'Psychotic' man with gun told to email police to hand himself in as Tory cuts close local station

A ‘psychotic’ man with a loaded gun attempted to hand himself in at his local police station, but was turned away and told to simply email or call police to report himself after Tory cuts had forced the local station to close.

Seamus Boyle, who described himself as 'psychotic and paranoid' at the time, and was in possession of a loaded revolver, turned up to discover Basildon police station’s front counter was not operational as a consequence of Government cuts.

After being advised to simply 'email or call' police, Mr Boyle phoned police from a nearby phonebox to tell them he was attempting to hand in a gun but had been turned away.

Several minutes after making the call to police, a heavily armed swat team were sent to Basildon Town Centre to arrest Mr Boyle - at substantial cost to the taxpayer.

Mr Boyle had unknowingly attempted to hand the gun in during an Essex gun amnesty initiative, but the force refused to honour it and prosecuted him instead.

The incident is the latest in a list of recent high profile failings by police resulting from austerity measures, with former Chief Met Police Investigator Peter Kirkham laying the blame for four unrelated fatal stabbings across London on New Year’s Eve firmly at the feet of the Prime Minister.

In a no-holds barred attack during an interview with Sky News, Kirkham scathed Theresa May has having "the blood of these young people on her hands”, whilst denouncing her Government as racist “at its heart” and its actions “criminal”.

Asked by Sky News how rare such a spate of killings is, Kirkham responded,

It’s unusual for four to die... it’s anything but unusual for a number of stabbings to happen on the same night... it is now absolutely typical of a Friday / Saturday night across London... it is horrendous out there.

Kirkham praised the ambulance and medical services, saying how he “would hate to think what the death toll would be if it weren’t for their great skills.”

When then questioned as to what he believed lay behind “such horrific events happening”, Kirkham response was candid and absolute,

The reason is very obvious: Theresa May has cut the police service, so there are no longer police officers on the street and the control of public space has been lost.

Police officers from the suburbs had been drafted in to cover the New Year’s Eve celebrations occurring in the city. Kirkham’s disdain at this decision forced upon the Met was evident, with him pointing out how “there is no magic box” that police officers can be conjured from, and that it was “no surprise” to him how having to draw in officers to cover the event meant that incidents of crime would increase in the city’s outskirts.

Neither are the problems confined to the capital, with Kirkham revealing how there had also been

five stabbings in Sheffield on the same night... there were stabbings all around the country, just like there are every Friday and Saturday night.

Kirkham lamented how the absence of bobbies was also responsible for many other issues,

Deaths on the road are rising... shoplifting is going through the roof... antisocial behaviour is getting out of control... a moped crime epidemic...

Once again reinforcing the severity and urgency of the situation as well as the person he deems responsible, Kirkham continued,

Theresa May is ENTIRELY responsible for this state of affairs... she has REFUSED CONSISTENTLY to listen to professional police officers... there are too few police officers to keep the public safe, and she has been told that repeatedly and she is ignoring it - it is criminal.. I really don’t understand why the Government aren’t treating this as the emergency it is... it’s a public disaster happening in slow motion in front of our eyes... if these young people were white and it was happening on the streets of her constituency in Maidenhead or in Windsor, there would be utter uproar... there is institutional racism at the heart of this Government and that is the source of the problem

The mandatory punishment for possessing a firearm and ammunition is a minimum sentence of five years unless ’truly exceptional circumstances’ can be shown; Seamus Boyle’s efforts to hand in his gun were acknowledged by the judge and he received four.

If only such circumstances of the public being let down by this Government were indeed ‘truly exceptional’.

WATCH: Former Met Chief Peter Kirkham's astonishing attack on Theresa May:

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