A controversial target for maintaining police numbers has been dropped by the SNP in its Scottish parliament manifesto.
Police Scotland will no longer be required to maintain 1,000 additional uniformed officers compared with the figure the SNP inherited when it came to power in 2007 if a nationalist government is re-elected.
The target has been a key SNP commitment on law and order for nine years, and has kept officer numbers at just above 17,234, while the number of support staff has fallen by 2,000 since 2010.
The police have also faced claims that uniformed officers have been taken off frontline duties to undertake work previously carried out by non-officer staff, such as call handling and firearms licencing.
The manifesto presented the policy rethink as