Police officers sent to charity shops to buy kit, says union
POLICE officers are having to buy some equipment from charity shops because of swingeing budget cuts, a union chief said yesterday.
Calum Steele, general secretary of the Scottish Police Federation, said the force was in ‘dire financial straits’.
He stated dog handlers were abandoning searches towards the end of their shifts to avoid overtime costs – while criminal investigations are ‘passed from officer to officer, grossly diminishing the care for victims’.
Mr Steele said ‘rural communities are seeing police services diminished’ and access to policing is a ‘postcode lottery’.
The outspoken attack undermines repeated SNP claims that the single force has reduced the cost of policing without compromising the standard of service offered to the public.
Last night, Scottish Tory justice spokesman Douglas Ross said: ‘These are deeply worrying claims and the Scottish Government should now examine them very seriously.’
Mr Steele said: ‘The Police Service of Scotland (PSoS) is in such dire financial straits that it is sending officers to charity shops to source equipment you could pick up for a couple of pounds in most supermarkets.
‘That is but one of the ridiculous yet brutal realities of a lack of funding for what is the first and last emergency service.’
Describing one incident, he said: ‘Officers dealing with a child rightly sought to go some way to protect the child from needless intrusion by seeking the purchase of car sun blinds to help screen them from view.
‘These can readily be bought for a couple of pounds but the officers were sent to scour charity shops to see if they could source them cheaper.’
Mr Steele added: ‘Dog handlers following trails are being told to stop as they approach the end of their shift (lest they incur overtime) and other dog handlers are simply despatched to pick up from where they left off ’.
He said the police service in Scotland deals with more than 10,000 calls each day. He said: ‘A few short weeks ago, during the good weather, Scotland had ten murders in a 14-day period.
‘In the same period, its call demand far exceeded anything that it had ever experienced before and made the traditional high demand of Hogmanay seem like a Sunday morning.’
Mr Steele said ‘senior officers, the Scottish Police Authority (SPA) and Scottish Government are happily kidding the public on that everything in the garden is rosy’.
Lib Dem justice spokesman Liam McArthur said: ‘The idea of officers being sent to charity shops to source essential kit would be laughable if it wasn’t so serious.’
But an SPA spokesman said any ‘informed debate about policing needs to focus more on a measured appraisal of performance and less on generating an emotional reaction from a few anecdotes’.
Deputy Chief Constable Rose Fitzpatrick insisted that dog handlers ‘ask for authorisation to stay beyond their tour of duty if the search cannot be completed within rostered hours’.
She added officers ‘do not routinely or regularly purchase items from charity shops to support operational requirements’.
On the occasion Mr Steele mentioned, she said an officer ‘bought a sun shade – something we do not carry in stock’.
A Scottish Government spokesman said: ‘We are committed to protecting the police revenue budget in real terms for the entirety of this parliament.’
‘Dire financial straits’