A “sickening” spike in the number of assaults on Angus police officers has been slammed by an area MSP.
In the last nine months, 70 police officers have been assaulted — an increase of 37.3% on the year before.
Local Area Commander for Angus, David McIntosh, said he has “more uniformed officers” in the past year than he did in 2015, and there was an 11.2% reduction in overall crime.
But the top officer acknowledged an increase in domestic abuse, and said this year’s “challenges” will come from crimes of violence, crimes of dishonesty, road safety and anti-social behaviour.
In a 2018 message of intent to the area’s politicians, Chief Inspector McIntosh set out some of the key statistics from the year past, and prime objectives for the months ahead.
“Following feedback from our communities, partners, elected members and police officers our deployment model was changed in January 2017,” he said.
“Dedicated locality Inspectors, community Sergeants and community officers were reintroduced across Angus providing a recognised point of contact to deal with community based issues.
“The performance year ending on March 31 2017 demonstrated a 11.2 % reduction in overall crime which was welcome. I have more uniformed police officers at my disposal than I did when I took post in 2015; there are more detective officers based in Angus than when we were Tayside Police.”
Although crimes of violence continued an overall downward trend, Mr McIntosh highlighted a 9% rise — 55 incidents — in domestic abuse, and the unwelcome spike in assaults on his personnel.
“Reports of domestic abuse have more than doubled in Angus in the last five years,” he added.
“It is important to recognise that if we get work in this area of business right, victims will continue to come forward and figures will continue to rise in the short/medium term.”
He continued: “The overall number of crimes of dishonesty has increased in Angus by 10%. The main driver for this is a 35.7 % increase in theft by shoplifting. “
But the top officer reported positive news on efforts to clamp down on rural crime, after a spate of incidents last year.
“This was primarily as a result of travelling criminals from Dundee, Fife and Aberdeen but they were assisted by some of our home-grown individuals.
“Reported incidents and calls to the police are considerably fewer. It is worthy of note that officers deal with significantly fewer of these overall incidents in our rural areas than in our Angus towns.”
North East region MSP Liam Kerr said he believed the increased visibility of police officers has likely been a factor in the overall reduction of Angus crime.
But the Scottish Conservative shadow justice spokesman expressed anger over the increasing threat officers are coming under.
“The police officer on the street is often the first person to a major incident, vital minutes before anyone can call the emergency services,” said Mr Kerr.
“All these men and women are valuable public servants.
“It is sickening to think that an increasing number of criminals believe they are fair game for verbal and physical assault.
“The Scottish Conservatives support tougher sentencing for criminals who target those who keep the peace.
“We recently revealed a surge in the number of attacks on ambulance staff — deplorable acts which threaten safety for all of us.”
