Det Ch Supt Gordon McCreadie is head of local crime for Police Scotland, as well as specialist communications support.
I hold a number of portfolios but, effectively, each of the detective superintendents in local policing divisions are seconded from specialist division and I oversee their activity and coordinate the function, as well as leading on pieces of work around biometrics and live facial recognition, as a couple of examples.
Stability is a significant issue in terms of the stability and resilience of command teams, because as a result of pension changes, and people striving to gain a broad church of operational experience, they’re encouraging people to move or resign or retire from the organisation early, and that creates a bit of instability among command teams.
Our foundation of success is usually based on relationships. So the instability of leadership positions undermines the relationship, which means we’re less effective.
My key takeaway from conference has been around the balance between being risk positive and driving use of technology forward, versus carefully managing public trust and confidence around finance.
So that we get the right balance that when we use tech, we use it well, we use it effectively, we use it with public consent, and we can afford it.