I HAVE read the report (March 3) where Malcolm Dickson, the Deputy Chief Inspector of Constabulary in Scotland, advocates a debate on whether police recruits should pay for their own training.
Another attempt to save the central government budget and put out training to the private sector?
Would these debates end with the fire service, ambulance service, armed forces and staff of other agencies whose training is funded from central government being required to fund their own training so that these respective agencies can also recruit fully trained staff?
This type of recruitment would most certainly discourage recruits from applying to serve the communities where they live and discriminate against those who have no income, the lower-paid and the unemployed. The police service recruits across the board irrespective of race, creed or background. These recruits need not have any formal education other than life experience. Some of the more senior officers began careers in the police service from lowly backgrounds, getting to where they are by sheer hard work.
The Scottish Police College is a world-renowned training facility turning out some of the best trained and respected police personnel in the world. There is no need to repair what is not broken.
My advice to Mr Dickson is to concentrate on what he is employed to do: ensuring that the police service is fully funded by the government and that officers are trained to do the job that they were employed for.
We pay for what we get, and I for one do not object in my taxes being used to train current and any future police constables who do a sterling job, sometimes under arduous circumstances.
Meston Christie, 7 Scotstown Road, Aberdeen
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