ONE VIOLENT CRIME EVERY 8 MINUTES
Murders and rapes soar in new crisis for police
SCOTLAND is in the grip of a growing crimewave – with one violent offence every eight minutes.
The number of murders has risen by nearly 30 per cent in a year while rapes have soared by 7 per cent.
But in a surprising response to the rise in reported sex crimes, police chiefs last night welcomed the figures, saying they demonstrated that victims are becoming increasingly willing to report sex assaults, and confident their attacker will be brought to justice.
Despite a spike in serious assaults, almost a third of violent offences – which have risen by about 5 per cent in a year – are unsolved, police data shows.
The figures fuelled fears over the disaster-prone single force amid concern over a mounting financial crisis
and secret plans to axe up to 300 officers. Scottish Tory MSP Alex Johnstone said: ‘The sheer frequency of these serious crimes should be a wake-up call for the SNP.
‘Instead of messing around with statistics to boast of 40-year lows, it should be making sure Police Scotland is equipped to sort this out.’
Police Scotland revealed crime figures comparing the first quarter of this financial year – April to June – with the same period last year.
They showed violent crimes are up 5.1 per cent, rising by 817 to 16,712, meaning over 90 days there is an average of 186 violent offences a day or roughly one every eight minutes.
Sexual crimes are up 10.5 per cent to 2,767 – 263 more than last year.
The number of rapes increased by 7.4 per cent to 450, which is 31 more than the previous year.
Around half of these were judged to be historical complaints and yesterday Deputy Chief Constable Iain Livingstone said the force ‘welcomed’
‘A wake-up call for the SNP’
the upsurge in reported sex offences. Standing in for Chief Constable Phil Gormley, who is on holiday, Mr Livingstone told a meeting of the Scottish Police Authority (SPA) in Stirling: ‘Sexual crime has risen, but we expect this and we would welcome it.
‘We see the increase in recorded sexual crime as indicative of the greater confidence not only in policing but in justice in general, and there has been an increase of 10.5 per cent in comparison to last year. Almost half of the recorded rapes in this period were non-recent or historical in nature, and this is an area where we continue to see significant rises from previous recorded periods and years.’
The figures showed sexual assaults are up 18.2 per cent to 1,736 – 267 more than last year – which was described by Police Scotland as ‘above the expected range’.
Murders rose from 14 to 18, an increase of almost 30 per cent, while serious assault was seen as the ‘main driver’ behind the increase in violent offending – these were up by 15.7 per cent, or 137 crimes, to 1,012.
But overall the violent crime detection rate was down 6.4 per cent to 71.2 per cent – meaning nearly 30 per cent were unsolved.
Mr Livingstone said violent crime ‘remains a challenge’ for the force but the figures were still ‘below the five-year average’. He said: ‘We remain committed to working positively with regard to violence.
‘I’m looking to address violent offending, and some of the things that underpin that such as alcohol, and to try to interpret why this increase has occurred.’
Meanwhile, it also emerged that a summer heatwave heralded almost two weeks of violence with more police call-outs each day than on Hogmanay. Police saw a ‘significant increase’ in incidents in the three months to June, including a 12-day stretch with ‘significant violence and a number of murders’, according to Mr Livingstone.
He said: ‘In the first quarter we dealt with 430,108 incidents. That’s a significant increase of about 24,000.
‘There was one period in mid-June when the weather was good, and over that 12-day period on each and every single day we had demand in terms of calls to service that was greater than we receive on Hogmanay, which traditionally is our period of highest demand.’
Recorded crime fell by 0.2 per cent from 63,569 to 63,440 between the first quarter of last year and the first quarter of 2015-16.
Break-ins involving ‘dwellings’ were down 15.1 per cent to 1,971 (351 fewer crimes) after a concerted drive to crack down on break-ins.
Scottish Tory justice spokesman Douglas Ross said: ‘The SNP’s model of a single police force is cracking at the seams and it’s our communities that suffer most when crime rates increase.’
A SURGE in violent crime that sees, on average, one attack reported every eight minutes means we live in dark times.
Troublingly, the spike also involves murders soaring 30 per cent and rapes rising 7 per cent. While the efforts of rankand-file officers are unstinting, the public are entitled to ask if Police Scotland is fit to protect them.
The single force is facing unprecedented pressure on its budget – it has a £21.1million black hole – and overall officer numbers are at a six-year low. Morale has been sapped by pennypinching that has seen even liners for wastepaper bins rationed and officers paying for replacement lightbulbs out of their own pockets.
Public confidence has been rocked by scandals including deaths in custody, abuse of stop-and-search powers, the deployment of elite firearms teams on routine call-outs and the utter horror of a woman’s death after a car crash was missed because of bungled call-handling.
More is to come. We reported this week that another 300 frontline posts face the axe.
It is a bold man who welcomes an upsurge in reported rapes but Deputy Chief Constable Iain Livingstone did just that yesterday, arguing that the jump showed victims had faith in his force’s ability to bring perpetrators to justice.
Perhaps he is right, but what of the estimated third of violent offences that remain unsolved?
And amidst all this turmoil, Justice Secretary Michael Matheson – Invisible Man of Nicola Sturgeon’s Cabinet – may soon be the subject of a missing-person inquiry.
He seems content to put senior officers out in front to take the flak from an increasingly concerned public.
But his tactic cannot disguise forever the fact that the architect of the whole creaking Police Scotland monolith was the SNP itself.
And nor can he abrogate his responsibility for the straitened budget under which Chief Constable Phil Gormley must operate.
The SNP’s notorious internal discipline means Nicola Sturgeon can sit Sphinx-like, pretending any issues are being dealt with by her minions.
If Mr Matheson is happy with the budget for the police, he should look disgruntled police officers in the eye and tell them they are complaining about nothing.
Similarly, he should tell the public their concerns are unfounded.
But if he is unhappy with the budget, he should place principle before party and ask the public to back his demand for more finance.
Government’s first responsibility is the security of its citizens.
Is the SNP so distracted by its separatist wrangling that it is failing in this most fundamental duty?