There is no question today that one of the biggest drains on the police service and the budget they have to work with is with the problems that arise due to alcohol abuse. This is particularly evident in town centres throughout the UK, where thousands of people turn out every night to get absolutely wasted, the consequences be damned.
It leaves everybody within the police in a very tricky position, as large sums of money need to be diverted from dealing with thefts, fraud, and worse, purely to help control the massive numbers of people behaving disorderly while drunk; causing harm to others and people’s property.
Most police officers, and police chiefs in particularly, have been calling for years for more action to be taken to begin to tackle this problem; with increased duty put on alcohol, harsher penalties for repeat offenders, and more money put into the police service so that they have more resources to deal with the situation.
Whatever we look towards as a nation to help to deal with the current situation, it is clear that if we want to improve our ability to deal with crimes like fraud and theft, then we will need to prioritise for it, which means we will have to deal with alcohol abuse in one way or another.
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