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6-9-2005 Scotsman Police chief blasts drunken violence draining resources By Gethin Chamberlain Chief News Correspondent LEVELS of drunken violence on Scotland's streets are now so bad that police no longer have enough time or resources to deal with many routine duties, a senior officer has admitted. Malcolm Dickson, the Deputy Chief Constable of the Lothian and Borders force, says that more and more police officers are needed to deal with drunk young people using the streets as "playgrounds of violence", leaving fewer police available to serve the majority of peaceful residents who need their assistance. And he criticised government plans to introduce new legislation to liberalise pub licensing laws, claiming that it would only be feasible if there was a huge investment in additional policing. Writing in The Scotsman today, Mr Dickson said: "It frustrates me enormously that I have to focus the majority of available police hours on drunken young people who spill out of bigger and bigger pubs at all hours of the night and use the streets as playgrounds of violence." He said the deployment of police officers was "increasingly skewed towards the night-time economy, because of the heady mix of crowds and excessive alcohol consumption which leads, every week, to a sorry tale of violence and injury". He went on: "It has got to the stage now where I believe the deserving majority are being denied the level of policing they could otherwise enjoy because of the unruly minority." Mr Dickson said that routine interaction between the police and members of the public who turn to them for help was becoming more difficult because of the demands placed on officers to deal with drink-related problems. And he warned that, while people might prefer to see police patrolling in residential areas during the hours of daylight, that was becoming increasingly difficult, due to the need to have officers available to deal with drinkers. To support his case, he cited violent incidents over the past two weekends, which he described as by no means untypical. In one, a man's skull was fractured when he was hit with a piece of wood torn from a bench in Edinburgh city centre. He was attacked after leaving a pub. In another incident, police, called to a fight involving several people in a West Lothian street, found one man with a broken arm and one wielding a wooden pole. All had been drinking. There were two reports of rapes, one after a 15-year-old girl and her friend "purchased and consumed a vast amount of alcohol" and another shortly after a woman left a pub at 5am with a friend. Mr Dickson warned that changes to the law to extend licensing hours could only make the situation worse. A spokesman for the Scottish Executive's justice department said that they shared police concerns about levels of violence and the link between alcohol and disorder. He said the Executive had focused on tackling such behaviour, but he disputed Mr Dickson's comments about 24-hour drinking, claiming that much of the new legislation was aimed at cutting binge drinking. And on the question of the need to divert police away from routine duties to tackle drunken behaviour, the spokesman said it was up to chief constables to decide how to deploy their resources. "The police have never had greater resources in terms of manpower than today," he said. Alcohol campaigners have criticised the plans to extend licensing hours, and yesterday Jack Law, the chief executive of Alcohol Focus Scotland, said he feared that they would lead to an increase in the levels of disorder and drunkenness in town and city centres. "We need to challenge the idea that drunkenness is part and parcel of a good night out," he said. |
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................................................................................................................. Copyright ©2004 Gethin Chamberlain. All rights reserved. |
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