Force is criticised by complaints watchdog, report David Leask and David Ross
DAVID LEASK and DAVID ROSS
HUGH and June McLeod believed Ian Latimer, the chief constable of Northern Constabulary, would do anything he could to avoid meeting them face-to-face. Now he has no choice: he is going to see them and he is going to say sorry.
Jim Martin, Scotland's Police Complaints Commissioner, last night officially ordered Mr Latimer to apologise to the couple over the way his force handled a decade of family complaints about the police investigation into the death of their eldest son.
Kevin McLeod, a 24-year-old labourer who was engaged to be married, drowned in Wick harbour on the night of February 7, 1997. He did so after sustaining serious injuries to his abdomen. A fatal accident inquiry ended a year later with an open verdict.
Northern Constabulary and its officers have long said they believed Kevin died in a tragic accident. Mr and Mrs McLeod suspect he was murdered.
Nobody knows for sure how he met his death. Nobody official, anyway, and certainly not Mr Martin. The police complaints commissioner, after all, did not reinvestigate Mr McLeod's death. Mr Martin's job is to review how complaints are handled by forces. And, according to his most damning report yet, he wasn't impressed by the way Northern did so.
"The service provided by Northern Constabulary to the McLeod family falls well short of the mark," he said yesterday.
"Northern Constabulary appears at times to have lost sight of the fact that it is dealing with a bereaved family who are looking for answers to difficult questions.
"My report is deeply critical of the force and the chief constable. I believe the attitude taken toward this family, who I also criticise in my report, has smacked at times of institutional arrogance and has on occasion been influenced by personal feelings rather than professional judgment."
The wording could scarcely have been stronger. Northern Constabulary was smarting last night, especially at any suggestion of "institutional arrogance". Mr Latimer, who took over Northern four years after Kevin McLeod's death, formally welcomed the report, but is still unhappy at Mr Martin's more strongly worded charges. He feels his force has already apologised, in writing, but yesterday agreed to do so again, in person.
He said: "I have offered to meet with the family to underline the force's apology and I have now intimated this to the family. I hope that by doing this the force can rebuild its relationship with the family. I do refute, however, the comment by Mr Martin that Northern Constabulary is in any way institutionally arrogant' and certainly not in regard to its dealings with Mr and Mrs McLeod."
So why was Mr Martin so tough on Northern? The force, he found, had adopted the wrong attitude. Positions were entrenched, bunkers dug. Mr Martin criticised Mr Latimer for repeating, earlier this year, that Kevin's death was an accident, a potential contradiction of the fatal accident inquiry's open verdict.
But it is the breakdown in the relationship between the family and the force that he focused on most, the "downward spiral" of the past 10 years. Eventually, the two sides communicated only through the media and bitter exchanges of correspondence. The McLeods wrote 277 letters to Northern in 10 years. Most went unanswered.
Mr Martin said: "It is clear from the tone of the correspondence that use of press coverage by both Northern Constabulary and the McLeod family has had a negative impact on relationships and hampered communications.
"That said, it is disappointing that on occasion the force's response had been to take criticisms in a personal rather than professional manner. Having reviewed how the handling of their complaints has developed, I can well understand the comment the family has made about the high-handed approach of Northern Constabulary. This approach has, in my view, contributed in no small part to the escalation of the situation."
The McLeods didn't escape criticism. They were wrong, Mr Martin said, to visit serving officers at home.
"We don't make any apology for that," the family's spokesman, Allan McLeod, Kevin's uncle, said last night. "We weren't getting any answers from Northern Constabulary so we had to conduct our own investigation."
Several investigations were eventually carried out by Northern or on their behalf. A deputy chief constable retired before he could face disciplinary proceedings. The chief constable of Central Police, Andrew Cameron, made recommendations on how to improve such relationships.
The McLeods only discovered his findings - or most of them - after obtaining his report under the Freedom of Information Act. It took the intervention of the Information Commissioner, Kevin Dunion, to get 70% of the Cameron report into the public domain. The rest remains secret.
The McLeods have been astonishingly persistent - Mr Martin said "their campaign had clearly become an important part of their lives" - and have rarely rested from their efforts to find out what happened to their son.
Their complaint was the first to arrive on Mr Martin's desk, a month before he took up his powers on April 1 this year. Scotland has never had an independent police complaints watchdog before. The McLeod case was always going to be a test of how independent Mr Martin was. He seems to have passed.
Mr Martin has already criticised Strathclyde Police for wrongly holding a 14-year-old in a police cell over a weekend. But he has also dismissed some of the 200 or so cases he has dealt with so far. His investigation into the McLeod matter was described as "thorough" and included trips to meet the family, Mr Latimer and the local police board.
Councillor Norman Macleod, convener of the Northern Joint Police Board, last night said: "We express regret for the distress this has caused and extend our sincere apologies to the McLeod family for this. We will be making an offer to meet with the family where we would seek to answer any outstanding questions they may have and where we will apologise for the manner in which their complaints were handled."
The McLeods were still not happy last night. They believe Mr Latimer should now go.
Allan McLeod said "This case is not just about negligence or incompetence. We believe it is a cover-up at the highest level to avoid embarrassment and to protect the integrity and reputation of Northern Constabulary in relation to what was a murder inquiry.
"If this is the manner in which the Northern Constabulary deals with a grieving family and investigates suspicious deaths they are inexperienced, clueless and not fit for purpose. We will be asking our solicitor to examine the report and digest it. With Andrew Cameron's report and now Jim Martin's, that gives us ammunition to take legal action against Northern Constabulary.
"The best apology we can get is for Mr Latimer to tender his immediate resignation. It has taken 10 years and two reports to get here. Both reports have said he should apologise and he still hasn't. Is he going to take another 10 years before he apologises? I think this man should have his head bowed in total disgrace."
A swift climb up the career ladder
DAVID ROSS, Highland Correspondent
NO-one who remembers Jim Martin from his previous life as a trade union official will be surprised by his alacrity in tackling chief constables' shortcomings.
At the age of just 33, he followed John Pollock as general secretary of the Educational Institute of Scotland, by that time one of Scotland's most important unions. Mr Pollock had been a huge figure in Scottish Labour politics having been twice chairman of the Labour Party in Scotland and chairman of the STUC, and was instrumental in bringing teachers centre-stage in the Labour movement.
Mr Martin, now 53, had been an able lieutenant who earned his spurs during the Scottish teachers' campaign of industrial action between 1984 and 1986 when he displayed his capacity for work, good political instinct and a strategic mind.
A teacher of economics and modern studies, he had joined the staff of the EIS as a field officer. His rise to assistant secretary was dramatic enough but in 1987 Mr Pollock announced his retiral. Mr Martin ignored those who counselled caution on the grounds of youth, and he was elected general secretary.
It could have been a job for life, but eight years later he felt he needed a fresh challenge and made an almost unprecedented jump across the barricades, becoming director of corporate services at Scottish Amicable. He stayed five years before moving on to work for an an IT company in the south of England and North Carolina. On his return to Scotland five years ago he founded his own management and communications consultancy, Causeway Consulting.
He is also non-executive chairman of Logica CMG Scotland, an IT business with 300 employees in Scotland. He is a member of the Scottish Funding Council, and a lifelong Hibernian supporter.
Since becoming Scotland's first commissioner on April 1, he has received around 200 complaints against the police and has already disposed of about half. There is little doubt we will be hearing from him again.
