SCOTLAND'S new single police force will not have a separate counter-terrorist squad as its officers would be under-employed and lacking "match fitness" to fight crime, its chief constable has revealed.
Instead, detectives will be dedicated to combating organised crime and terrorism because the volume of work will keep them sharp and make most effective use of resources.
Chief Constable Stephen House – who will run Police Scotland when it officially becomes operational on Monday – said there were two reasons for combining counter-terrorism and organised crime in the same unit, in contrast to the situation in England.
In an interview with The Herald, he said: "One is because a lot of the skills, attributes and equipment are similar. You need detective abilities but you need surveillance skills as well. You need the best interviewers. You need to be able to deal with the people professionally. There is a skills match. The other reason is effectiveness and efficiency.
"Organised crime is a big issue in Scotland. You could be busy all the time, dealing with organised crime. Counter-terrorism is a smaller need, not insignificant but it's not massive. I don't think the country would want us to have the funding to have battalions of cops sitting round waiting for a terrorist incident, when actually there is a whole load of stuff they can be doing on organised crime issues. So we have them doing both.
"Our view is that when we have to deploy a surveillance team on a terrorist cell we want them to be absolutely at the top of their game, match fit, really experienced, used to working with each other and to working with the equipment.
"If the way they get that is through working against a drug gang over the past few months, they just switch in."
Mr House, who was chief constable of Strathclyde Police, stressed the changes from midnight on Sunday would not impact on the public. He said: "Unless they are an avid badge watcher, they won't notice any difference. So the car that pulls up outside their house will not say Lothian and Borders Police, it will just say Police."
"Murder and other serious incidents come under the remit of our Serious Crime Division. That has been up and running for a month now and has already dealt with two murders and a suspicious death.
"It dealt with a death and suicide in Fife, it dealt with an unexplained death in Wick, and it has dealt with a murder in Airdrie over the weekend as well.
"Two detective constables work out of Wick, but what was deployed was a full major investigation team of some 20 officers."
The same has applied to referrals to specialist units covering trafficking, rape and domestic violence – giving new wider experience to those on the ground and providing models for good practice.
Mr House and Vic Emery, who chairs the Scottish Police Authority (SPA), have been at loggerheads over who has control on a day-to-day level the force's administrative areas such as personnel.
Of the public spat, Mr House said: "It would have been better if it could have been avoided. Yes, it was unfortunate.
"I think a lot of it was simplified by the media. It wasn't a personality clash and I don't think it was a power struggle either. I think it was a factor of time.
"Here we have had no shadow period at all. The service and authority are created and bang, within three months you're responsible for all this."
He also denied claims that uniformed officers were back-filling lost civilian jobs, insisting: "There is no criteria to say, 'we'll fill it with a cop'. In fact, if the answer is if we would have to fill it with a cop, then we can't let them go. For those who want to go and we can't release, it's a real bone of contention. The emails I get complaining about voluntary redundancy are from people I don't let go."
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