Edinburgh’s latest ‘Fringe venue’ opened this morning with the launch of Police Scotland’s Operation Summer City and a temporary unit in East Princes Street Garden.
The chuckly side of getting your collar felt was much in evidence at the event, as officers and young volunteers publicised a place where locals and summer visitors to the city will be able to ask for advice, pick up leaflets, and report a crime.
Superintendent Lesley Clark cheerfully answered questions.
The inside of this vehicle is not particularly exciting, but it does feature on continuous loop the Police Scotland ‘running-man’ video that went viral earlier this year.
With the huge increase in population during the Fringe and Festival, Edinburgh experiences a corresponding but not disproportionate spike in crime.
Extra resources are laid on accordingly, with plain-clothes detectives in the last few years successfully catching and deterring the organised gangs of pick-pockets who formerly plagued the city at its busiest periods.
Venue 999 – open between 10am and 11pm daily – will only be staffed by one or two officers at a time, but it will nevertheless be a useful and welcome addition to the area over the next few weeks.
‘We have a wealth of experience in policing the Festival,’ says Superintendent Clark, ‘and considerable planning and collaboration with our partners has already taken place to ensure the safety of those who are visiting, as well as our local residents and businesses’.
Special praise should go to whichever bright spark at Fettes came up with the poster …
---------------
Michael Traill Personally, id have made use of an empty premises as a pop up 'safety/police point', maybe somewhere like the police museum on the royal mile?
Broughton Spurtle The Police Information Centre on the High Street is going to be open as well throughout August, but, obviously, will focus mainly on Old Town issues such as trusted-trader break-ins, body snatching etc.