WINCHESTER’S police chief has defended the closure of the city’s police cells, which will force officers to drive to Southampton when they make arrests.
Chief Inspector Darius Hemmatpour said Southampton’s new Central Police Station can process arrests far quicker than North Walls station, where cells have been stripped ahead of a planned sell-off.
The Winchester base previously employed five officers to staff the cell block in shifts.
Insp Hemmatpour said: “At times when you’ve only got one or two people in the cells, is that value for money? No, it’s not.
“What Southampton provides is a slicker service. We go in and literally hand over to a detention officer there, do a quick pro forma and you’re out the door. We couldn’t do that at Winchester – the officers have to do all that themselves.”
He added that officers are making fewer arrests because of new time and cost pressures imposed by multi-million pound government cuts to policing.
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