On the 24th April 2024, I attended the Scottish Parliament at Holyrood to give evidence on the proposed Police Ethics, Conduct & Scrutiny Bill.
https://www.parliament.scot/bills-and-laws/bills/police-ethics-conduct-and-scrutiny-scotland-bill
It is a bill in response to the 2019 Dame Angiolini report on complaints handling, that found multiple, serious flaws in the way Police Scotland deal with complaints and investigate misconduct.
I was asked to attend after submitting my experience of being complained about and then complaining. I was told the likely questions, so wrote out responses. This is the response to the opening question;
“What do you think should be changed about the police complaints system, based on your experience?”
This was my response, that I read out in full. I found when researching my answer, that this blog site had collated various reports over the ten years since the initial incident and I had not realised how directly those reports related to my experiences of complaints and misconduct handling.
“The majority of police officers, serving & ex, could sit here and relate 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 ten years, my experience of the misconduct process has been mirrored by investigations by Dame Angiolini, HMRCS, 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 3 day trial, when the Sheriff ruled there was no mens rea & there was a lack of credible evidence. The expert witness 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 much of the evidence was hearsay. It ignored 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 the Data Protection Act. FOIs revealed that there was often a lack of evidence and I found the conviction rate for those reported was only about 7%. That scandal was again the subject of a BBC documentary in 2018, “A Force in Crisis” which found out of 118 reports, there had been 2 convictions.
In 2016 HMICS published a report into the conduct of the Counter Corruption Unit and said, “A common theme was the legality, proportionality, & apparent lack of procedural fairness carried out by the CCU when dealing with police officers & members of police staff”.
In 2017 I put in a series of FOIs that found from 2013 to 16, whilst the conviction rate for all crimes was an average of around 86% for the public, it was more like 7% for police officers.
PIRC used to put information about their rulings on misconduct investigations on X, twitter, showing they were consistently finding about 50% were unsatisfactory. In 2019 they reported a 44% decrease in the proportion of complaints handled to a decent standard.
In 2017 the Sun ran a headline “Ex cop on brink of suicide after being fitted up by anti-corruption officers over murder bid case.” I know there have been multiple instances of police killing themselves whilst being the subject of misconduct enquiries. I spent large periods off sick with situational clinical depression and anxiety and was on anti-depressants during the last 2 years of my service. Police Scotland are very poor at managing the stress 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 54.5 weeks. It was exactly 900 days from the incident to the day I was found not guilty, ending proceedings by COPFS. The majority of that delay was due to CAP-D, who sat on my report for over a year, with no updates, and no apparent action. There is plenty of anecdotal evidence of police waiting years for PSD to conclude their misconduct investigations, separate to any criminal proceedings. That is excessive and causes additional stress not just to the police but also their families. I would like to take this an opportunity to thank my wife, family and friends who all supported and stood by me. Thankyou.
The SPA stopped publishing figures as to how many police and staff were suspended or on restricted duties in 2016, their last report showing that out of 166 on restricted duties, 27 had been for more than 700 days.
In 2018 the Herald reported that nearly 80 police officers had resigned whilst being investigated for misconduct. My experience was that I was able to take early retirement. I could no longer cope with the pressure. Colleagues had provided me with plenty of anecdotal evidence of police found not guilty at trials, who were then forced into accepting misconduct sanctions by PSD. My own limited experience of PSD investigations during my service was that they were distrustful, aggressive & 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. What you would never get, is a police officer to appear and tell you how their misconduct was excused or covered up.
In 2018 PIRC reported to this committee that they 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% in the number of police being reported for assault, proving the scale of criminality being hidden.
The 2019 Angiolini Review of complaint 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 considered good officers. Investigations were led by the opinion the investigating officer had, of the person they were investigating. The public also reported that they felt under pressure to not complain or that complaints were dragged out far too long. That was very much my experience when I complained. Complaints were lost, they took months & were being passed around between divisions. A CHI from my home division visited my home and told me he did not think it was his job to investigate. A PSD Inspector visited my home & told me he was a “devil’s advocate” as he sought to excuse the misconduct by witnesses and whoever had conducted the investigation. I met an Inspector from Custody Division, who finally took on the investigation. He had retired, so he felt 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 given.
As Dame Angiolini said to this committee when she appeared to answer questions about the review & I paraphrase, if that is how the police treat each other, what about how they treat the public?
The complaints & misconduct process can and does work in many cases, but there is far too much scope for it to not work. It is far too easy to hide and excuse misconduct and if anything the greatest risk is not to police guilty of misconduct, it is to innocent police and police who report their colleagues for misconduct.
The present system, based on my experience & that found by the investigations I have referred to, needs to be changed so it is driven by evidence, not opinion. It needs to be fair and open with no pressure placed on complainers, no early decisions on who is guilty, believe the victim, or taking sides. It needs to be quicker. It needs to be of high risk to police who are guilty of misconduct and low risk to the innocent and reporters, so restoring some of the lost confidence in policing in Scotland.”
rogerthepoliceman 