POLICE Scotland is wrongly recording "several hundred thousand" stop-searches a year.
The national force has come under increasing political scrutiny over what its own numbers have made look like a tactic of mass frisking, including of children.
However, its chief constable, Sir Stephen House, has now admitted that vast numbers of routine encounters, such as taking alcohol from youngsters, had skewed official statistics.
Speaking before his main civilian watchdog, the Scottish Police Authority or SPA, on Friday Sir Stephen took personal responsible for "some mistakes in data gathering and presentation".
The chief constable had been summoned before the SPA after the BBC reported figures that appeared to show the force breaching its own policy - announced last summer - of not carrying out consensual searches on under-12s were also wrong.
The broadcaster had said there had been 356 such suspicionless searches since the change in policy.
It had obtained the numbers under Freedom of Information laws - "legislatively, not consensually", the chief joked.
The force had not wanted to release them, telling the broadcaster they thought the numbers were corrupted.
The body representing rank-and-file officers has long argued that Scottish statistics for stop-and-search were being inflated - and that resulting meaningless figures were sparking political controversy.
The SPA on Friday was told the latest analysis suggested that the actual number of under-12s subjected to consensual searches was 18.
Most were youngsters stopped by police after youth disorders before their ages could be checked.
Sir Stephen said "I don't think we should routinely be using consensual search on children. But it is a policy, not a law,. if my officers step outside the police and they have got a good reason, they will get 100% support."
He said that if so-called "interventions" - for example, when officers remove alcohol from children - were removed from figures there would be dramatic reduction in the wholesale number.
He said: "They would reduce by several hundred thousand.
"Why is is that Police Scotland stops so many more people than the Metropolitan Police or the New York City Police?
"Because we record as much of what we do as possible and, frankly, we are damned for going further in recording our contacts with citizens.
"I think we need to record them in the right box."
The representing rank-and-file officers has for some years warned that stop-search figures have been inflated by what it regards as a "targets culture".
A spokesman Scottish Police Federation or SPF said the SPA meeting at which Sir Stephen was speaking could be "best summarised by saying 'the numbers are guff'".
Sir Stephen denies individual targets for the number of searches - although he has set targets for the share of searches that are "positive", that find something.
Vic Emery, the SPA chairman ended the meeting by challenging Sir Stephen to look at what effect any targets have had on the issue.
The force, meanwhile, has said it believes that consensual searches should be reviewed. One of Sir Stephen's deputies, Rose Fitzpatrick, laid out potential consequences of that, including the danger statutory searches could be seen as more confrontational. She also suggested that many consensual searches, about a third, were nominally made for alcohol. There is no statutory power to frisk for such drinks. Police believe such a power should be considered.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article