By Tommy Jardine
If you can’t call the police for whatever reason then ring Crimestoppers . It’s easy, it’s anonymous and it’s up to you to make a difference.
That’s the message First Minister Jack McConnell delivered loud and clear during an ‘Ask Jack’ radio interview in Dumfries on June 19.
When asked by me to respond to the fact that Crimestoppers anonymous hotline 0800 555 111 took 1,000 calls per month and helped arrest 175 drug dealers this Spring, Mr. McConell declared: “I think Crimestoppers Scotland is great…I would certainly encourage people to make use of the anonymous facilities they provide.”
He referred to the success of the Safer Scotland double award-winning ‘Drug Dealers Don’t Care. Do you?’ campaign and the ‘real willingness’ in the region towards Crimestoppers Scotland encouraged this to continue, he said.
Questions about crime, road safety, health, the environment, rural and farming came thick and fast from the 140–strong invited audience at a well attended public question and answer session in the Easterbrook Hall, at The Crichton.
Business people, community groups and local youth bodies as well as listeners and secondary schools contributed to the informative hour-long discussion staged by Southwest sound Radio in the presence of Chief Constable David Strang and Mr. David McKie, Deputy Convener of Dumfries and Galloway Council.
Members of the audience put the First Minister on the spot over sport and asked why he was not supporting England in the World Cup.
Always the diplomat, he responded: “People in Scotland should support England if they want to. People in Scotland should support other teams, if they want to, in a World Cup where we are not represented.”
And he went on: “I don’t believe it will have an effect on tourism, as long as we treat it properly. But if we get uptight about it, if we get wound up about it, it could have an impact. We should just treat this as a football match and a sporting occasion.”
With the formation of the Dumfries and Galloway Sub Committee Crimestoppers Scotland now reaches every corner of the country from the Highlands to the Borders.
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