FRUSTRATED residents are losing confidence in police due to ongoing issues with anti-social behaviour at Inverkip Beach, according to a ward councillor.

Labour politician Paul Cassidy grilled Inverclyde’s top police officer Damian Kane about disorder at the local beauty spot and said he had witnessed police leaving community wardens to move children away from the area during a recent incident.

Chief Inspector Kane, who is Police Scotland’s area commander for Inverclyde, said that the local force had a multi-agency approach in place to deal with problems at the beach but apologised to any residents whose faith in the police had been impacted.

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Speaking at a meeting of the council’s Police and Fire Scrutiny Panel, Councillor Cassidy asked the chief inspector what he was going to do to restore faith in the force and get to grips with the issue.

He said: “There was a recent meeting of residents in the marina and there was a growing frustration from them about Police Scotland’s inability to get to grips with the problem and indeed a number have expressed that they have now no confidence in the police’s abilities.

“A number of weeks ago on the school leavers weekend there was a multi-agency approach taken at Inverkip Beach tied in with the council’s warden service, the assist team, British Transport Police, ScotRail and Police Scotland.

“I happened to be out and see the action that was taking place and I have to say that while I absolutely praise the approach taken by our warden service and assist team who did spectacular work and BTP and ScotRail who did good work, what I did notice was that Police Scotland were barely visible.

“Indeed, one of my big concerns was at the end of the night when it came time to getting the kids back up to the train station and back onto the trains to get home safely, police officers disappeared off the scene and left the council’s warden service to deal with the kids.”

In response to the councillor’s comments, the chief inspector emphasised that police were committed to dealing with the issues.

He added: “There’s a limited pool of resources and a multitude of areas to cover, a very massive land area.

“I have to put the resources where they’re most needed or assessed to be needed at the time.

“I think of the period you’re talking about we did have a plan in place, if the cops have been distracted from that I do apologise, it’s unfortunate.

“However, they have my support, they’ve had to be called away to something more pressing whether it’s ongoing domestic violence, knife carrying, some of the attempted murders, some of the major incidents we’ve had.

“I won’t apologise for that because that’s correct and I’d expect my supervisors on the ground to quite correctly corral their cops and move them to something that’s got more threat to life, if you understand what I mean.

“But I do get your ongoing frustrations, we’ve been working in Inverkip Beach for a number of months now, we actually started working that way before the Easter holidays.”

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The senior police officer admitted that the force had been ‘caught unawares’ as the problems usually begin after the Easter break, but sought to reassure councillors that he would resource the plan that was in place as best as he could.

The chief inspector also added that the police could only take action against young people when there was criminality and said that most of those involved were not breaking the law.

He said: “You’ll be aware as I’m sure the whole board are we’re not exactly flush with officers, we’ve had other demands on us, we’ve had certain cuts to finances and posts but despite that we’ve brought in other cops from other areas.

“Over the last four weeks had really good support from a number of neighbouring divisions, national teams, we’ve cops from Glasgow, Dunbartonshire, further afield.

“That in itself has allowed us to have the cops you’re referring to. In truth we probably wouldn’t have had those cops there at all on the weekends to be frank with you, were it not for the fact we’ve had good support from other divisions who allowed us to move from some of the other serious violence demands because other cops are covering that.

“But we are trying our best and I appreciate there’s no easy fix.”