Down and Out in Whitfield - Policing the Most Notorious Schemes in Dundee

Officer Keir Elder felt at odds with the population of Dundee in the late 90s, tasked with patrolling Whitfield - the most violent scheme in the city. The cycle of poverty and drugs kept generations in trouble with the law, break-ins, drug deaths, and murders were a regular occurrence.

Throughout the 90s and early 2000s, Dundee saw a collapse in their manufacturing industries as labour became outsourced abroad, plunging thousands into poverty.

Keir found himself in the police at the age of 21 working in a city that was and continues to be the drug death capital of Europe – a driving force in the city’s high crime rate.

Keir said: “From my own experience, I would say probably 80% plus of crimes I dealt with had drugs at their core. The young people of Ardler, Kirkwood, Whitfield - lots of house breakings, lots of people breaking into cars.

“Young people in desperate situations who were not trying to accumulate money. They were simply trying to get money to see the next day out. They were addicted to the prescription drugs which was a big problem.”

To this day, drug abuse is still a prevalent factor in criminal activity. Drug users are four times more likely to commit crimes to supplement addiction, a study conducted inside a Scottish prison in 2019 found that 71% of inmates tested positive for illegal substances which included the illicit use of prescription drugs.

“The northern schemes of Dundee were particularly challenging places for people to live. Being very badly designed, ill thought-out social projects, which created lots of problems just from the design of buildings. People whose lives are under pressure living on top of each other essentially.”

Whitfield was an ambitious but ultimately disastrous housing project attempting to house the expanding Dundonian population. Known as 'Skarne' housing, it sprawled miles of prefabricated homes.

The poor design of the pre-cast panels let mould seep through the internal walls, window vents stuck permanently open allowed for the harsh winter to drain heat from the buildings, and substandard front doors could be kicked in easily, leaving residents vulnerable to home invasions.

Keir said: “House break-ins in Whitfield were constant, as soon as somebody left their house the door would be kicked in essentially, and the only thing that really prevented it getting out of hand was that nobody really had anything. Nobody had anything left to steal.”

Within this boiling point of social pressure, the police were a constant presence in Whitfield, patrolling the streets as wardens in miles of brutalist identical blocks.

Keir said: “We got a call down into the middle of Kirkton in one of the more notorious streets about a guy swinging a Golf Club around.

“I approached them and he ignored me like I wasn't there and kept swinging it, so I walked over up to him and was just about to put a hand on him when from the hedges of the gardens all round about eight or nine of the local youth leapt out armed with sticks.

“Just tore into us.”

By the time backup would arrive, both would have sustained injuries, with Keir’s partner Tony having one of his teeth knocked out. The rest of the shift was spent dragging gang members from their beds in the early hours of the morning – one of the youths arrested was a usual suspect.

Keir said: “Handcuffed him, put him in the back of the car and noticed all the way down the road he had his face pushed into the passenger seat. He was almost forcing his face through the headrest.

“But I realized on the way down he was 100% sure he was going to get beaten up in the back of the police car because he had punched the cop.”

This culture of retribution had been carried on from the 70s where the police would actively try to get into fights and beat suspects in the station.

Keir said: “They would regularly arrest people taken back to Whitfield police office and would be a square-go in the police station.“

Policing would evolve from this brash style of swift and violent revenge as Keir would adopt the practice policing by consent, which is the notion that officers should act as uniformed civilians, as the legitimacy of police power is dependent on their support from the public.

However, to measure police efficiency the police would be expected to report a certain number of cases per day.

Keir said: “The inspector would come in in the morning and review every incident and pick it apart. That seemed to be more and more prevalent, and people's actions in the moment were being scrutinized with a very sterile forensic lens.”

As policing by consent allowed officers to use their own discretion, scrutinising officers for their actions in the moment and working for the best outcome for public relations became less tenable. Because of this, Keir left the force in the early 2000s – as punishing an impoverished population by cracking down on them for acting on their own circumstances does nothing to prevent crime.

Keir said: “I said, “well if I'm the beat man for Saint Mary's and I'm doing a particularly good job. Hopefully, the number of cases I report will be none.””

This cold, unfeeling form of policing where officers are encoraged to bring down the full weight of the law upon citizens that the government has failed to protect will only have greater consequences. Resolution Foundation, a UK think tank, predicts that 1.3 million people will be dropped into absolute poverty by 2023 during the cost-of-living crisis, which will undoubtably increase crime.

The way police treat the newly impoverished will determine their attitude to authority – depending on if they police by consent or ruthlessness.