Evening Telegraph (First Edition)
MOre cops in region
Small hike in number of officers based in Tayside
POLICE officer numbers have risen slightly in Tayside, new figures have revealed.
The latest stats from Police Scotland show that by the end of September this year, there were 945 officers working in the region.
That’s a rise of 10 since the end of June.
However, the long-term picture shows a small drop in officer numbers locally.
Figures from the end of December 2013 show there were 968 officers distributed locally around Tayside — meaning that number has dropped by 2% to September’s 945 tally.
Iain Livingstone, Police Scotland’s Deputy Chief Constable, said there will be weekly fluctuations but insists the force performs well to keep numbers consistent.
He said: “Overall, Police Scotland officer numbers have remained constant, and information is published regularly detailing our resources throughout the country.
“Police Scotland remains committed to maintaining officer numbers at the current level whilst we review demand, organisational profiles and skills to shape a service that can deal with new and changing requirements from our communities.
“There will be weekly fluctuations in numbers as a result of monthly retiral patterns but we continue to recruit — an intake of 150 probationers started in September with further intakes planned. Local policing is at the core of Police Scotland. Individual divisional commanders are responsible to their communities and as such are empowered to deploy resources according to local needs.
“We carefully manage our resources at local, regional and national level to deal with the priorities of our communities, emerging threats and risks, major events and public demand.”
While Tayside has remained fairly static, in August the number of officers in Scotland fell to its lowest level since 2010. There were 17,242 full-time officers in the country between April and June compared to the 17,217 in the last quarter of October 2010.
In 2007, the SNP pledged an increase in the total number of officers by 1,000 but that was dropped in April this year.