‘ Please trust us to do our job’

Don’t chase registered sex offenders out of town and trust us to keep you safe.

That’s the message from those in charge of dealing with the individuals on the register on our streets.

They say there’s a reason why registered sex offenders ( RSOs) are rehomed back in the community they came from – because everyone knows who they are.

MAPPA coordinator Allan Woods told the Post: “From a risk management point of view, we will always try to put an offender back into the community that they came from.

“You may think that’s a strange thing to do. But the reality is, if they go back to the community they came from, most people know them because they’ve been in the local paper or on the news.

“The house they get put into has been put into this stringent environmental risk assessment. These people become quite isolated in their communities because everyone knows who they are.

“But this has worked for years and until recently there wasn’t really any issues.

“You’d get the occasional vandalism of a house, abuse on the streets or a stone through the window. But since Facebook you are getting the situation where people are being activated and controlled with crowds gathering outside houses and forcing people to leave – and that is a real problem for MAPPA.

“Because if we need to move someone in an emergency situation we can’t do the in depth environmental risk assessments.

“In an emergency we may have to move an RSO to a place where nobody knows them.

“Where they were before in their own community no- one was ever going to leave their kids with them while they nipped down to the shops.

“This is the problem we are having. We know people don’t like it, but if you place them back in the community where they came from everyone knows who they are.

“We’re all about risk management. We absolutely do not want another offence or another victim and that process works in favour of protecting people.”

The police force add that rallying outside an RSO’s house to chase them out of town takes up time they could be using fighting other crimes.

Detective Inspector Nathan Calderwood said: “Whilst protesting might be well intentioned, it does simply undermine the significant efforts undertaken and measures put in place by the police and our partners to manage the RSOs in the community.”

Just last month a police officer was struck on the head with a hammer as a crowd of 250 people protested outside an RSO’s house in Kilmarnock.

Chief Inspector Brian Anderson said: “That kind of behaviour is completely unacceptable.

“I understand the right that people have to protest peacefully and we respect that right. But what we won’t do is allow peaceful protests to develop into disorder where there is a wider risk to the public. It is an emotive subject.”