Keeping Communities Safe

That the Parliament notes with concern that the Scottish Policing Performance Framework Annual Report 2010-11 shows that the number of police support staff fell by 428 in the last year and that violent crime increased by 2% during the same period; believes that cuts in the number of support staff lead to police officers being taken off the beat to fill civilian posts; further notes that the number of unmarked cases with procurators fiscal doubled to 14,000 in the six months to October and that many of these cases were more than four weeks old; considers that such delays in the processing of offences undermine public confidence in the justice system, and believes that both reductions in police support staff and backlogs in the marking of cases put public safety at risk.