Police ‘keen to attract Shetlanders’ to join up
A RECRUITMENT drive will target Shetlanders to join the local police force.
A number of vacancies have become available after officers left, either to move to the mainland, to leave Police Scotland altogether or because their secondments were over.
Area commander Chris Sewell said they would be focusing on trying to encourage locals to become police officers first and foremost.
“We’re carrying a number of vacancies at the moment,” he told Shetland News at Lerwick Police Station this week.
“What you’ll notice over the next month or so is a big recruitment drive.
“We’re really keen to attract Shetlanders in to consider a career in policing. It’s important that the police reflects the community.”
Sewell said they hoped to condense the recruitment process and to offer every part of it in Shetland.
Historically new recruits have had to go south to carry out medicals or be assessed.
But the chief inspector hopes that this time the whole process can be carried out without anyone having to leave Shetland.
“That’s a real positive,” he said.
“We wanted to bring the recruitment process to Shetland to save Shetlanders having to go to the mainland, because there’s considerable costs involved in that.”
Less than three months ago, Sewell told Shetland’s community safety and resilience board that the police had “almost a full complement of staff”.
He said the latest recruitment drive showed “how much things can change in the space of a few months”.
Sewell said the primary focus over the next month or so would be in trying to entice Shetlanders to sign up to become police officers.
“We already have Shetlanders in the police, and folk that have come from south,” he explained.
“That’s good in terms of a skill mix, but I’d still like to see more Shetlanders reflected in the police here.
“Nobody understands the community better than someone who has been brought up in that community.”
In the short-term, Sewell said Police Scotland would look to backfill the vacancies by bringing in seconded officers from the mainland.
Attracting people to come work in Shetland was not difficult, he added.
“Our social media team and internal comms team did a video piece recently where they spoke to local officers, spoke to myself, took some fancy drone footage and compiled that into an internal recruitment video.
“We also did an internal piece where our seconded officers shared their experience and tried to highlight what it’s like living and working here.
“It is an attractive offering.”
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