Campus cops: Scotland's role models on the frontline
From handling terrorism referrals to teaching about positive masculinity and cooking stovies with the kids, PC Luke Cameron is on a different type of beat.
Usual playground activity grinds to a halt as a dozen small pupils drop what they’re doing to instead wave and holler towards their school’s visitor.
“It’s like a celebrity appearing,” says Eyemouth Primary’s head teacher Jill Horsburgh.
The celebrity? PC Luke Cameron, who looks exactly like your average cop bar for the pair of googly eyes stuck to his two-way radio.
PC Cameron has been the local police liaison officer for the area for the past four years.
He covers the Eyemouth High and Berwickshire High clusters - so, two secondary schools and 10 primary schools.
In other words, a lot of names to remember.
PC Cameron is one of two Police Scotland officers who work in Scottish Borders Council schools, what used to colloquially be known as campus cops.
It’s unusual for police to work in primary schools and PC Cameron and his colleague, as far as they’re aware, are the only primary school liaison officers in Scotland.
And they have plenty of work to do.
Ms Horsburgh begins rhyming off a laundry list of PC Cameron’s activities in her school - from cookery lessons, sports, road safety activities, early intervention work, tackling school refusal by supporting the home school link worker, attending the School Liaison Group and internet safety lessons.
She mentions sextortion education for the P7s.
“That may seem a little young but the reality is that Police Scotland does have 11 and 12 year olds being subject to sexual extortion, and so they need to know how to protect themselves, and that's what I view it as,” PC Cameron said.
“If anything I've said triggers in their head that little alarm bell ringing when they're communicating with someone online then I’ve done my job well.”
PC Cameron, who has a degree in computer game design, adds: “One of my biggest bug bears is that we completely protect children in the real world yet they go online and it's just a completely unregulated space, and they're just left to the predations of bad people.”
For PC Cameron, prevention is better than cure. Being in the schools, knowing the pupils and being able to respond quickly means his colleagues in response don’t have to become involved.
“You like to feel like you’re another person that young people can come to,” he added.
“Kids have come to me to say, ‘We’ve experienced this’ or ‘We’ve been contacted by this person’.
“High school kids sometimes just go wayward if they don't feel they can trust the staff at the school, or they don't feel they have a relationship with someone.”
PC Cameron had come to Eyemouth Primary School from a Vulnerable Young Person’s meeting discussing a child he had supported through criminal extortion and modern human trafficking.
The pupil had, that morning, been taken off the vulnerable young person’s protocol.
It’s a good feeling, he says, to have a positive outcome especially given how immersed he is in the schools and how familiar with the pupils.
On three occasions PC Cameron has been involved in referrals to Prevent, the multi-agency scheme to divert potential terrorism.
In one instance, a pupil was accessing material online to learn how to buy fertiliser to make bombs.
A benefit of having such a close relationship with pupils is that PC Cameron is able to assess any changes in a young person’s presentation.
For the very youngest children, PC Cameron talks to them about how the police can help them.
“If you ask them what the police do,” he says, “They’ll answer ‘catch bad guys’ but I tell them that we would find them if they went missing and tell them all the different ways police would respond in an emergency.”
He says about 80 per cent of his time is used in the two secondary schools, because “the level of incident and risk necessitates that’s where you will be” but he tries to spend as much time in the primaries as possible.
“If I can deal with a child who's coming in to conflict with the law, and educate them and help them understand why they've done what they've done, and they then don't go on to commit five further offences, I’ve done my job, right?
“But it's very hard to measure that.”
His role is ultimately not to criminalise children but to prevent them coming into further contact with the law.
Mrs Horsburgh said: “We’ve got people who need to be around the table and Luke is one of them.
“For me, as head teacher, it’s about a multi-agency approach.
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“Having police liaison officers in primary schools isn’t the done thing but he’s a vital part of our school.”
PC Cameron agrees. “In Jedburgh, not 50 miles away, they leave the primary schools to the community police but for me, the benefit is that primary is best chance to build a relationship with them.
“I do think it’s a miss by other local authorities not to have them in primary schools.”
PC Cameron will go to the primary seven outdoor residential week for at least a day or two, taking part in archery and abseiling sessions.
While he doesn’t have a head for heights, he will endure the abseiling to role model to the pupils how to conquer fears.
When Eyemouth High School had a particularly challenging year group, the head was looking for ways to gainfully occupy their lunch breaks.
PC Cameron played American Football so offered to teach them the basics, resulting in some of the boys going to play for the Edinburgh and Napier university teams.
He still has days where he works as a regular officer - perhaps doing a shift in the courts or match day policing.
It makes him feel guilty to be away from his schools because no one is covering when he’s not there.
One of the increasingly difficult issues facing Scottish schools post-pandemic is school refusal and PC Cameron will work with the home school link worker, Laura, who Ms Horsburgh refers to as “outstanding”.
He says reduced timetables for pupils who can only cope with being in school part of the week has made identifying truanting that much harder.
He added: “It used to be if you were driving around between school start and school finish, you wouldn't see kids unless they were truanting whereas now they can say they're on a reduced timetable, it's quite hard to disprove in the moment and it's definitely not as easy to to resolve as it once was.”
During a spate of anti-social behaviour over last summer he drew up “heat maps” of where it was happening and switched to back shifts to go out and speak to teenagers involved.
While young people will bolt from police “because they think it’s fun to have a chase” they know it’s PC Cameron and will stay and chat.
One of the other courses he undertakes with young people is Imagine a Man - teaching positive masculinity and trying to combat some of the toxic masculinity of the likes of misogynist Andrew Tate.
The influence of men like Tate is, both PC Cameron and Ms Horsburgh, say, having a real impact on young boys.
Ms Horsburgh said: “We’re lucky here, we do have some male primary teachers, and one of the deputies is male, but it's that bit of positive masculinity.”
She echoes a point PC Cameron has made earlier about seeing young male pupils answering back and being disrespectful to women teachers but not to men.
“Where is that coming from?” PC Cameron says, “It’s a kid online hearing influencers talking about women like property and various expectations of women - they can’t separate that from what reality is.
“It’s so pervasive.”
As part of Imagine A Man, PC Cameron, who is also an under-18 rugby coach, asks boys to tell him their strongest quality as a young man.
“And they could not answer anything positive about themselves’,” he said.
They could all, however, name their weakest quality.
“I found that really, really damning because you should be able to, as a young man, say ‘I’m kind’ or ‘I’m compassionate’.
“But some are never hearing that praise.”
“I try to be a good role model for them.
“I hold open doors for people, I model being respectful towards women.
“It's teaching them it's okay to be upset, it's okay to cry, it's okay to talk about these things.
“You don't have to to be brave all the time.”
From freedom of information requests submitted to all Scotland’s local authorities, around half have school-based or liaison police officers.
They are funded depending on council area and police division. In some councils, Police Scotland cover the full cost of the scheme.
In other local authorities the role is paid for partially by the council and partially by the force.
In Dumfries and Galloway, for example, the council pays 40 per cent of the costs while in South Ayrshire the council picks up the total cost.
In Glasgow, which has the highest number of liaison officers at 25, head teachers use their government-allocated Pupil Equity Fund (PEF) money to pay for police officers.
During the last school year, Glasgow’s head teachers spent £460,000 on their campus police - by far the highest amount Scotland-wide.
Claire Wilson, head of Clevedon Secondary in the city’s west end, says the money is well worth it.
“It's value for money, not just for us as a school community, but I think for the wider community as well.
“They've got that really good local knowledge. They're able to act swiftly but then follow things up over a period of time.”
PC David Watt, who works in Clevedon, takes part in Higher classes for subjects where he can lend valuable insights. He too does sport and other extracurricular activities while also helping divert pupils from anti-social or difficult behaviour.
Ms Wilson added: “He’s really built up strong relationships, both with our young people and staff, but also with the local community and families.”
Back at Eyemouth Primary School, PC Cameron is sharing his famous stovie recipe ahead of a cookery class he’ll shortly be involved in.
Reflecting on his role, he adds: “I didn't join the police to catch bad guys. I’ve never been interested in it.
“I joined because I had difficult teenage years, and if I'd had someone there that I could have spoke to amongst it all … well, that's what I want to try and be for these young people.
“There’s no special secret to it.”
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