Former Police Scotland superintendent questions ‘risk to public confidence’ amid crime strategy shift

Fears of extra ‘back-office burden’ on Police Scotland

A former Police Scotland superintendent has questioned how the force will implement a contentious new policy that means it will no longer investigate some minor offences, warning some incidents could be logged and closed by staff who have never investigated a crime.

Martin Gallagher, who served as an area commander in Paisley during his near three decade-long service with the force, said the disquiet caused by the new strategy raised questions over whether it was “worth the effort” and the risk it posed to public confidence in the police.

Earlier this week, Police Scotland defended the decision to expand the ‘proportionate response to crime’ strategy in the wake of a pilot scheme in the north east of Scotland. The force argued the move would allow officers to devote more time to keeping people safe and reducing offending.

Assistant Chief Constable Emma Bond said the shift was “not a policy of non-investigation”, and pointed to an evaluation of the pilot, which found a majority of officers felt the change had brought about a positive difference to their workload, with some 2,657 officer hours freed up over the course of the 12 week-long trial.

Chief superintendent Rob Hay, president of the Association of Scottish Police Superintendents, has also backed the switch, and stressed the approach “isn’t about not investigating any particular crime type”. He explained: “What it allows for is, where no clear lines of enquiry exist and there are no wider concerns, reports to be concluded at the earliest point of contact. In turn, this frees up officer time for investigations which do have lines of enquiry.

“This should lead to better quality, more timeous investigations and a better service for the public. It treats the public with maturity and honesty and doesn’t require them to repeat their report on a number of occasions, to different people, only for it to be filed undetected weeks later.”

However, Mr Gallagher, the founder and director of Kilmailing Consulting, said a key question facing the force was who would process crime reports. “Is there confirmation that this will be veteran police officers who have experience of visiting crime scenes and undertaking investigations, or will these crimes be logged and closed by staff who have in fact never investigated a crime?” he asked. “In terms of staff taking these reports, recruitment and training are one thing. Actually knowing what to look for to form a line of inquiry and having a passion for follow up to feel someone's collar is something very different.”

Police Scotland say the new approach will free up frontline police officers, but there are questions over how it will be implemented. Picture: John Devlin

Mr Gallagher, a former area commander for Paisley who retired from Police Scotland in 2022, also said there were concerns about the strategy’s impact on control rooms. The force’s evaluation of the pilot scheme found that since the change was implemented, half of team leaders in C3 division said their workload had increased.

Mr Gallagher said: “Since 2018, nearly two million calls to the 101 service in Scotland have been unanswered. This is not evidence of a police function with capacity to take additional work. However, the proposal to have crime reports taken and closed by phone or via the internet, will add to the back-office burden for the service at a time when there is a voluntary redundancy scheme underway for police staff.”