Police Scotland’s Edinburgh Public Protection Unit (PPU) will publish daily posts on Facebook to provide an overview of the work they do, starting today with the Divisional Rape Investigation Unit.
The PPU consists of several departments working together to protect people at risk of harm in our communities. They cover Domestic Abuse, Child Protection, Adult Protection, Rape & Sexual Crime and Offender Management. The PPU work in partnership, taking a multi-agency approach, increasing public confidence and raising public awareness. As well as the proactive and reactive investigative work they carry out, the PPU are well placed to identify threat, manage risk and prevent harm.
The work carried out by the PPU isn’t widely covered on social media, so over the next 7 days we will publish daily posts to give you an overview of the work carried out by the PPU in Edinburgh. Today we are looking at the Divisional Rape Investigation Unit:
The DRIU offers 24/7 coverage in Edinburgh. The most serious sexual offences are investigated by officers with specialist skills and expertise including Sexual Offences Liaison Officers (SOLOs) and Joint Investigative Interview (JII) trained officers to ensure all the needs of the victims and their families are met.
The department covers a variety of roles including:
– Sexual Crime: Main role being the investigation into Section 1 SOSA 2009 and Common Law Rapes, both recent and non recent. All other sexual offences including sexual assaults and online sexual crime dependant on the severity may be included.
– Partnership working: Liaising directly with Rape Crisis/Women’s Aid and other agencies to ensure the victims/survivors are provided suitable advice and support throughout the investigation and beyond.
Officers within the department are also involved in the national pilot of VRI SOLO interviews of Adult Rape Victims, seeking to improve victim’s experiences of the justice process and how to obtain best evidence, eventually considering the use of video recorded interviews during court proceedings.
John graduated from Telford College in 2010 with an HNC in Practical Journalism and since then he worked for the North Edinburgh News, The Southern Reporter, the Irish News Review and The Edinburgh Reporter. In addition he has been published in the Edinburgh Evening News and the Hibernian FC Programme.
