SPF general secretary blasts politicians and calls for training to deal with terrorist threat

The general secretary of the Scottish Police Federation has made a plea to the Scottish government to end cuts to the service in the wake of the Paris attacks and to realise Scottish police are under-equipped and ill-prepared for a similar attack on home soil.

Speaking after a meeting of the SPF in Glasgow Calum Steele, general secretary of the SPF said: “We must never allow terrorism to undermine our way of life.

“Scotland has a proud record of being a tolerant, welcoming and open country and we must ensure the freedoms we all enjoy are preserved for the benefit of all.

“The fight against terrorism needs tackled on three fronts. We need to make sure the resentments and ideologies from which terrorism is born aren’t given the opportunities to flourish.

“We must ensure that where they do, we have the intelligence capabilities to gather evidence and bring prosecutions. We must also make sure that in the event we face a terrorist incident, we have the tactical capabilities to respond.

“There can be little doubt that at this time, we lack the resources and investment on all of these areas.”

Mr Steele said the police had already “saved an incredible amount of money” and that it was time the cuts ended and expectations were reassessed as today’s policing environment had changed utterly from when they were first introduced.

“Cuts to our budgets have seen fewer police officers in our communities and necessitated the closure of many of our buildings.

“Police officers need time to become embedded in our communities and to build trust and relationships with them.

“Regrettably the austerity at all costs approach sees police officers running from pillar to post and not having the time to stop, talk and listen. It is at this most basic level that the fight against terrorism and extremism begins”, he added.

Mr Steele also criticised politicians he accused of “lining up to score political points whilst ignoring the realities of policing and the impact of austerity.”

In particular, he called the furore over armed officers on routine patrols “shamefully opportunistic” adding that Scotland is “woefully under-equipped” for an attack like that in Paris.

He said: “We want to be clear that this is not the fault of the exceptional officers prepared to undertake these onerous roles not least as you can’t train for scenarios that you neither have the equipment for or the people to deploy to.

“Let me be clear, this SPF is not calling for a fully armed police service (at this time) but we do believe we need more trained officers routinely carrying their weapons in public.”

The SPF general secretary acknowledged that arming officers cannot necessarily prevent an attack like Paris but said unarmed officers have “absolutely zero containment ability” and that officers should at least have the capability to mitigate one.

He went on to discuss the impact of cuts south of the border and how these could affect Scotland, saying: “The decimation of the police service in England & Wales inevitably means there would be a call for Scotland to assist in the aftermath of an incident south of the border.

“We must also not lose sight of the reality that it would be morally repugnant and politically suicidal not to provide that assistance but in doing so, we shouldn’t ever lose sight of the fact that we would be diluting yet further the very limited capability that Scotland currently has. Scotland would be paying the price for police cuts south of the border.”

There is “no doubt” Mr Steele said, that it is time to invest significantly in training and adequately equipping the police in “this increasingly uncertain world”.

He added: “We hope all this training is never used and that our weapons are never called upon to be fired, but we at least need to have them in the event that they do.”