Fife Police and NHS partner to learn about assault
NHS Fife staff and Fife Police are working together to create a truer picture of how violence hurts Fife and Fifers.
NHS Fife staff and Fife Police are working together to create a truer picture of how violence hurts Fife and Fifers.
Every victim of violence who turns up at a hospital accident and emergency department will be asked to take part in an anonymous survey. The details will help police target assault hotspots, learn what weapons are most common, plus pinpoint the age and gender of most victims of assault.
The page-long assault survey will even help police learn if an assault was linked to football, drugs, religion or race. One factor the survey will help pin down is the number of cases of assault where alcohol played a major part.
Chief Inspector Nicola Harkness, Fife Polices NHS liaison officer, helped develop the survey while on a two-year secondment to the health service.
We need to get smarter in pinning down the causes of serious assaults, said CI Harkness. This violence reduction initiative was trialed in Cardiff and helped Welsh police bring about a 25 per cent reduction in victims of violent crime turning up at A&E.
Because of the information gathered by the anonymous questionnaires police were better able to pinpoint violence hotspots. They could be particular pubs or clubs at certain times.
The number of crimes of violence reported to Fife Constabulary has shown a steady downward trend over the past five years. In 2002-2003, a total of 798 crimes of violence was recorded. This fell to 580 in 2006-2007.
But CI Harkness said it is estimated that only 30 per cent of violent crime is reported to police.
This survey will only be carried out with the patients consent, by NHS Fife A&E staff, she said. There is nothing on the form that would identify the patients. The information gathered, though, will be invaluable in spotting and predicting trends. No doubt, the survey will also push up Fife Polices figures for violent crime across the Kingdom, but we are aware that such crimes are at present under-reported.
The survey went through a test run between October and December and will be launched officially in January.
Chief Superintendent Martin Birrell, Fife Constabularys spokesperson on violence, said: We are in the midst of the Policing Our Festive Fife campaign, targeting violence which is so often linked to alcohol.
Having a tool such as this next Christmas and New Year will be invaluable for police to home in on trouble hotspots.
NHS Fife information services analyst Dr Gwen Bayne will work alongside Fife Police colleagues to analyse the raw data gathered by the survey.
Rona Webster, NHS Fifes Director of Human Resources and executive lead for health and safety, said: By working closely with Fife Police to gather this information we aim to reduce the number of people attending accident and emergency as victims of violence.
According to figures from the Scottish Violent Crime Reduction Unit, 72 per cent of victims of assault cite alcohol as a contributory factor.