We will track down Bonfire Night’s thugs - Chief Supt Sean Scott

With Halloween and Bonfire Night now behind us, we are once again taking stock of the Operation Crackle and Operation Moonbeam deployments utilised over these weekends to deter fireworks-related disorder and protect both the public, and emergency service workers from harm.

Chief Supt Sean Scott is the Divisional Commander for Edinburgh

Despite the ongoing measures in place across the city to stem the spread of Covid, which included the cancellation of pre-planned bonfire events, we experienced a similar numbers of incidents involving the dangerous use of fireworks as in 2019.

There were a number of occasions were police vehicles and officers were targeted. Thankfully, however, none of these incidents resulted in any injury. Regardless of this, I am extremely disappointed that the behaviour of a small few who put the safety of my staff at risk and I want to make it clear that our inquiries are unde rway to identify anyone who was involved to ensure they are brought to justice.

I know that our Scottish Fire and Rescue Service colleagues, were also subjected to similar levels of abuse and we will continue to conduct inquiries into any and all incidents where fire service personnel and their equipment was targeted by fireworks.

While the vast majority of reports received over the Bonfire Night period were able to be dealt with by local Operation Crackle resources, there were instances where we required the assistance of national specialist public order resources, provided by Operation Moonbeam. I want to thank the Moonbeam command team for their support of our local policing plan and their involvement played a significant role in helping keep our communities safe.

I am also grateful for support of our partners at City of Edinburgh Council during the planning and implementation of the nine dispersal zones we had in place. Once again, these were well-utilised with various individuals and groups told to leave an area and not return, or face arrest.

On a more positive note, we did see a decrease in the number of bonfires started in the Capital and I believe this was because many members of the public heeded the advice about keeping their households safe – either by having extremely small and easily extinguished fires that were put out quickly; or by completely refraining from having a personal bonfire this year.

Looking forward, we are now stepping up our plans for Operation Winter City, Edinburgh Division’s festive policing campaign. Winter City covers not only the run-up to Christmas, but the Hogmanay celebrations and the early days of January 2021 too.

Like much of our celebrations this year, the festive period will have a different feel than previous years. We already know that the Christmas markets will not be in situ within Princes Street Gardens, while the Torchlight Procession and Hogmanay Street Party are also cancelled in order to reduce the potential spread of coronavirus.

With that said, we know this time of year continues to provide a number of challenges in terms of policing and our campaign will maintain its focus on tackling acquisitive crime, drink driving, violence and general home and personal safety. This information will be once again available on our social media channels, so please follow these if you want to be kept up to date with Operation Winter City.

You may also have seen that in the past week, the UK threat level has been raised to severe, in response to incidents arising in France and Austria. Let me take this opportunity to assure residents and businesses within the city that there is no intelligence to suggest any specific threat to Scotland.

Chief Supt Sean Scott is the Divisional Commander for Edinburgh