POLICE chiefs have strongly rejected a watchdog’s claims that officers made errors in recording crimes because they are incompetent or motivated by something more “sinister”.
Kate Frame, the Police Investigations and Review Commissioner (Pirc), accused officers of failing to refer criminal allegations within their ranks to prosecutors.
She said a case of unlawful detention was wrongly recorded as a “quality of service complaint”, and suggested police incompetence or something more sinister may have contributed to the mistakes.
She said: “I think there may be a combination of factors that have contributed to it – either by way of incompetence or other more sinister aspects.”
However Ms Frame’s office was later forced to retract claims police had recorded an allegation of rape as merely an “incivility” rather than a serious crime. The force said this was “categorically incorrect”.
Speaking to Holyrood's justice committee, Ms Frame said: "Recently, we've seen some evidence of serious criminal allegations which have been inappropriately recorded.
"We have examples of a complaint where someone had been unlawfully detained. That was recorded by the police as a quality of service complaint.
"There is a further example of someone who had been punched twice on the face that was recorded by the police as excessive force rather than assault."
She said she had concerns about the "level of police discretion which continues to allow them to investigate some of their own actions", and said it was “very difficult” to assess how commons mistakes are.
This was echoed by Pirc's head of investigations John McSporran. He told MSPs: "If you cannot examine it, you cannot tell the extent of the problem and, at present, there is no audit of those sort of processes to determine the extent of the problem.”
Assistant chief constable Alan Speirs insisted claims there is no audit of police complaints are “incorrect”.
He said: "Where it is assessed there is an inference of criminality within a complaint about the police, the matter is reported to the Crown Office.
“The assessment of criminality is subjective and undertaken in accordance with the Lord Advocate's Guidelines.
“Police Scotland categorically rejects the assertion made by the Commissioner that any failure to report matters is due to 'sinister aspects'.
"Police Scotland deals with over 6000 complaints annually and all complaints against the police are fully recorded and subject to fair and rigorous investigation.
“Every complainer has a right of recourse in circumstances where they are dissatisfied, and are provided by Police Scotland with details of how to seek further action.”
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 hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel