The controversial proposals by the head of the Scottish Police Services Authority (SPSA) will be seen in some quarters as equivalent to pouring petrol on the flames of the row over the SNP's manifesto commitment to provide 1000 extra police officers. Before rushing to douse them with cold water, however, all concerned should consider whether David Mulhern's ideas, outlined in The Herald today, have any merit. Not least because they follow comments from the Scottish Police Federation that, as a result of other duties, rest days and sick leave, only 8% of officers are available for operational duty at any time. In that situation, it is inarguable that releasing trained officers from tasks which could be done by civilians would increase significantly the number of police officers on the front line. The debate must be over which tasks must be carried out by police officers and whether door-to-door inquiries and taking statements from witnesses can be satisfactorily carried out by civilians. Using retired police officers, who bring a wealth of experience to such tasks is a positive step; using untrained civilians risks undermining some basic tenets of policing.
The most contentious of Mr Mulhern's suggestions will be that Scotland should introduce Police Community Service Officers (PCSOs). Their role in England and Wales was recently criticised after they failed to go into a lake in which a boy drowned, because they were not trained for such a situation. Inevitably, the role of uniformed personnel who have received some training, but who are not police officers, is likely to cause confusion. If they are to be deployed, it must be for specific purposes that are widely understood. Mr Mulhern's mantra of "remove replication and duplication" has obvious operational and financial advantages in theory, but in practice that may be at the cost of sometimes vital local knowledge.
His proposal for a single body to deal with all transport policing (rather than eight forces with separate road traffic divisions and British Transport Police dealing with trains) makes more sense than officers from one force having to turn back at the boundary with the next. It would, however, require a different financial structure and, combined with his other suggestions, such as adding responsibility for fraud, counter-terrorism and complex homicides to the Scottish Crime and Drug Enforcement Agency's remit, will be seen by some as merging police forces by the back door.
Having eight, very disparate, police forces in Scotland has long been a cause for discussion. The justification for a force the size of Strathclyde is that the large rural hinterland cannot be policed effectively without access to the expertise available in other forces, particularly Northern, and will occasionally require specialist services they cannot provide themselves. In an age when criminal activity is no longer local, the argument for one national force was made by Graham Pearson, the recently-departed head of the SCDEA. In a small country, however, a single force would be very much subject to direct political pressure from Holyrood. The establishment of the SPSA for services such as forensic science is an acknowledgment that centres of excellence are required. It is time to broaden the current argument about freeing police officers from tasks that do not require their unique powers from party politicking to how to deliver better policing for the whole country.
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