r/Glasgow Tools

Is the guy he has moved in with vulnerable in any way? Learning difficulties? Socially isolated? Mental health problems - anything like that?

I was at a criminal justice conference shortly before lockdown and I was late joining one of the workshops being run by North East division of Police Scotland. The workshop had been running for about 10 minutes when I arrived. At first I thought I was tripping. The two big husky unsmiling polis up front were talking about "cuckooing".

WTF have birds got to do with mental health issues and crime? I looked around at the other people there but no-one else looked baffled. One woman put up her hand. Here were go, thinks I, here comes the What The Hell Are Youse On About question.

"Can you give us some examples of signs of cuckooing?"

"Yes. They include cling film lying around in places you wouldn't expect to find it: the tenant of the accommodation sleeping on the sofa rather than in his bed; "relatives" or "friends" from Liverpool turning up and moving in..."

By now the penny is starting to drop. The officers explained that in Aberdeen it's mainly Liverpool gangs involved in Cuckooing. The gangs aren't rivals with one another, in fact they often cooperate and when one gang is short, another will supply them.

Sometimes the cuckoo who "befriends" the tenant will introduce them to drugs and keep them addicted/supplied in order to ensure they can remain in the property.

Another woman put up her hand and asked, "Why don't you just go in and arrest them?" And this time I knew who the idiot was.

Just say the drugs are in that property. Whose property is it? How do you prove who brought the drugs in? The PF is going to kick that into the long grass. And do you think dealers are daft enough to hand over drugs to folk they don't know?

It's a difficult crime to tackle, but just because the police don't seem to be doing anything, doesn't mean they aren't. I know from the investigation into my father's murder (by a heroin addict) that the police aren't going to compromise an investigation by telling you everything they're doing until after they've completed it.

If it really IS what's going on, getting rid of one guy with an accent which doesn't fit, won't stop another from moving in. Threatening one member of a gang - the one you can see - is a seriously bad idea.

Of course, I may be way off with all of this. But every time I hear a cuckoo now, I think, I think "scouse bastards".