Police Scotland warns of rise in shoplifting in Inverness
Police say rates of shoplifting and fraud in Inverness increased over the past 12 months.There were 680 shoplifting incidents in 2024-25, almost 13% more than the 603 reported in 2023-24. For fraud, the figures were 155 incidents in 2023-24 and 168 in 2024-25.Police Scotland said the three-year average for shoplifting in the city was 423 incidents and 408 for the five-year average.In a report to Highland Council, the force said the detection rate for the crime was 63% but only 14% for fraud.
In the report to next week's city of Inverness committee, Ch Insp Jamie Wilson said: "Unfortunately, crimes of dishonesty have increased, particularly theft by shoplifting and fraud. "My team are actively looking at preventative measures we can implement to drive this number down, whilst robustly investigating any crime of dishonesty reported to the police."City centre business organisation, Inverness BID, said the Covid pandemic was likely to have affected the average figures but added that shoplifting was a problem.It said it worked closely with Police Scotland in preventing and responding to retail crime. A spokesperson said: "Whilst the rise in shoplifting is disappointing, and coincides with a rise in anti-social behaviour in the city centre which impacts on retail outlets, it was not totally unexpected given the financial pressures on retail and our frontline public services."The spokesperson said this situation had at times led to reduced in-shop security and visible police resources being available.Retailers in other parts of Scotland have reported problems with shoplifting, including in parts of Edinburgh.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Daily Mail
an hour ago
- Daily Mail
Public's confidence in Police Scotland could be damaged by gender ruling inaction
Public confidence in policing is under threat because of a lack of progress on implementing the Supreme Court 's transgender ruling, it was claimed yesterday. Katharina Kasper, a member of the board of the Scottish Police Authority (SPA), questioned whether there was a 'policy vacuum' over whether rapists can self-identify as women. In a bombshell judgment in April, the Supreme Court stated the words 'woman' and 'sex' in the Equality Act 2010 refer to a biological woman and biological sex. Top brass had promised a full report on updates to their guidance but yesterday presented an 'interim' report on progress - which Ms Kasper said was 'disappointing'. Last night Scottish Tory equalities spokesman Tess White said: 'Even SPA board members are rightly raising concerns about Police Scotland dragging its feet on the Supreme Court ruling. 'This should not be up for debate and the public will understandably be asking why the force is still not complying with its legal obligations. 'SNP ministers must issue an urgent directive to all public bodies, including Police Scotland, to follow the law immediately so that the public retain confidence in their decision-making.' At a virtual meeting of the SPA's policing performance committee, Ms Kasper challenged Deputy Chief Constable Alan Speirs and Assistant Chief Constable Catriona Paton about trans issues. Ms Kasper voiced a 'degree of frustration', adding: 'I am concerned about public confidence in Police Scotland because this process has been taking so long, and about the impact on officers and staff.' She said Police Scotland's policy on recording gender remained unclear despite the Supreme Court ruling which should have cleared up any confusion. In March, police chiefs asked an equalities watchdog – the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) - for advice about whether they should allow rapists to self-identify as women, and provide single-sex changing rooms for staff. Last year Chief Constable Jo Farrell said the public and MSPs should be 'assured' that a man who commits rape or serious sexual assault will always be recorded as male. In March, the Mail revealed that this stance, which campaigners said was a major policy U-turn, was not communicated to officers, sparking claims that police may have misled parliament. Responding to Ms Kasper, Ms Paton said 'policing is not immune to the complexity of this issue', adding that she 'acknowledged [Ms Kasper's] frustration', while Mr Speirs said she 'understood' her concerns. It came after Ms White raised a formal complaint with Police Scotland about a 'shocking' internal document which compared gender-critical campaigners to Nazis. She was prompted to act after the Mail revealed the paper said 'gender binary' - the belief there are two genders - was a 'key feature' of Hitler's ideology.
Daily Mail
2 hours ago
- Daily Mail
STEPHEN DAISLEY: A report card to make the SNP squirm. Is this REALLY what 'stronger for Scotland' looks like?
