Hansard

Thank you. The majority of police officers, serving and ex, could sit here and relay examples of how they or colleagues have been unfairly treated during misconduct proceedings. Ten years ago last week, I supposedly committed the crime of assault by preventing a suicide attempt. Over those 10 years, my experience of the misconduct process has been mirrored in investigations by Dame Elish Angiolini, HM Inspectorate of Constabulary in Scotland, the PIRC, the SPA and journalists, who have all evidenced that the standard of investigation into police misconduct is very poor. My experience was that I was found not guilty after a three-day trial, when the sheriff ruled that there was no mens rea and there was a lack of credible evidence. The expert witness who was used by COPFS changed his mind and supported my defence when evidence missed out by the investigation was revealed to him. The investigation into me failed to establish that much of the evidence was hearsay, and it ignored the fact that the medical evidence contradicted the witness claims. I have anecdotal evidence of other police officers whose trials were ended because of a poor standard of investigation. In 2014, the BBC reported on alleged breaches of data protection law. Freedom of information requests revealed that there was often a lack of evidence, and I found that the conviction rate for the reported breaches was only about 7 per cent. The scandal was again the subject of a BBC documentary in 2018—“A Force in Crisis”—which found that, out of 118 reports, there had been two convictions. In 2016, the HMICS published a report into the conduct of the counter-corruption unit. The report said: “A common theme was the legality, proportionality and the apparent lack of procedural fairness carried out by the CCU when dealing with police officers and members of police staff.” In 2017, I made a series of freedom of information requests and found that, from 2013 to 2016, although the conviction rate for all crimes was an average of around 86 per pent for the public, it was more like 7 per cent for police officers. The PIRC used to put information about its rulings on misconduct investigations on Twitter—X—which showed that it consistently found that about 50 per cent of those investigations were unsatisfactory. In 2019, it reported a 44 per cent decrease in the proportion of complaints that were handled to a decent standard. 11:00 In 2017, The Sun ran the headline “Ex-cop on brink of suicide after being ‘fitted up by anti-corruption officers over murder bid case’”. There have been multiple instances of police officers killing themselves while being the subject of misconduct inquiries. I spent large periods off sick with situational clinical depression and anxiety, and I was on antidepressants during the final two years of my service. Police Scotland is very poor at managing the stress that is caused by misconduct investigations. It took 122 weeks for my case to go to trial, when the average, according to figures from the SPA, was 54-and-a-half weeks. It was exactly 900 days from the incident to the day when I was found not guilty, which ended the proceedings by COPFS. The majority of that delay was due to CAAPD, which sat on my report for more than a year, with no updates and no apparent action. There is plenty of anecdotal evidence of police waiting for years for the PSD to conclude its misconduct investigations, which are separate from any criminal proceedings. That is excessive and causes additional stress, not just to the police but to their families. I take this opportunity to thank my wife, family and friends, who supported and stood by me. Not everybody has had that. In 2016, the SPA stopped publishing figures on how many police and staff were suspended or on restricted duties, with its final report showing that, out of 166 police and staff on restricted duties, 27 had been in that position for more than 700 days. In 2018, The Herald reported that nearly 80 police officers had resigned while being investigated for misconduct. My experience was that I was able to take early retirement. I could no longer cope with the pressure. Colleagues have provided me with plenty of anecdotal evidence of police found not guilty at trials who were then forced into accepting misconduct sanctions by the PSD. My own limited experience of PSD investigations during my service was that they were distrustful and aggressive and assumed guilt. I could not face that. I started by saying that there is a lot of evidence of police being treated badly during the misconduct process. However, what you will never get is a police officer telling you how their misconduct was excused or covered up. In 2018, the PIRC reported to the Justice Committee that it had found evidence of criminal allegations being treated as misconduct. A PSD quarterly report in 2019 recorded that there had been an increase of 161 per cent in the number of police being reported for assault, proving the scale of criminality that was being hidden. The 2019 Angiolini review of complaints handling found instances of the public reporting that their complaints were being excused by the investigating officer. I worked where inspectors dealt with complaints, and the trend was to excuse police who were considered good officers. Investigations were led by the opinion that the investigating officer held of the person whom they were investigating. The public also reported that they felt under pressure not to complain or that their complaints were dragged out for too long. That was very much my experience when I complained. Complaints were lost, they took months and they were passed around between divisions. A chief inspector from my home division visited my home and told me that he did not think that it was his job to investigate my complaint. A PSD inspector then visited my home and told me that he was the devil’s advocate, as he sought to excuse the misconduct by witnesses and whoever had conducted the investigation. I met an inspector from the custody division who finally took on the investigation into my complaint. He had retired, so he felt that it was safe for him to tell me that he had been put under pressure from management to dismiss all of my complaints. In the end, most were dismissed or advice was given. As Dame Angiolini said to the Justice Committee when she answered questions about her review—I will paraphrase—if that is how the police treat one another, what about how they treat the public? The complaints and misconduct process can and does work in many cases, but there is far too much scope for it not to work. It is far too easy to hide and excuse misconduct, and, if anything, the greatest risk is not to police officers who are guilty of misconduct but to innocent police and police who report their colleagues for misconduct. Based on my experience and from the investigations that I have referred to, the present system needs to be changed so that it is driven by evidence and not opinion. It needs to be fair and open, with no pressure placed on complainers, and no early decisions on who is guilty, believing the victim or taking sides. It needs to be quicker, and it needs to be high risk to police who are guilty of misconduct and low risk to the innocent and reporters in order to restore some of the lost confidence in policing in Scotland.