Police Scotland - is it working?

[BlueThursday]

I was just reading about Sheku Bayoh, the man from Kirkcaldy who died whilst in police custody, and the allegations against one of the officers.

It seems police scotland is getting a pretty bad press lately. Was it too ambitious to combine it all into one force?

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-34529611

I'm pretty shocked by the information in this link that one of the police involved had violently attacked his own parents, the police attended and yet it was all seemingly brushed under the carpet and he kept his job. That is wrong on so many levels.

Police Scotland is another SNP shambles. It's odd how devolution is great until it means devolution from Holyrood then centralisation is greater.

Same issue with having central police call centres is applying to ambulance call centres - it's all a shambles.

I don't think particular case can be blamed on Police Scotland. Sounds like it would have happened without a merger the formation of PS had no bearing on it at all

. Other things like budget cuts mergers call centres etc. No they don't work. They definitely don't and I can say that as someone who's worked in the old Strathclyde and new PS

PSoS is an utter shambles. 1 in 3 officers actively looking for another job, the staff survey says it all really

The staff survey also says the reason most officers want to leave is due to shitty changes to their pensions - that's down to WM too, not SNPBaaaad.

And merging the eight forces into one was also in the Tory manifesto.

The racist police officer attacked his own parents in 2005, prior to merging.

I have no time whatsoever for Stephen House, who strikes me as a misogynistic rude word, and I would agree that his appointment was a massive mistake.

A large number want to leave because we're now stretched to the max for resourcing calls, the morale is so low it's non existent and many other working conditions are shocking

I'm surprised that the number of people completing the survey was so low, even though I know it's very high compared to other large organisation surveys, as everyone I know hates it. Morale has never been lower. One size does not fit all when it comes to policing and if the grass roots know this how come the bosses don't? Or they do and they don't give a fuck as it's House's way or no way.
Pension changes are a disgrace!!

Can we hope that with House's departure things might improve a bit? What changes would you, as serving officers, like to see?

(And what did you think of the decision to have armed officers doing routine patrols?)

The armed officers were never really doing general patrols as reported in the paper. For one thing they're not allowed to leave their vehicles unattended. What they were doing was dealing with minor things - as in their role as police officers

One story I saw as front page news was armed officers attending a road accident where there was no one with a gun involved and there seemed to no threat to the public. Hands up in horror OMG police officers with a gun in the street. Delicate little flowers and the media couldn't cope.

Actually the accident happened right in front of them so what we're they to do. Stop and there's shock and horror but had they driven on and done nothing that sane piece of crap paper woukd have run the front page story that police refused to stop and help no doubt with the obligatory wee sad face photo of the drivers involved

Damned if they do dammed if they don't

And don't get me started on the regular Daily Crap photos of cops in shops buying sandwiches

As RedGlitter said, the armed officers didn't/don't answer routine calls, they are mobile and the reason for that is should there be an incident that requires their presence, which unfortunately with knife crime is getting higher, armed officers can start making their way to the scene immediately, although as there are only ever one or two armed response units in my division at anyone time they could be 60/70 miles away from the locus, but, that still provides an element of protection for beat cops. (Although beat cops still go in the first instance whether it's a gun or knife to "assess" the situation. In my 21 years I've been sent to assess more times than I would like and have often thought "great, I shall fend off bullets with my baton then shall I?" Although you still go no matter what.

What needs to change policing wise is this one size fits all attitude, it doesn't work, logically it could never work, Glasgow has a much different call rate and call type from say aviemore yet officers are expected to police to the same model when the geographic and demographic are so different. Officers have back filled spaces previously occupied by civilian members of staff drastically cutting the number of cops on the street that aren't being replaced and cops are running from call to call (well they always have but had time to do paperwork and to investigate crime, now they don't).
The public are not getting the service they deserve, when I noted a crime I knew my area, my "customers" and the complainers, I knew who was committing crime in the area, who was in the jail and whose mo was wing used to commit the crime, detection rates were usually very high. Now, officers are run all over the city, don't have time to walk a beat and get to know who lives there and what the problems are. Crimes are noted and passed to the next shift for investigation, if you get a re visit it an update on your crime you are lucky, if you see the same officer twice and don't have to repeat the story two or three times, then it's a miracle. I used to have about 10 people on my shift, I've seen 3 officers come on duty cover the same seven schemes on the section.

I have seen calls go with no police attendance for over two weeks as the priority calls come in and believe me it's not nice getting a call, attending and then getting a verbal bashing from a complainer who has waited a fortnight for the police to come! I want out

Its certainly working for some people

Obviously anecdotes do not = data

But, had to call police recently (999) in Glasgow. Several police cars were in scene within minutes, and police on foot running around. Suspect apprehended within minutes, 5 mins later 2 police at the door to take statements.

On the other occasion police were oiut within 30 mins (101) and fingerprinting etc was carried out the next morning (initial call at about 2am).

So no complaints here.

Also as far as I am aware crime levels etc are down?

Edinburgh's crime rates are now the worst in the country, and people are reporting really bad responses re break-ins. Personally I'm lucky enough not to have had to call the police, but I attend the community council and we've had a lot of problems with no longer having the community relationships with police that there used to be, and less continuity of police presence, but we keep getting told this will change.

I don't want to jump up and down and say the whole thing is a disaster, but I think clearly improvements are needed and hopefully changes will be made and we will have more local focus again. I thought the sledgehammer approach taken to the Edinburgh saunas for example was ridiculous.

Edinburgh doesn't seem to be great at the moment. Not a serious crime, but we recently had a bike stolen from right outside our house (chained up) - called 101 to report, told they'd call back with a crime number, 10 hours later still nothing. Went outside to bring our other bike in and realised that whilst they'd only nicked one of our bikes, they'd tampered with the lock on the second one so we couldn't unlock it. Called back to ask for advice/assistance, no use and couldn't even find the original report.

Couple of months back we had issues with (homeless) drug users using garages (we live in a wee mews street where many aren't locked up, it's always been really safe) to shoot up/sleep in and then leaving used needles lying around. Various neighbours called the police and essentially they couldn't give a crap.