It was a day of reckoning for the SNP, a rendezvous with a governing record 18 years in the making. The pace of revelations was relentless, as one damning report after another rained down thunk, thunk, thunk on ministers' desks. The statistics were bleak and their mounting volume, accumulating by the hour, meant they could not be spun away. It was all there in grim black and white: death by a thousand bar charts. There was the Crime and Justice Survey, in which the former was more in evidence than the latter. Violent offences were up 73 per cent since 2021. How could this be? Ministers have repeatedly assured us that lawbreaking is on the decline. No wonder it seems that way: eight in ten offences are no longer reported to the police. Eight in ten. House-breaking is on the rise, one in ten of us have been defrauded, and criminal violence among children is climbing, too. Hardly surprising, then, that only 45 per cent of Scots rate the job their local bobbies are doing. The figure used to be 61 per cent before the 2013 shotgun wedding of the old constabularies into Police Scotland. No one doubts the hard, usually thankless, work the rank and file do, but the force's reputation has been tainted by constant gaslighting about crime trends, the decision to stop investigating 'low level' criminality, and the perception that the police have become politicised. Too many tweets investigated, too many pronouns shared, and the scandal of a senior officer attending John Swinney 's anti-Reform summit. Yet nothing has debased public trust in the thin blue line like the SNP's complacency over officer numbers. The Scottish Government has hindered Police Scotland's crime-fighting ability and left the constabulary to take the blame for it. SNP ministers have presided over a collapse in public confidence in the justice system, and who could blame the public when judges are told to jail criminals under 25 only as a last resort? When 56 per cent say punishment doesn't fit the crime, they are delivering their verdict on a soft-touch set-up. The SNP's many inadequacies are more than just a political talking point. In some instances, they are a matter of life and death. Another statistical update that landed yesterday was the quarterly release on drugs deaths. At 308, they were up by one-third on the previous quarter, the highest spike since 2019. It is easy to become inured to the scale of lives lost when you live in Europe's drugs death blackspot, but the human toll is not diminished by indifference. This is a social catastrophe that ought to be as unthinkable as it is unconscionable. For ministers, the misery did not end there. Hospital records laid bare the crisis in emergency care: just 65.5 per cent of patients are being seen within four hours at A&E. The target is 95 per cent. The labour market data was next to take a swing. Not only had unemployment leapt by 14,000, but it had done so as the number of taxpayer-funded Scottish Government staff had ticked up higher still. The coup de grace came with the emissions figures. Remember how ministers ditched some of their key climate targets? Lucky for them that they did because yesterday brought the news that they would have missed them anyway. The government's opponents will seize on all these numbers, but it ought to be ministers seizing on them first. When the cabinet sees this litany of failures, its first instinct should not be how to spin the problem, but how to fix it. One day Scotland will have a government that thinks first of solutions rather than PR strategies but it won't be today. The government we're stuck with, at least for now, met an overwhelming body of evidence with an underwhelming series of excuses. Does it not embarrass them that, after 18 years under their control, Scotland's public services are in this state? Do they feel even a skerrick of shame for having promised so much only to deliver so little? Is this what 'stronger for Scotland' looks like? The SNP is accomplished at politics and abject at policy. It knows how to win power but not how to use it, and so asks to be judged on inputs rather than outcomes. What matters is not that ministers consistently miss their targets but that they introduced the targets in the first place. Government by good intentions might give off positive vibes but it is unpardonable vanity, prioritising the feelings of politicians over the material realities face by ordinary people. There is nothing progressive about promising what you cannot or will not deliver. It is a cruel deception that drives cynicism and frustration deeper into the hearts of the electorate. The SNP thoroughly deserved to squirm as it received its report card in real time, but the people who rely on the police, the NHS and other public services do not deserve the outcomes meted out to them. They will continue, however, as long as this feckless, hopeless shower remain in office.
