Perth and Kinross Local Area Commander S Bulletin

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Perth and Kinross Local Area Commander’s Bulletin

12th February 2015

This last week has seen some ‘quiet’ and very beautiful weather. For those of you living and working in rural Perthshire, have a thought for us office bound troglodytes! I see the mountains in the distance, when I am on the upper floors at Perth HQ and never stop thinking how stunning Perth and Kinross is.

This week also saw the very sad death of the young man at Kinnoull Hill. My sympathies go to his family and friends. This is a well known suicide spot and we are working with Perth and Kinross Council to look at ways to make it harder for people to commit suicide there, such as planting shrubs and bushes, while retaining the beauty of the spot and making sure there is information about support services available at the spot should someone go there for that purpose.

With such settled weather, the roads have not proved to be a challenge this week. Today I was shown a video taken from one of the snow ploughs clearing the A93 a few weeks ago. It shows the immense challenge facing drivers trying to clear the road and would be worth watching. It shows a plough getting stuck on the main hill to the ski centre and having to resort to a snow cutter to cut a way through the drifts. You should be able to see it on the Tayside facebook page.

Many people have a clear view in their minds of what you mean by ‘crime’, words such as Assault, Theft, Vandalism etc. spring to mind. However, increasingly we are faced with dealing with internet or communications offences. The Telecommunications Act 1984 is very clear in that it creates criminal offences if people send messages to others that if said to their face would be a Breach of the Peace. This includes abusive, threatening and hate based comments.

If someone takes offence to such messages and reports it, the police will trace the perpetrator and charge them. This may seem an obviously good thing, although some raise concerns about free speech which must be protected; however, consider what your children are doing on social media. Many are using language that could be in use in the playground, but instead are posting on facebook, or personal messaging applications, comments that can amount to cyber bullying and criminal harassment.

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Just today I saw a crime report involving a 12 year old school child sending abusive messages to another on facebook. I don’t want to see our children being investigated for being children, but in a world of instant communication, it is now very difficult for victims to avoid bullying and harassing behaviour; meanwhile the internet records the evidence.

Another type of such crime is ‘Sexting’. This involves young people sending indecent images of themselves to each other, with obvious vulnerabilities. Often the images go viral around the schools, with devastating consequences for the original child. The obvious issues to me are about child protection and we work very closely with partners to address the risks. However, the Telecommunications Act also creates additional offences. Even if a child willingly takes such an image and sends it to someone who receives it and then sends it on to others, they are committing offences.

I would ask that you discuss this with your children and see if we can’t reduce the number of children involved in Sexting or coming to police attention this way; not to mention help protect the victims of cyber bullying, which can have catastrophic consequences for victims.

This weekend we had a report of another Theft of a purse from a handbag in one of the charity shops in High Street, Perth. We have not had one of these for a number of weeks, but it is worth repeating the advice to shoppers. These thieves can easily open a closed handbag without the owner realising. So if you are going shopping, keep your purse in a secure compartment in the bag and if possible turn the bag so that the flap or cover is facing into the body, to make it more difficult. The shops these thieves target are charity shops, as they generally do not have security cameras and have lots of nooks and spaces amongst the clothing racks to allow them to operate without staff seeing them.

Yesterday, we have had another incident of Bogus Caller type crime in Dunning. A number of men approached an elderly resident as she was leaving her house and convinced her to allow them to carry out repair work on her drive. They quoted £200, but when they finished, they asked for £3,000 – apparently the holes were deeper than thought! These people are parasites on the elderly. The only answer is to convince residents to refuse any work on their homes offered out of the blue and to refer any such caller to a neighbour or family member nearby.

These people often work as organised crime gangs, swapping the details of victims so that other member of the group can target the victim if they happen to be in the area. If anyone hears of such people calling to offer work, call the police straight away on 101 or 999, if it is happening at the time; we might just be able to catch them in the act. As a result of this crime, I have officers out in the area looking for these men, as they will do it again.

We have been working with community wardens to target antisocial behaviour in Perth centre during the day. Many shoppers and visitors to the city are affected by people drunk or under the influence of drugs around High Street and South Street areas. Over the last few years we have periodically targeted these locations to deal with such people, using stop and search powers to recover drugs, weapons, stolen property and alcohol.

