The Police started the policy of withdrawing from walking the streets during the 70,s and by the mid 80,s were mainly to be seen driving around in cars rather than walking the beat.
It then became less and less common to see Police anywhere and we were all asking for them to be put back out on patrol rather than being chained to desks filling in paperwork.
Traffic policing was all but abolished in many places long before the cuts. Failure to attend burglaries and other similar crimes was quite common before the cuts.
Of course the cuts havent helped one bit, but they havent been responsible for the kind of policing we have in the UK today. That is the responsibility of Politicians and Senior police who spent much more time at Uni than they ever did policing communities.