Daily Mail
2 hours ago
- Daily Mail
SNP's day of shame as damning statistics lay bare failures on drugs deaths, violent crime and A&E waiting times
A long list of failings by the SNP Government across health, justice, the environment and the economy have been exposed in a 'day of shame' for ministers. The Scottish Government's own official statistics showed performance plunging in a series of key policy areas, while flagship targets were missed. It included a massive increase in the number of suspected drug deaths at the start of this year, soaring violent crime, an increase in A&E performance targets being missed, and growing anger about soft-touch justice. Carbon emission reductions also fell well short of previous targets, while unemployment soared by 14,000 in just three months. Scottish Conservative deputy leader Rachael Hamilton said: 'These stats constitute a day of shame for this desperate SNP Government. 'There's no hiding place for John Swinney and no way to spin these awful figures - from A&E delays to drugs deaths, crime to climate change, his government are manifestly failing the people of Scotland. 'After 18 years in power, the SNP have run out of road and run out of excuses. For the good of the country, they need to be removed from office next May - and that's what a vote for the Scottish Conservatives will help ensure.' Yesterday's flurry of damning statistics were discussed at a virtual meeting of the Cabinet chaired by John Swinney. The Scottish Government data showed there were 308 suspected drug deaths between January and March, which was 76 higher - or a 33 per cent rise - compared to the last three months of last year. The latest rise comes despite then First Minister Nicola Sturgeon announcing a new 'national mission' to reduce drug deaths in 2021. Official figures also showed that violent crime has soared by 73 per cent since 2021, while the Scottish Government's crime and justice survey found that 56 per cent of people were not confident that the criminal justice system gives sentences which fit the crime. In hospitals, the proportion of people seen within the target of four hours at an A&E ward fell to just 65.5 per cent in the week ending June 1, down compared to 67.1 per cent the previous week. The proportion of patients waiting more than eight hours increased from 10.5 per cent to 12.2 per cent over the same period, while five per cent had to wait more than 12 hours. Other data published yesterday showed that greenhouse gas emissions have reduced by 1.9 per cent between 2022 and 2023, and are now down by 51.3 per cent compared to 1990 levels. But this was short of the previous target for a 56.4 per cent reduction by 2023 before the targets were scrapped last year. Scotland's demographic pressures also increased as figures released by the National Records of Scotland (NRS) showed 11,431 children were born between January and March of this year, which was 3.9 per cent lower than the average for the first quarter of a year. James Mitchell, professor of public policy at Edinburgh University and a leading authority on the SNP, said: 'This data shows that it is all too easy for ministers to deliver speeches making promising and commitments. It is quite another to deliver on the promises and commitments.' He added the 'legacy of failures' were felt by communities across Scotland and continued: 'It is little wonder that the SNP does not want to contest elections on its record in office and tries to divert attention and blame others given this latest list of statistics. Even if there were improvements in the next year it is difficult to see enough change to justify past claims and promises. 'In Nicola Sturgeon's own words, she took her eye of the ball on the issue of Scottish drug deaths. This has clearly been true across a range of devolved policy areas as her energies and efforts were devoted to pursuing a constitutional agenda and seeking conflict with Westminster. 'If as much effort had been devoted to addressing drug deaths, problems in the justice system, the educational attainment gap, problems in the health service, poor economic performance as was spent pointlessly and damagingly, then we might not have such poor outcomes.' Scottish Labour health spokesman Jackie Baillie said the rise in drug deaths 'shows just how badly the SNP is failing the country's most desperate and vulnerable people'. On the crime figures, Scottish Tory justice spokesman Liam Kerr said: 'SNP ministers must urgently show some common sense, ditch their soft-touch agenda, get tough on criminals and properly fund our police so they can keep the public safe.' Dr Sandesh Gulhane, health spokesman for the Scottish Conservatives also said it is 'shameful' that more than a third of patients are waiting longer than four hours to be seen during summer, 'when the pressure on A&E departments should be easing.' During yesterday's Cabinet meeting, Health Secretary Neil Gray gave an update on 'health performance statistics', while Justice Secretary Shirley-Anne Somerville updated on the crime and justice survey. Asked about the level of concern about the figures, a spokesman for the First Minister John Swinney said: 'We want to make progress on all these issues.' Mr Gray said every drug death is a 'tragedy' but added figures showed a year-on-year-fall. He added A&E in Scotland faced similar pressures to those elsewhere in the UK.
