Police Scotland have been blasted for running a pilot to not investigate some crimes, with one top cop claiming that it sets a “dangerous precedent.” David Threadgold, chairman of the Scottish Police Federation, also said it could lead to officers losing the public’s trust.
The force had previously said it is trialling a “proportionate response to crime” in the country’s north-east, meaning some crimes, such as garden thefts, would no longer be probed. Other incidents which have no leads or eyewitnesses would also be dropped.
But this has already been slammed by local leaders who have accused the Scottish Government and Police Scotland of abandoning Aberdeen and its neighbouring regions again. Police bosses have claimed that this approach would give officers more time to focus on responding to emergencies and was a result of budget cuts.
Mr Threadgold called these claims on Good Morning Scotland into question as he highlighted pressing concerns about the project. He said: “It is important to say no police officer in Scotland wants to provide a poorer service than we are already being forced to do so for the public.”
“For a national police force to say to its citizens they will potentially no longer be investigating crime is a very dangerous precedent indeed, and one we must be very careful about. We could have a situation where this gets rolled out across Scotland. Then reasonably intelligent criminals target certain areas safe in the knowledge there will be no investigation on the back of their crime.”
“That is a real concern for us and could be a reality for our citizens in Scotland.” He added that he had concerns about the ability of staff to decide what does and does not get investigated and claimed that the plans would damage the “strong bond of trust” officers have with the public.
Under the SNP, Scotland has been becoming more Lawless with issues of rising youth crime, such as shoplifting being treated almost as non-crimes and ignored. Prisoners are released early to return to the streets and re-offend.
Much of this is down to savage cuts that the SNP have made year after year in Police budgets. The Police service needs more considerable funding to provide a decent pay settlement for staff and increase the number of officers on the streets. Now, we see a type of policing that is reactive, that sees officers respond once a crime is in progress.
A better system would be to return to the old Bobby on the beat. A high presence of officers walking the beat day and night deters crime and allows the Police to get to know the public. An Officer today is just someone seen fleetingly in a car, or you come into contact with as a victim or perpetrator of a crime.
With them becoming a more daily presence, it not only builds trust but also allows the officers to gain knowledge of who in the area is a risk to other members of the public and gain intelligence from chats with local people.
As well as putting money into Policing, there also needs to be a more significant investment into community mental health services. Just now, the Police spend a disproportionate amount of time dealing with situations that are down to the failings of the mental health services, which have also received terrible underfunding by the SNP government.
It is proven that ignoring low-level crime leads to terrible outcomes, as can be seen today in places like San Francisco and New York. New York’s out-of-control crime rate was controlled when former Mayor Rudy Giuliani launched his zero-tolerance policy for crimes large and small over a decade ago.
Under the SNP, we have seen more and more Police resources pushed towards what the SNP perceives as “hate crimes”. This needs to end with the resources redirected towards actual policing rather than the SNP’s political agenda.
The SNP are yet again failing the people of Scotland. Hopefully, when the next elections come, the people of Scotland will realise the only way to reverse our nation’s decline under SNP rule is to vote them out.
