Scottish police officers have issued a plea on social media for more frontline resources, saying they are failing to act on dozens of crime reports because they do not have enough staff.
Five officers described the impossible situation Police Scotland faces on videos posted on Twitter by the Scottish Police Federation (SPF), which represents frontline staff.
Stuart Corbett, a sergeant in Lanarkshire, said: “We are starting our shift with 50 or 60 un-actioned calls before the day even begins. We can’t even answer the calls, which means we can’t put qualitative, investigative time into the calls that we do have to report, and it’s just unsustainable.”
Iain Gray, a sergeant in Glasgow, added: “Everything’s a priority for the police service, which unfortunately means if the public phone the police they expect to see the police, and the demand is so great at the moment that we cannot guarantee that.”
Scotland had 17,147 full-time officers at the end of September – more officers per head than anywhere in the UK except London.
The officers in the video acknowledged that there were more police in Scotland than ever before, but they said the extra staff hadn’t become frontline officers.
Chris Thomson, a sergeant in Glasgow, said: “There have never been so many police officers in Scotland, however, so few on the front line. We can’t be everything to everyone. Police officers are at stretching point, breaking point.”
Andy Malcolm, Chair of the East Area Committee of the Scottish Police Federation, said: “The thin blue line is getting thinner, we need to decide what we’re going to do and how we’re going to do it.”
Scottish Police officers secured a 6.5% pay rise over a 31-month period last year.
A Scottish government spokesperson said: “While the allocation of resources is for the chief constable and SPA [Scottish Police Authority] to determine, we are protecting the police resource budget in real terms in every year of the current parliament, delivering a boost of £100 million by 2021.
“Officer numbers in Scotland remain high – over 900 more than were in place in 2007, while over the same period in England and Wales there was a decrease of nearly 20,000 officers. Total Scottish government funding for the SPA in 2019-20 is increasing by £42.3m, bringing the annual policing budget to more than £1.2 billion.”
The Scottish government received £37m in last year’s budget to deal with the knock-on effects of Brexit, but no money was made available to Police Scotland.
But the authorities said they had put 360 officers on standby to deal with potential protests and disruption at ports, all of which needed extra funding.
Deputy Chief Constable Will Kerr told The Times: “Over 80% of calls we receive are not related to crime and many of the people who call us are in distress, many are vulnerable and they don’t always know where they are or what services they need.”
He added: “The front line of policing goes beyond uniformed officers on the street that the public will see every day.
“The front line includes our officers working in less visible, but no less vital, areas which protect the public, such as preventing and investigating serious and organised crime, cybercrime and the abuse of children and vulnerable people.”