Protests strain thin blue line, warns police chief
SCOTLAND’S police chief yesterday said that dealing with disruptive marches, parades and protests is ‘unsustainable’.
Chief Constable Iain Livingstone said that coping with large-scale public disorder was a ‘significant challenge’ for his force.
Officers have come under attack at recent parades and marches in Glasgow, forcing the creation of a unit of 25 detectives to track down those responsible.
An operation on September 7 launched when Loyalist protesters tried to disrupt two Republican parades in Glasgow cost nearly £200,000. Violent scenes also broke out in Govan during confrontations between an Irish Republican march and counter-demonstrators on August 30.
Asked at a meeting of the Scottish Police Authority (SPA) in Falkirk yesterday if policing such events was ‘sustainable’, Mr Livingstone said: ‘No, it’s not. We’ve drawn officers from across the country away from their key role in our communities to respond to this, so in terms of sustainability, it’s a significant challenge.’
Deputy Chief Constable Will Kerr said the ‘scenes on August 30 were completely unacceptable’. He added: ‘The scale of the policing operation on successive weekends was very, very significant.
‘The initial cost of policing on Saturday, September 7 – when nearly 600 officers were deployed – was nearly £176,000, for that policing operation alone. Those are officers who aren’t involved in investigating domestic abuse incidents across the city, tackling drug and traffic offences.’
He said there will be ‘a lot more arrests’ relating to assaults on officers during these events.
It also emerged that since August there have been 508 deployments of a police reserve unit set up to tackle Brexitrelated public disorder.
The unit is being used for a variety of purposes, including dealing with antisocial behaviour, violent offenders and pre-planned events.