For the last week we have been running such an operation with marked success and this will continue for the coming weeks. One group we have been targeting are people buying New Psychoactive Substances (old name – Legal Highs) from the shops in County Place and Atholl Street. Previously these substances have been found to contain controlled drugs and my officers have been searching people under Section 23 of the Misuse of Drugs Act (MDA), recovering such substances and sending them away for analysis.

This issue is a challenge for the Police, partners and communities that first emerged in 2008; substances being sold under the label of plant food, but clearly designed for human consumption as a drug. The legislation struggles to deal with them; as each substance is banned, Chemists elsewhere in the world simply adjust the manufacturing process with the outcome being the same drugs, but different enough to fall outwith the MDA.

These substances have a devastating effect on the users, who become ravenously addicted and frequently use dangerous methods of administering the drugs, putting their health at significant risk, while committing crime to pay for the next ‘fix’.

This is a problem across the UK, with both the Home Offence and the Scottish Government working to find a solution. We are working with a number of different agencies to try and disrupt this activity in Perth and Kinross and support addicts.

Sadly, alcohol related violence continues in Perth and Kinross, particular for the partners and children of domestic abusers. We have had a number of nasty domestic assaults in Comrie, Crieff, Muthly and Perth. While we are working with partners such as Women’s Aid, RASAC (the Rape and Sexual Abuse Centre) and Barnardos to support victims, irresponsible drinking underlies a lot of the violence.

Victims and their children will know this well, looking for the signs of the perpetrator having been out drinking and knowing what to expect. The victims of Domestic Abuse often mistakenly think that stickling with an abusive partner is the best thing for the children; nothing could be further from the truth in most instances. It has been identified that young children exposed to violence and abuse, even as witnesses, are affected physiologically as well as mentally. The way their brains develop changes, blighting their potential and affecting them for the rest of their lives.

So my message is that if you know or suspect someone is being abused or beaten up; if you see them with unexplained bruising; or wearing a lot of

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In relation to other crime, we have had a break in to a shed in Rattray reported, with golf clubs and equipment stolen; it is unclear when exactly this crime occurred, as it appears to have happened some time over the last month. A caravan was stolen late last week in Caputh and we have had a couple of Thefts of heating oil from houses in Kilicrankie and Pitlochry. This type of crime can be significant to a home owner, both in value and inconvenience. In once instance, the perpetrators stole what they could manage and recklessly let the rest of the oil spill onto the ground, contaminating it.

As with many rural crimes, the houses targeted were isolated or not overlooked by others. If you have an oil tank, try to disguise or cover it, such as climbing plant screens or walls; if you have a choice of where to locate a new one, put it out of sight of the road. We have in the past had criminals following oil lorries watching them deliver a quantity of oil, before targeting the house.

If you are leaving home, advise your neighbours to check the house and always, if you see a car in suspicious circumstances, please note the number and call the police. Don’t worry about thinking it is too minor. Even if we don’t catch them at the time, with the number we will have a great chance of success.

COMMUNITY ISSUES

We have had communication with the community council in Luncarty reporting concern about trees being attacked. Early last year a number of trees of trees were cut down in St Martin’s Lane for no apparent reason and the persons responsible were not identified. It would appear that around New Year, another tree has been drilled and poisoned, before being cut down. The council are appealing for any information about these incidents and community officers will be carrying out inquiry in the village.

This time next week is the Chinese New Year and a great time for the Chinese community with wonderfully colourful celebrations and I wish them a happy New Year.

If you have any information about any of the issues discussed in this bulletin or wish to discuss them with your local Community Policing Team, please email us on the addresses listed below. For your information I have identified the names of the community sergeants covering your area.

Perth City Centre Sgt Gillian Farnington

Perth City North Sgts David Rice and Shona Beattie

Perth City South Sgt Liz McLellan

Almond and Earn and Carse of Gowrie Sgt Stuart Watson

Perthshire South and Kinross-shire Auchterarder - Sgt Scott Ferguson

Crieff - Sgt Peter Lorrain-Smith

Kinross – Sgt Geoffrey Goodison

Perthshire North Aberfeldy/Dunkled/Pitlochry - Sgt Caroline MacNaughton

Blairgowrie&Glens/Coupar Angus/Aylth - Sgt Andy Ness

Community Co-ordinators There are 3 Community Sergeant Co-ordinators covering the Perth and Kinross. They are:

Sgts Jon Anton, Karen Harrison and Amanda Nicolson are Community Coordinators working right across Perth and Kinross to support the community Sergeants.

If you wish to make contact with any of these officers please use the following e-mail addresses.:

[email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected]

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