POLICE Scotland is facing a “massive” rise in emergency mental health calls just as it warns Brexit and other challenges will make it hard for it to balance its books.
Force leaders say the number of complex “concern for person” cases officers attend has risen by nearly a quarter over the last two years.
This is often as people suffering health crises reach out to the public service of last resort - policing - at weekends and nights when other safety nets are not available.
Deputy Chief Constable Will Kerr on Tuesday told the Scottish Police Authority (SPA) the force had logged an additional 14,000 to 15,000 additional calls. He said: “Every one of those additional calls can take five, six, eight or ten hours to deal with. It is taking police officers away from their communities.
“It is a massive issue for us and something we need to get to grips with.”
Police services throughout the United Kingdom are seeing a rise in such demand - from vulnerable people rather than criminals. Yesterday The Herald reported that just five children in care topped its list of missing persons with more than 350 cases between them.
SPA chairwoman Susan Deacon stressed such issues were “by far and away one of the most pressing we face”.
She added: “This is now a debate that is coming to the fore both north and south of the birder though I think we are in a better place to deal with it than the rest of the UK.
“There are now demands facing our police service because of challenges in other bits of the public service. This is not the best use of resources that are available but critically not the best support for the people involved.”
Policing insiders feel pressure on public funding and staffing in care homes or psychiatric services is being passed on to the force.
So much so that the rising demand of “vulnerability” is forcing the police to rethink its plans to balance its books by 2021.
Deputy chief officer David Page said there were “major concerns” over assumptions needed to cut costs, including the rise of calls on mental health and the challenge of Brexit.
Police Scotland, for example, is ready to provide support to Northern Ireland should leaving the EU result in trouble there.
However, Mr Page said he now expected a “substantial reduction” in the reform budget for Police Scotland - the money used to make the still relatively new force more efficient.
He said: “If that proves to be the case we will have very little funding to do transformation.” We will be defaulting in to care and maintenance scenario.” This, he said, meant the force would be focusing on “keeping the lights on”.
Mr Page added: “We are starting to patch our systems up. If they start to fail, we will not be able to deliver our service. That is a real risk of not investing in policing.”
“The gap between us and serious organised crime continues to widen.”
However, Mr Page said there were also delays in getting funding that had already been okayed in principle by the Scottish Government, including for mobile IT systems. Many Scottish officers do not have mobile phones - just as criminals become increasingly sophisticated at using such technology.
Mr Page said some former Strathclyde officers had been issued with 13-year-old PDA devices which were now too old to be upgraded.
Money for replacements has not been approved for release by government. Mr Page said: “If we don’t get the investment we will take PDAs off 200 officers and re-issue them with notepads and pencils. We rely on the goodwill of our officers and staff notwithstanding that they only have pads.”
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