A “resetting” of policing priorities in London will mean that some incidents at major events and protests will now “take longer to squash”, the Metropolitan Police has said.
Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley told a session of the London Assembly that officers were being moved away from policing major events and into community policing instead.
The decision, he said, freed up 6,000 shifts in October.
The commissioner asked the Assembly for “support” in making the changes, which he said were due to “financial pressures”.
Sir Mark said to Assembly members: “London’s politicians, including yourselves, regularly say to me, ‘My local neighbourhood officers are great, but you abstract them too much.’
“So this is about reducing that, but it does come with a challenge.
“It will mean that sometimes events in the centre of London will happen in a way that wasn’t anticipated, and will take longer to squash and deal with.
“So I would ask for your support when that happens because the prize for taking that more measured approach is that we have more resources in local communities.”