Police will escort fire crews as part of a major operation to combat disorder during Bonfire Night celebrations. The move comes amid concerns for the safety of emergency personnel responding to incidents on November 5.
Last year, fire services received approximately 750 calls and attended over 250 bonfires on Bonfire Night. Between October 31 and November 5 of the previous year, police recorded just over 830 calls requiring a local or specialist response, a decrease of more than one-third compared to the year before.
"For firefighters, we have dealt with anti-social behaviour on occasions; it tends to be the minority, but what we want is our personnel and our staff who are out on Thursday night to ensure that they go home safely to their families," said Cleland. "They are mums, dads, brothers and sisters just the same as everybody else in the community and we really want our crews to make it home safe."
While there has been a slight decrease in fireworks-related calls to police on Halloween this year, with 144 received compared to 160 in the previous year, more serious incidents have occurred. These include a firework landing near a pram in the Drumchapel area of Glasgow, which left a child badly shaken, and reports of fireworks being thrown in the high street in Bonnyrigg, Midlothian. Two male youths have been charged in connection with the latter incident.
In a separate operation, officers seized 350kg of fireworks, valued at approximately £12,000, from an address in the Penilee area of Glasgow. Some of the seized fireworks had the capacity to fire 600 individual rockets and were reportedly being sold online.
As many as 1,700 officers could be deployed for the operation, marking the largest such deployment by Police Scotland since a visit by President Trump last year. Maps illustrating firework control zones in Edinburgh and Glasgow have been released by authorities.