PC Toadfish

🚨 SUMMARY: The Government's reforms to policing - Facial recognition technology will be rolled out across England and Wales from next year - The 43 police forces will be cut to around 12 "mega forces" who will only focus on major crime - "Local Policing Areas" will be included in these forces in each town, city or borough who will focus only on local crime, such as shoplifting or anti-social behaviour - A British FBI will be established, called the National Police Service, to bring together national policing functions to tackle fraud, terrorism and organised crime, with Regional Crime Hubs built into its structure - All police officers must hold a "Licence to Practice" to remain in the force to ensure they're trained to tackle emerging crimes, with those who fail removed from duty - Police will be required to reach serious incidents within 15 minutes in cities and 20 minutes in rural areas, and answer 999 calls within 10 seconds - A National Public Order Commander will be appointed in the NPS to coordinate responses to riots - A new national centre called "Police AI" will roll out AI across all police forces from April to cut bureaucracy and speed up investigations - A new national forensics service will be created to end "postcode lotteries" in forensic capability - Non-crime hate incidents will be abolished and replaced with a new framework so police spend less time "policing" tweets - Police governance will transfer to directly elected mayors or Policing and Crime Boards made up of council leaders