Public want us to be more visible and more accessible, says Caithness police inspector
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Police Scotland's area inspector for Caithness has acknowledged that members of the public want officers to be more visible and more accessible.
Inspector Stephen Mezals also revealed that some 70 per cent of police work is "not related to crime", while giving an assurance that Highland communities are still among the safest places to live in the country.
Inspector Mezals was speaking at an event in the Pulteney Centre on Wednesday looking at how confidence in policing can be improved.
Under the title Community Confidence Action Research, it formed part of research being carried out by the Scottish Police Authority (SPA) and Police Scotland in locations around the country.
It attracted a modest turnout of the public and representatives of local agencies, along with a solitary Highland councillor who suggested there might have been a lack of awareness that the meeting was happening.
A follow-up session is being planned for late August.
Wednesday's event was not open to the media.
Speaking immediately afterwards, however, Inspector Mezals said: "It's quite clear that the public want us to be more visible but, more importantly, more accessible. There's definitely work to be done to help us be more visible and more accessible.
"There is also recognition that policing has changed in the incident types that we're dealing with. It has brought out that 70 per cent of what we do is not related to crime, leaving 30 per cent of our time to tackle crime."
When asked what the 70 per cent of non-crime work consists of, Inspector Mezals said: "It's wellbeing concerns to the public... There's a greater demand from the public for intervention and there's a lot of police time spent doing that.
"But no matter what the percentages are, where there's someone in immediate need the police are going to be there and local officers will make sure the demand is met.
"I will never shy away from that. It's just trying to manage that balance between crime and non-crime, and that's where the public are probably looking at us more."
He added: "The overall message is that the Highlands is still a safe place to live, still one of the safest places in Scotland. The crime rates are what they are, they're kind of holding steady – in fact we're seeing reductions in crime in Wick by almost a quarter in a five-year comparison.
"The police are still out there dealing with crimes and we're not at a stage where we're getting worried about us reaching the same as the big cities.
"Antisocial behaviour in Wick seems to be coming down, compared to the call types that we're getting. Some of the work we're doing behind that seems to be making a difference."
Martin Smith, SPA strategy and research lead, said: "Some of the issues that were raised were around the tackling of antisocial behaviour within the community. What came out was perhaps an understanding from the public that levels may be higher than they think because we saw from statistics that antisocial behaviour and crime have reduced in the Wick area.
"Also we have to understand that with antisocial behaviour a lot can be underreported and not reported, necessarily. There's also a tendency for it to be very repetitive, where some people experience very high-frequency antisocial behaviour and others don't experience it at all – or people think that other people may have reported it.
"A second issue is around the desire to see a greater visibility presence of officers, and not necessarily understanding that modern policing is perhaps different to what their perception of policing might be.
"The police do a lot of work behind the scenes. They also do a lot of work out of hours and all these kinds of things that the public don't necessarily always appreciate as well."
Mr Smith says there is recognition that the Highland region is "very diverse and not homogenous".
He pointed out: "You have Fort William, you have Wick, you have Thurso, with many urban parallels in terms of demand, but also the remote aspect creates a challenge for services to be provided to meet those demands."
Inspector Mezals pointed out that the follow-up event next month will be open to members of the community, statutory organisations and partner agencies, again through a registration process. He said: "We want to hear their opinions. It matters."
Jan McEwan (Wick and East Caithness) was the only Highland councillor present on Wednesday.
She said later: "I was very disappointed with the attendance, which might have been through lack of public awareness of the event.
"Members went through the results by slides and thereafter Inspector Mezals gave an update on Wick policing.
"There was a lengthy discussion on how policing in Wick could be improved. Some of the suggestions were around visibility and accessibility to the public, such as police having a presence at community events, police station opening hours and attendance at community meetings.
"Also discussed was retention of officers in the area and how this could be improved.
"The SPA is intending coming back to Wick towards the end of August and I hope that it will be better advertised to enable a better attendance."
