THE leaders of Scotland\u2019s main political parties have pledged to maintain or increase police officer numbers while maintaining police pay.<\/p>\n
In a contrast to south of the border \u2013 where 17,000 officers have been lost \u2013\u00a0The Scottish National Party (SNP), Labour, Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives have all committed to maintaining more than 17,000 police officers in Scotland.<\/p>\n
And they have agreed not to attack\u00a0police officer pay.<\/p>\n
The leaders of the political parties were speaking at the Scottish Police Federation Conference, where the England and Wales Winsor pay and conditions reforms were discussed.<\/p>\n
Brian Docherty, chairman of the Scottish Police Federation, said: \u201cOn pay, probably every public sector worker shares the concerns about the erosion of their pay.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut in respect of police officers, I need to remind everyone why the police should be considered a special case. Police officers have unique occupational restrictions on our working and private lives.<\/p>\n
\u201cPolice officers spend large parts of their working lives dealing with society\u2019s drink and drug addicts, those who assault their spouses and children, rapists, robbers, paedophiles, the criminally insane and occasionally murderers.<\/p>\n
\u201cPolice officers do not have a normal job, they are insulted, assaulted, abused and spat at. They are threatened with weapons, punched, kicked and head butted. We have had colleagues stabbed, shot and murdered.<\/p>\n
\u201cOfficers see terrible things as a result of fires, accidents, suicides and murders. They deal with violent life and violent death and are then expected to go home and \u2018be normal\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n
First Minister Nicola Sturgeon told the event at the\u00a0Turnberry\u00a0resort that the Winsor reforms were \u201cinsulting\u201d. She also reconfirmed SNP plans for there to be a new Police Negotiating Board for Scotland, which will include legally binding arbitration on pay.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
THE leaders of Scotland\u2019s main political parties have pledged to maintain or increase police officer numbers while maintaining police pay. In a contrast to south of the border \u2013 where\u2026 read more →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1693,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1906"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1906"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1906\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1907,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1906\/revisions\/1907"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1693"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1906"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1906"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1906"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}