The lie that crime is falling cannot continue to be told. Statistics show a year-on-year rise of just under 10,000 known crimes and offences.
That’s ten thousand more incidents – while Police Scotland have a thousand fewer officers to deal with them.
Our cops are at breaking point. Their buildings are falling down about their ears due to decades of neglect, while ever-increasing numbers cannot be deployed operationally due to ill health.
Calls to the 101 [non-emergency] service can take ridiculous lengths of time to get answered, leaving many actual crimes unreported as callers give up, while of those who do get through 80 per cent of the calls actually do not relate to crime.
These ‘non-crime’ calls are due to the failure of other public bodies in Scotland to provide a proper service – those in distress contact the police as a last resort.
And the rise in recorded crime shows very clearly that this position can no longer continue and that other services need to be responding to their own work.
The police need to be allowed to be the police – and focus on crime. No other agency does, or can.
These 10,000 new crimes and offences contain worrying trends.
Rates of domestic abuse have gone up according to latest figures
Former Police Scotland superintendent Martin Gallagher
MSP Angela Constance is Scotland’s Justice Secretary
There are 15 per cent more rape victims than last year and 26 per cent more victims of domestic abuse.
These are real people who need the police more than ever.
The trope that will no doubt be put forward by a senior police officer that ‘it is encouraging more victims have come forward’ must be consigned to the bin for broken records.
While victim numbers have been climbing for years, the police have been claiming this is due to their increased approachability.
This needs to stop and there needs to be a harsh reality check.
Something is wrong in Scottish society in relation to how we are treating each other, and the police need to stop making excuses about this.
Until we do, we cannot find answers to why we are increasingly mistreating each other in the most abhorrent ways.
There has also been a reported 17 per cent year-on-year increase in shoplifting.
Everyone knows that the problem is far worse, and the rise is just in respect of crimes that our retailers have taken the time to tell the police about.
It is obvious that without the deterrent of police on patrol and available to promptly attend calls, along with a ‘soft touch’ approach to the few thieves who are actually caught, there has been a bold and brazen approach among those who want something for nothing.
With no police to attend – and shopkeepers along with the public paralysed by a fear that if they intervene to stop thieves, they will find themselves prosecuted – we see the chaos of shelves being emptied into the arms of ne’er do wells.
The more this behaviour goes unchallenged, the worse it will get.
We seem to be entering a vicious spiral of the fewer police we do have feeling powerless and overwhelmed with crime rising around them, making them feel more powerless and overwhelmed.
This can be turned around.
Our politicians need to make other services take responsibilities, such as mental health issues, away from the police and put them where they should belong.
There needs to be a clear mission articulated by the Chief Constable that the police have one central priority – the prevention and detection of crime.
We need to free our cops up from needless bureaucracy and get them back on the street.
We also need politicians to look at the regulations around the ever-growing number of officers who cannot get outside and make arrests, for example due to ill health.
Cops who cannot go out in bad weather need to have a reasonable exit package provided.
The streets are cold – but it’s where our cops need to be.
Until you have more of them out there focused on crime, victim numbers will continue to rise.
Martin Gallagher is a former superintendent with Police Scotland, who served as area commander of Paisley.
