By Professor John Robertson

Today, BBC Reporting Scotland has an unnamed source claiming that the Scottish Government is treating police officers with ‘contempt’, because they’re taking a bit of time to settle their pay claim. In truth, the deal is just going through the usual channels and the Scottish Government is not involved at this stage.

The report, of course has no context. Here’s some:

First:

Officers in Scotland are immediately better off than other forces, and exceed the UK average salary within just 2 years of service. https://www.ranksuccess.co.uk/officersalary.html

Second:

https://policepromotion.blog/2024/03/07/2024-police-officer-numbers-across-uk-and-beyond/

Significantly more officers per head of population in Scotland despite as we’ll see below, far lower crime and falling crime. in the last 20 years.

Third:

From BBC Scotland in 9 August 2024, in what must be an unauthorised ‘Scotland is the best‘ report by a junior reporter not yet ‘inducted‘:

Police Scotland is considering a request to send 120 officers to Northern Ireland following several nights of anti-immigration riots in Belfast and other parts of the UK.

Jon Boutcher, chief constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI), said his officers were exhausted and could not “stand alone to deal with disorder like this any more”.

Mr Boutcher said the PSNI needed support as it had been allowed to “decay” in recent years.

The National Police Coordination Centre, which provides support to forces across the UK, said it was considering a request from the Police Service in Northern Ireland (PSNI) for back-up from other forces.

“As a national service, Police Scotland has the ability to flex resources where the need is greatest in order to keep people safe,” said a Police Scotland spokesperson.

Mr Swinney said “thankfully” there had not been riots in Scotland, but added: “We have to remain vigilant because of the unacceptable conduct that’s taking place.”

He told BBC Radio’s Good Morning Scotland: “I want everyone to remain vigilant because we have communities that are experiencing a great deal of fear and anxiety as a consequence of what they’re observing in other parts of the United Kingdom.”

He said Police Scotland had “formidable” resources that could be deployed flexibly across the country if required. ^{https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c77lxyz7702o}

Fourth:

From the Safer Communities and Justice Statistics Monthly Data Report : July 2024 edition:

Crime has fallen by 53% since 2008-09. Results from the Scottish Crime and Justice Survey (SCJS) show that around 1 in 10 adults were victims of crime in 2021-22 (10.0%) compared to 1 in 5 in 2008-09 (20.4%). The estimated number of crimes fell by 53% over the same period, and by 18% since 2017-18. https://www.gov.scot/publications/safer-communities-justice-statistics-monthly-data-report-july-2024-edition/pages/3/#page-top

IMPORTANT – This is not based on police reporting which is known to understate the actual level of crime but on The Scottish Crime and Justice Survey (SCJS), a large-scale (5 500 interviews) social survey which asks people about their experiences and perceptions of crime in Scotland and is considered ‘gold standard’ research methodology ie very accurate.

In crude terms, you’re half as likely to be victim of crime than you were 17 years ago. How’s that for real news utterly unacceptable for our MSM’s agenda?

Fifth:

Despite this massive fall, there are actually slightly more police officers, as of March 2024, than there were, 17 years ago, at the end of the last Labour Government in March 2007:

From Police Scotland data, 7 May 2024:

Scotland’s Chief Statistician has published statistics on Police Officer Quarterly Strength, which gives the number of full-time equivalent police officers employed by Police Scotland.

The key findings of the statistics are:

• there were 16,356 full-time equivalent (FTE) police officers in Scotland on 31 March 2024
• this is an increase of 122 FTE police officers (+0.7%) from the 16,234 FTE police officers recorded at 31 March 2007 _{https://www.gov.scot/publications/police-officer-quarterly-strength-statistics-31-march-2024/}