It saddens me to devote so many of these columns to the blight of anti-social behaviour, but my inbox continues to be filled by people increasingly fearful for their safety.
Last week I highlighted the experience of a Broomhouse couple who witnessed the intimidation of a group of balaclava-wearing youths who later attacked the Calder Road service station, and I was able to raise the case in the Scottish Parliament on Tuesday.
I also told MSPs about a Moredun family intimidated by a different gang of 20 weapon-wielding youths – a neighbour was threatened with a baseball bat – with the same uniform of covered faces and black clothing, and same violent intent, who threw fireworks, set bins alight and ripped up fencing to barricade the road. It was also the same old story of repeated calls to the police and a lack of response, with locals putting out fires and replacing the fencing themselves.
Then late on Tuesday I was contacted by an exasperated man who witnessed a staggeringly brazen raid, the best description of it, by another masked gang at the Sainsbury’s store in Longstone. Three youths wearing balaclavas and black ski goggles made a beeline for the alcohol aisle and started to help themselves. Shoppers alerted store security and despite assistance from other staff members they were met with extreme aggression and abuse. Police were called, but the gang had gone by the time they arrived.
Set aside the arguments for tougher sentencing – although these feral gangs don’t care about the consequences of their actions and have little fear of the law – it makes no difference what happens in the justice system if they cannot be caught. The blame cannot be pointed at overstretched individual officers operating at breaking point, but it can be firmly laid at the door of a Scottish Government which has left them so short of resources.
If it is the first duty of a government to keep the country safe, that applies to domestic policing as well as defence, and when people cannot pick up some groceries from their local supermarket without running the risk of encountering violent thieves then something has gone badly wrong.
Tuesday’s debate heard about creating a national taskforce and of a possible tightening of the law, but it’s not the law that’s the problem but the lack of resources to enforce it. The troublemakers know the police can’t cope, they know that even if there were one of two more officers they’d still struggle to reach incidents on time because they are snagged up in traffic queues caused by lane narrowing and interminable roadwork.
What is a taskforce, other than a name to disguise the usual scant response to sudden concern arising from an incident like the Bonfire Night riot in Niddrie? It’s not a task force that’s needed but a permanent boost to policing resources driven by senor officers telling the government what’s required, and for the Scottish Government to accept it’s not the police’s job to cover up political failure in mental health and social care.
Police officers used to talk about broken window theory, that cracking down on small offences naturally led to a reduction in serious ones. After 17 years of SNP rule, it’s Scottish communities which are broken, with no solution in sight.
