Callers rushing to Stornoway police station to report crimes and other incidents will soon find the doors locked.
Streamlining for the new single police force is the excuse being used by Northern Constabulary to bring in severe cost-cutting measures, including shutting the Church Street station to callers from the end of March.
Meanwhile, the personal touch by the boys in blue is also being eroded by a new non-emergency telephone number 101 which is already being answered in Inverness as well as all the emergency 999 calls.
In a bid to make a few bob for the cash-strapped cops, all calls to the new number will be charged at 15p – even if they just last for a few seconds.
Force chiefs have been forced to insist that, despite the changes, the Church Street office will remain as an operational police station 24 hours a day, seven days a week, with officers working out of the station and in communities, providing a local policing response.
However, it looks like much of the informal face-to-face contact with officers and staff which islanders have always had will inevitably be cut back with more and more decision-making and services like telephone answering going off-island.
The force has admitted that cutting staffing to the bone could mean that seasonal bouts of colds and flu could be a principal factor in whether the doors on Church Street will be locked at 8pm.
The station may still remain open only if enough officers are in the building to deal with the public. However, that will no longer be guaranteed.
A few years ago a survey of 999 calls to police and fire HQs and coastguard units found that the further away from communities that calls were answered, the more likely staff were to get the information wrong.
With the local policy of naming streets and villages in Gaelic, there will now be more chance of errors as a smaller percentage of Inverness staff will understand the Gaelic names from now on.
A recent caller to the Inverness police control room said it took five attempts for the call handler to pronounce or spell the name Airidhbhruaich correctly.
The benefits of a single Police Authority are starting to show. Remember, the SPA was all about having more Police more available to the public and never about cost-cutting. And we believed that.
When was the last time you spoke to the Polis ?
In any police state, the first thing that is done is to isolate the police from the public. This inevitably means that the public have even less trust in the police than they do now. And, of course, in any good Stalinist state, centralisation of control is paramount.
They have already closed the local police stations on the island, and now they are effectively closing the Stornoway police station and centralising things in Inverness. It will only be a matter of time till everything is centralised in Glasgow.
Never mind, I suppose all the local criminals, thugs and drug dealers will be quite pleased as the supply of local intelligence to the police will dry up. We will be left with a few squad cars patrolling the islands, harassing motorists and ignoring the real criminals. Then again, it has been like that for a number of years now, with genuine complaints from members of the public being totally ignored by the police, and no action taken.
After independence, we should get rid of the Idiot Wing of the SNP and then, perhaps, we can get back some local control over our police force – and it is ours, we pay for it.
Dixon of Dunfermline,Dundee,or Dunnadrochit,but never again a Duty Desk in Stornaway
Spoke to a policeman in the Inner Hebrides about what it was like to work for Strathclyde… He was sent out in the very early hours of the morning to drive around the crofting villages. A tracking device was in his car to prove it had travelled at the right time.
With a centrally controlled police force, you get madness like that!
Did you notice a Scotsman report the other week where one of the numerous Depute Chief Constables floated the likelihood of the move of all the call centres to a central belt location?
The long or short arm of the law, will soon if not already be remotely controlled……..perhaps we will have a fly by from an un-armed RPV……over the harbour at appropriate times, and then it really will be Big Brother or Sister keeping a beady eye on Island matters.
The Bobbies beat will probably be taken up with an influx of “specials” GPS tagged/monitored and controlled for the Thursday – Sunday duty, coupled with a live video feed to the mainland, for them to see what they are missing. Still with the costs saved on a bobbies overtime and interaction with the public (who) perhaps we will get a timely reduction in our local (Council) tax ?.