THE "top four offenders" in the Cowdenbeath area over the past year racked up 108 offences between them - and they were aged between 13 and 15.
One incident included a car with an underaged driver and seven other kids as passengers racing through Fife and Perthshire at speeds of up 120mph while being pursued by the police.
Sergeant John Nicol told the Cowdenbeath area committee "we were lucky we didn’t come in on Monday morning to eight young dead people".
Local councillors were given an update on police activity in the area in 2024-25, which included work to tackle off-road bikes, drugs and violent crime.
Sergeant Nicol said: “In the reporting period there is a stat that is probably quite staggering, a significant volume of the anti-social behaviour was attributed to a very small group of young people.
"That group contributed to a massive percentage of the offences.
"In fact the top four offenders for the whole Cowdenbeath area were young people.
"This triggered a huge amount of partnership work and support for them and their families through the youth justice mechanism and social work."
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Asked for more details, he went on: “The 108 offences, it was a massive range of different type of offending from threatening retail workers to assaulting their peers, shoplifting, car theft, causing damage, causing road traffic type offences but really super high risk road traffic offences.
"As I’ve documented in the report they were travelling at a speed of 120 mph which was part of a police pursuit across two policing divisions.
"We were lucky we didn’t come in on Monday morning to eight young dead people because that would have been really grave news for the area.
"That could have been a real outcome."
Community inspector for the Cowdenbeath area, Carley Marshall, said: "We identified the four problem kids last year and let’s be straight about it.
"They are children.
"They are 13, 14 and 15-year-old's that need a bit of guidance.
"We don’t want to criminalise them as we don’t want that to impact on their adult life.
"But we recognise we need to get involved as we cannot have them impact on the communities in the way they were.
"The ones we got involved with, we take a crime, we charge them, we arrest them, whatever part we take, we are a very small part of the criminal justice system.
"Once we refer those children to the youth justice system we very often don’t hear back what the result is."
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Sergeant Nicol said there had been a "positive outcome".
He told councillors: "For the four of them in particular, we would sit around the table with them weekly and discuss their behaviours, how they’re getting on with their home setting - none of them went to school.
"That was a huge amount of work for us and our partners.
"It really came to a point in a four month period but the upshot of that is every single one of them has dropped off our radar so there’s been a positive outcome."
He added: "Reassuringly, to date the top 10 offenders for Cowdenbeath are ones you would probably expect, ones that have chosen a criminal career if you want to put it like that. They’re not young people."
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