Policing is being reshaped in ways few outside the service understand. But fewer officers, fewer cells and weaker supervision risk leaving communities with a service that looks very different from the one they expect.

We need to have a serious conversation about policing.

Policing will never escape public fascination. The most gripping television dramas are almost always police-based, and the sheer variety of things we expect officers to deal with means the subject never becomes dry.

A few minutes on social media will also confirm it’s a subject on which everyone is an expert, or at least has an opinion. That being said, its almost singularly unique positioning in the nation’s psyche means being in the spotlight is something that goes with the territory – no matter how much those on the first floor of Tulliallan wish it didn’t.

At the turn of the year, the Chief Constable, Jo Farrell, was busy telling MSPs of the need to bring in an additional 850 police officers to “urgently support straining frontline services”. You’d have thought that such a claim from Scotland’s most senior cop would have delivered results, but such is the lack of regard paid to policing in Holyrood that her pitch for more money did little more than make a few headlines before becoming the wrappings for the Friday fish supper.

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Since then, Farrell has been remarkably quiet. Maybe she has concluded there’s no point fighting for more, or that with less than a year left on her contract there’s little she can achieve........

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