In the National two days ago, the above and:

This is the third time in recent history.

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From BBC UK July 2026:

Chief Inspector of Constabulary Andy Cooke praised officers for their “immense bravery and personal sacrifice” while protecting the public. But he warned it was “clear” that police had missed opportunities to prepare for widespread disorder, and that earlier incidents involving “extreme nationalist sentiment” had been underestimated. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cpvn0dnnyj3o

From BBC Scotland 11 June 2025:

Police were unprepared for the scale of disorder that broke out in part of the UK following the Southport knife attacks, a police watchdog has found. Police intelligence did not predict the “rising tide of violent disorder well enough”, according to the review of their response to the worst UK unrest in more than a decade.

Police Scotland has agreed to send officers to Northern Ireland after two nights of disorder in Ballymena. The Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) asked for extra support under mutual aid arrangements following violent scenes in the County Antrim town. The deployment will involve an undisclosed number of public order officers who are trained to police civil unrest.

Police Scotland previously sent 120 officers to Belfast last summer after a number of PSNI officers were injured during several nights of rioting and disorder in the wake of attacks on children in Southport, Merseyside.

Mutual aid agreements are uncommon and are generally “incident based,” according to the National Police Chiefs’ Council. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cn84wgnpqwgo

There’s not a word in the report from the police union or from opposition voices to remind us of the carefully selected statistics to suggest that police staffing has been cut by the SNP.

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.

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

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How was this possible?

From the Safer Communities and Justice Statistics Monthly Data Report : July 2026 edition:

Property and violent crime has fallen by 42% since 2008-09. Results from the Scottish Crime and Justice Survey (SCJS) show that one-in-five (20.8%) adults were estimated to have experienced at least one crime. https://www.gov.scot/publications/safer-communities-and-justice-statistics-monthly-data-june-2026/pages/statistics-on-crime-in-general/

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 almost half as likely to be victim of crime than you were 18 years ago. How’s that for real news utterly unacceptable for our MSM’s agenda?

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, 31 March 2026:

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 16,430 full-time equivalent (FTE) police officers in Scotland on 31 March 2026. This is an increase of 196 FTE police officers (+1.2%) from the 16,234 FTE police officers recorded at 31 March 2007: https://www.gov.scot/publications/police-officer-quarterly-strength-statistics-31-march-2026/

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