21 August 2013

Juxtaposition of the Day

Kenny MacAskill, Cabinet Secretary for Justice, defending the SNP policy of forming single police force in Holyrood in February 2013
"This is a police service for all Scotland and it will be focused on all parts of Scotland and not one part, whether that is west central Scotland or anywhere else. For that reason, the new police service has at its heart local policing and serving all communities. Local commanders have been announced for each area, who will work with communities, and local policing plans are being prepared for every one of Scotland’s 353 council wards, whether they are in the west or in rural, urban, island or mainland Scotland."

Police Scotland, the single national police authority formed, today, defending the massive ramping up of stops and searches by police officers on the Scottish citizenry by extending Strathclyde Police's old policy to the rest of Scotland:

"... the creation of a single police service had allowed a standardisation of practice throughout the country."

The best laid plans...

13 comments :

  1. The Labour Party should be pleased that knife crime is being targeted since it was a major policy promise in their last bid for power in 2011.

    Apparently they are complaining though.

    No pleasing some people?

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    1. Labour's 2011 election policy was ghastly. Nobody shrieked about that more than I did.

      Stops and searches are a slightly different issue. And as the First Minister likes saying, "better one sinner repenteth". Don't let's insist on Labour justice spokespeople being numpties forever. You'll give me a coronary in the 40s.

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  2. Ahem.

    I have some slightly vicarious experience in this matter; I no longer work as a librarian, I now work with what certain police officers call the "Fluffies".

    Ex-Strathclyde officers are now patrolling with ex L&B guys, Community Safety Officerss and Environmental Wardens, spreading their experience and methods and learning how it was done here (Edinburgh).

    It's working well so far...

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    1. A strangely reassuring picture, imagining your treading the beat, vastly hairy, with the repressed homicidal attitude of all librarians.

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  3. The discussion under the Herald link is rather good I think with interesting debate - I know some guys think the Herald threads have got anodyne since they insisted on real names but I'll take calm debate over frothy bile all day long. Also, encouraging to see that most people seem to be avoiding the steel trap of lining up automatically on the basis of a pro or anti SNP govt view.

    The chap who makes the Ulster comparison has it for me - 'Police Scotland' is such a bad idea, especially given how much justified wariness there is out there. There is another obvious factor, that the monolith will likely make it harder to get at the truth of how we are policed and what the figures actually mean. To take one example, Medics Against Violence was formed after A&E medics realised that the blade attack figures issued by Strathclyde Police were clearly wrong; if a stabbing victim wandered in and out of the Western after treatment without the cops being involved, then as far as Strathclyde Police was concerned, nothing had happened. Different forces makes it harder to get away with pockling the figures.

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    1. Must say, unlike some, I wasn't burningly agin the idea of a unified Scottish police force, or I would have said something here about it. In some ways, one of the clear benefits of one police force is that our criminal justice statistics will improve. At least they'll be collected according to unified principles, unlike in the past, when you had great patches of the country using their own eccentric system, or supplying no data...

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  4. Somewhat surprised and disappointed that Lallands did not actual pay more attention to the stats used in the Herald piece. If he had then surely you would see that there are complete "mince", not just a bit dodgy but rank rotten. They compare 3 months Police Scotland with a year of Strathclyde and completely ignore the size of the population they serve. If you factor this in then their stats show a 50% DROP in stop and search.

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    1. soosider,

      I've not had the chance to look properly at the statistics, though I've seen the commentary on them you're referring to. In my defence, I can only plead that I'm trying to finish my doctoral thesis, and am trying (and failing) to keep my distractions at a minimum...

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  5. Given that you are unable to check the figures, would it not be the decent thing to do to remove this post until you have. Then, if it turns out to be true, you can reinstate it, if not, then you can post a corrected version.

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    1. Robert,

      I don't really think so. The issue of the figures is really peripheral to the main point I was drawing attention to above, which is about the "localness" of Police Scotland. Whatever the rates at which the force are stopping and searching folk, it is undeniable and significant that they've rolled Strathclyde's policy across the country.

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