Tackling residents’ policing priorities after lockdown – Chief Supt Sean Scott

I hope readers have appreciated the recent columns provided by our specialist Detective Chief Inspectors leading the teams of dedicated officers and staff tasked with investigating the Capital’s serious incidents of violence, sexual crime and housebreaking.

Their efforts, alongside the tireless endeavours of our first responders and community officers, has led to some really strong year-end performance figures for 2019-2020 which show pleasing reductions in the number of victims and an increase in the numbers of perpetrators charged and reported to the Procurator Fiscal.

Of course, response and investigation is only part of the formula for success and the hugely diverse range of work carried out by our Prevention, Interventions and Partnerships team contribute significantly to keeping everyone in the capital safer.

Recently I presented and obtained approval for the new three-year Local Police Plan at City of Edinburgh Council’s Policy and Sustainability Committee and everyone here in Edinburgh Division and across Police Scotland’s national support services looks forward to tackling your policing priorities and ensuring Edinburgh remains one of the world’s safest and most welcoming capital cities.

I have deliberately highlighted some of our ‘business as usual’ work at the start of this column as a divergence from the current news because I’m sure everyone, like me, has quite rightly had coronavirus as the epicentre of their world for the last nine weeks or so and look forward to the day when it’s not the first subject on people’s lips, iPads, TV screens and newspapers and we reach that ‘new normal’ period in the times ahead.

That said, it’s important to underline the fact that what we’ve all been doing as a collective over this surreal lockdown period is saving lives and I have genuinely been hugely impressed by the Edinburgh public’s sense of civic duty by overwhelmingly adhering to government guidelines.

Both here and across the country, Police Scotland has worked incredibly hard to adopt the appropriate style and tone of policing which both supports our key partners in the management of a public health crisis but also recognises the public’s frustrations at not being able to go about their normal daily lives. To that end, I not only thank my own officers and staff for their tolerance and diligence in carrying out this task but also the Edinburgh public for helping ease the challenges of this complex and unprecedented responsibility.

And with Phase 1 of the Scottish Government’s gradual emergence from lockdown about to commence, my continued request of everyone is to keep working with us and maintain that crucial level of discipline by adhering to all revised guidelines.

My officers and staff will do their utmost to help you in that task by engaging positively, explaining the guidelines where necessary and encouraging everyone to do their bit in beating this disease which has sadly claimed so many lives.

Chief Superintendent Sean Scott is the Divisional Commander for Edinburgh