Policing Scotland is moving backwards because of a target-led management style, a former Tayside assistant chief constable has said.
Angela Wilson told The Courier that while no official targets may exist for individual officers, a culture of seeing policing as a “numbers game” now exists.
She said: “I think Police Scotland would deny that there are targets but I would ask them the question, why is it that so many of the staff perceive that there are targets?
“Why do you get staff saying they’ve been taken off departments because they didn’t meet ‘their targets’?
“There must be something that’s creating that but I absolutely support the front line staff and many of their junior managers.
“They are doing a very good job and the best they can. They have the interest of the public at heart, many put in that extra discretionary effort and go the extra mile when it is needed, despite the difficulties created by a management style that is very different to that which they are used to.
“It’s really important that the public realise that some of the stuff they may not like is not coming from these front line officers.”
Ms Wilson added that officers are now judged on these targets.
“It’s what’s passed on at meetings. People being compared to each other,” she said.
“If someone hands out 10 tickets for motoring offences and somebody only hands out two, the fact is that the person who hands out 10 is more highly valued.
“The person who only hands out two, they question what they’ve been doing all day. The police service used to be like that, that’s what’s weird. We’re not moving forward, we’re moving backwards.
“We used to be simplistic if you could measure something you were doing it and if you couldn’t measure well, you weren’t doing anything. But, as we all know, the qualitative issues can’t be measured in hard figures.”
She added: “I’m told that morale is pretty low for a number of reasons. Some of that is to do with the pensions, but a lot is that in the past frontline officers and indeed support staff, were given more discretion.
“Just because you stop somebody for something didn’t mean you had to give them a ticket. You had the power to make a decision there that maybe a warning is good enough.
“If you engage with young people and make the decision not to search them.”
Police Scotland deputy chief constable Iain Livingstone said: “Any effective organisation must monitor its operational performance. Police Scotland is no different. Accordingly, performance and key performance indicators play an important part in ensuring we are responding effectively at the right times, in the right places, to incidents and issues arising in communities throughout Scotland.
“We use performance figures to ensure we prioritise at all times the concerns of all communities throughout Scotland. Our duty is to serve the people of Scotland and to be accountable to the people of Scotland and that is achieved in part through the scrutiny of our performance by the Scottish Police Authority, the Scottish Government and HMICS.”
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