SNP candidate for the new Banffshire & Buchan Coast Constituency Stewart Stevenson MSP has welcomed release of figures which confirm the SNP Government has met a key pledge of 1,000 additional police on Scotland’s streets four years after being elected.
Locally, there are now 145 more police officers in Grampian as at December 2010 than there were in March 2007.
Latest figures show that there will be 17,270 police on the street at the end of March – 1,036 more than the SNP inherited from Labour in March 2007 and so meeting the SNP’s pledge to have 1,000 additional officers in the lifetime of this parliament.
The decision to put 1,000 additional police on Scotland’s streets has played a key part in delivering the lowest crime rates for 32 years, a 20% fall in violent crime – meaning 3000 fewer violent offences and falling knife crime.
Welcoming the figures, Stewart Stevenson MSP said:
“Our opponents said we had to deliver 1,000 more police in March 2011 than they left behind in March 2007 – and today’s figures make clear that has been achieved.
“If it had been left to Labour there wouldn’t have been a single extra officer, and Scotland’s forces would have been left vulnerable at a time when police numbers elsewhere in the UK are set to plummet.
“It was only the election of an SNP Government in 2007 that made increasing the number of police on the street a priority and it is that SNP Government working for Scotland that has done the job.
“Our record of improving community safety with more police leading to the lowest crime rates in 32 years, to 3000 fewer violent crimes, to special efforts to tackle domestic abuse, serious and organised crime and to crack down on knives with knife crime falling by a third is one that has helped to make Scotland safer.”
