RETIRED police officers should be allowed to work in schools which have a dedicated police presence, the Scottish Conservatives have said.
The party's justice spokeswoman Margaret Mitchell told the Scottish Parliament it would be a good way for outgoing officers to use their experience, while freeing up younger officers for frontline duties.
There are currently more than 50 campus officers operating in Scotland, working to improve relationships between the police and communities.
An evaluation of Scotland's campus police officers in 2010 found their presence "helps improve relations between young people and the police and make school environments feel secure".
Ms Mitchell said: "It would allow retiring police officers to continue to use their experience for the public good, while allowing them a way to wind down from full police duties. That would enable other officers who are based in schools to get back onto the frontline."
Ms Mitchell said Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill had already given a positive response to her suggestion.
She added: "While we don't know if the number of school campus police has increased or decreased under Police Scotland, it's gratifying to know Mr MacAskill will look into this further."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article