Gormley: Police do so much more than simply f ight crime

POLICING is no longer solely about crime-fighting, Scotland’s chief constable said yesterday.

Phil Gormley said most police business had nothing to do with catching criminals as so much time was now spent dealing with issues such as missing people.

He said officers should be judged on their compassion when they respond to vulnerable people in trouble and needing help.

Mr Gormley said an average of 84 people a day go missing and a ‘significant proportion’ of them have dementia, while about 260 calls a day concern problems other than allegations of crimes.

But the comments come at a time when violent and sexual crime are rising – and police ‘detection rates’ for violent crime and rape are declining.

Police were also criticised last year for publishing a list of future ‘priorities’, with catching criminals ranked only fourth behind goals such as ‘localism’ and ‘inclusion’.

Mr Gormley was speaking on a radio phone-in during which callers branded the force a ‘disgrace’ and complained of a lack of local accountability.

Asked about how Police Scotland dealt with dementia, Mr Gormley said many sufferers go missing, placing pressure on the force, a challenge likely to grow because of the ageing population.

‘Another issue for us is a broader understanding of what the nature of policing is,’ he said, ‘because it is often reduced to crime-fighting and of course crime-fighting is what we must and will do.

‘But so much of what the public call the police about is not crime. We have 260 calls a day from people who are worried about other people and that’s what policing does.

‘I need to create a service with colleagues that understands those demands and challenges.’

He added: ‘The challenge for me is to create a sustainable service, it’s to understand demand and to understand how to deliver against that demand in a way that meets the needs of communities.’

Mr Gormley disclosed he had called police because he ‘had a good friend who took his life when I was a student’. He said: ‘I can still remember the humanity with which the officer dealt with that.

‘It wasn’t a crime but I and his family needed a human, compassionate response at a point of need in our lives – and we got it. That’s what people remember. I take our ability to control, detect, confront, disrupt and to dismantle criminality as an absolute given but it’s so much more than that.’

Good policing was ‘about responding to people who are either vulnerable or at a point in their life when they’re vulnerable’.

Despite a looming £190million funding crisis and evidence of plunging officer morale, Mr Gormley said he was having a ‘great time’ as chief constable.

On Bauer Radio’s Scotland’s Talk In programme on Clyde 2, he said: ‘The opportunity and the professional challenge to be able to come and contribute to what I think is the right policing model for the future was irresistible.’

‘Compassionate response’