policing, which amount to a potential disaster in the fight to stop Islamist and neo-Nazi attacks, according to one of Britain’s leading counter-terrorism police officers.
Neil Basu, senior national coordinator for counter-terrorism, told the Guardian that two decades of progress in neighbourhood policing were at risk and that withdrawing police on the ground would mean losing the relationships and trust that yield crucial intelligence.
“When we don’t have those people we will become so divorced from the frontline, and the frontline of communities, that [it] will be a disaster for policing in this country,” Basu said. Asked whether it would threaten national security, he added: “Yes, because where’s the intelligence coming from?”
Basu said the spate of attacks in Britain this year could happen again and that the threat of both Islamist and extreme rightwing attack was growing, with the two sets of violent extremists even feeding off each other.
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