| “Having said that, I am most certainly not complacent and we must continue to work hard to reduce that figure further,” said Tayside Police federation secretary Malcolm Gibbs.
“In Tayside we have done considerable work to improve the standard of our officer safety training and I know that our safety advisor held long discussions with our trainers.
“I have previously commented in the local media that assaults on officers are not taken seriously enough by the judiciary and the message that assaulting a police officer in the execution of his or her duties will not be tolerated under any circumstances is not being conveyed by appropriate sentencing.
“I made comment last year regarding a female officer in Tayside who was stabbed in the head by a male apparently crazed on cocaine.
“In this case both the sentence and the comments made by the sheriff were considered highly inappropriate by the majority of my members and probably the majority of the public.
“Society is changing and a lack of respect for any form of authority permeates our streets.
“The UK government and the Scottish Executive must tackle this problem before our streets become no go areas for decent citizens.
“We desperately need a significant increase in officer numbers in order that we can deploy sufficient fully trained, sworn police officer resources onto the streets to tackle these issues.
“We have been given many new powers and tools with which to tackle the problem, but do not have sufficient numbers to use them to any great affect.” |
