Pandemic leads to increase in complaints about the police

The coronanvirus pandemic has led to an increase in the number of complaints about police, according to statistics from the first quarter of the year.

Police Scotland’s Quarter 1 Performance report covers the period from April to June. It found confidence in policing was high, with 63 per cent of 22,000 people questioned agreeing that they had confidence in their local police.

But it also recorded 1,676 complaints, up 14.4 per cent on the same period the previous year. More than a quarter of these (26.3 per cent) were related to Covid-19. Complaints concerned officers failing to physically distance, failing to enforce physical distancing by the public and not wearing PPE. They also involved “allegations of incivility” over officers attempting to “engage with individuals regarding their presence in a public place”.

Officers made 59,778 interventions under coronavirus legislation. This included 42 premises being closed, 3,164 fixed penalty notices issued, 263 arrests made and 339 people “returned home using reasonable force”.

The report found that 171 police officers or staff have contracted Covid-19, with all but two having now recovered.

An increase in hate crime from mid-may was attributed in part to the pandemic.

“A significant number of hate crimes relate to neighbour disputes many of which likely result from heightened tensions stemming from the pandemic,” the report said.

A summary of crime statistics over the quarter found that most violent crime has decreased with the exception of robberies and assault of emergency workers, the latter up 11.2 per cent. There was a 54.2 per cent increase in fraud and an additional 4,082 antisocial behaviour fixed penalties were issued.