‘WE DON’T GIVE UP ON ANY CASE .. NO MATTER THE COST’

In yesterday’s Record we told how Scotland is leading the way in learning from the ‘returned’ – those who come back after being missing and make up 99 per cent of all cases. Today, we look at the Scots who have not come home and talk to those leading the

DETECTIVES are hunting for more than 750 “long-term” missing people.

These cases, involving individuals who have been missing for more than 28 days, date back more than 60 years to 1957.

And while science and technology are helping officers trace those who disappear faster than ever before, they say good old-fashioned policing remains vital to cracking some of Scotland’s most complex cases.

Police Scotland’s Operation Logoria database currently houses 764 cases – the vast majority of them on young, single males with no history of going missing.

Thanks to the power of the media, the faces of many of them have become instantly recognisable to us.

Among them are Allan Bryant from Glenrothes, Shaun Ritchie from Strichen, Aberdeenshire, and Duncan Sim of St Andrews, whose disappearances remain a mystery for their families.

The handling of some of the force’s long-term cases has drawn criticism from relatives.

But Chief Inspector Lex Baillie has vowed never to give up on any case – no matter the cost to the force.

He said: “We don’t put a cost on a missing person. We will allocate resources to it accordingly, whether it be the helicopter, the dog branches, electronic investigations.

“Prior to Police Scotland, we had eight forces working on missing people. It’s probably only since 2016 that our data has started to bite and we have got an idea of the numbers involved and what we’re dealing with.

“Of the one per cent that aren’t traced within the first couple of weeks, 87 per cent of those are single males who have never come to our attention before.

“It’s quite common for a young man on a night out to have gone missing. Quite often, they will tragically have come to harm.”

Inspector Gavin Smith, also from the unit, said it is this small category of cases that can be particularly hard to crack, because they offer no clues or explanation.

He said: “What we’ve seen through our figures is that fatal outcomes in missing people is frequently males who haven’t been missing before and don’t appear to have any particularly big life issues with mental health or physical health. They are not considered to be particularly high risk.”

Police Scotland have received 22,968 missing person investigations in the last year – a six per cent rise on the 2016/2017 period. Of those cases, 96 people were found dead.

Almost all of the others are traced but the one per cent who don’t come back are termed “long-term” missing people after 28 days.

In 2014, police began using DNA to pair unidentified body parts found in Scotland with long-term missing people. They now know the remaining body parts on the database do not belong to the nation’s missing. The oldest cases are subject to an annual review on at least every anniversary.

But officers are keen to get the message out that going missing is not a crime – saying some people simply don’t want to be found.

Baillie said: “It consistently surprises you, the things you come across. There is a long-term missing person living in London now under different details.

“You need to tread carefully in these cases and we always respect the rights of missing people.

“These people have a right to do that if they want to be forgotten and there’s nothing criminal in it.

“The Missing People charity are a good buffer when that happens to speak to the family and the person themselves.”

Smith added: “We recently solved a long-term case of a missing woman after a re-investigation found she had moved abroad and married and was living under new details. I think it was a case of the person not being able to cope with life at home and a deliberate break being made.

“From our perspective, it was reassuring there are still cops out there who want to go the extra mile and find out what’s happened to that person.

“You can talk about databases and science and DNA but when it comes down to [solving cases], it’s the cops themselves chapping doors, asking the right questions and doing their jobs properly.”

In many cases, police say they can identify “push and pull factors” which appear to have influenced an individual’s decision to leave. Smith said: “Either something is pushing them away and they don’t want to be there, or something is pulling them away and there’s that attraction making them move from one place to another.

“The Government is keen, as we are, to prevent people from going missing and we’re looking at how we carry out return interviews (when people are found) to try and address the reason why they’re going missing.

“It’s becoming that we’re not good at that. We do a safe-and-well check. But partners and agencies are being trained to have a better relationship when they come back.”

Police came under fire for their

handling of Allan’s disappearance. The 23-year-old vanished after leaving a nightclub in his home town in November 2013.

Last month, his relatives received an apology from officers, who admitted they were wrong to delay releasing images of his last sighting for seven months.

Two weeks ago, the force again apologised after a watchdog found officers did not thoroughly search a garage where the body of missing Bo’ness man Arnold Mouat, 64, was found a month after disappearing in July last year.

The Police Investigations and Review Commissioner ruled it was “highly likely” police would have found Arnold’s body if they had looked over the property thoroughly. The families of missing people whose cases have been covered by the Record have told us they would like to have more contact with police and more frequent reinvestigations into their cases.

Baillie said: “In the case of Allan Bryant, we have apologised for mistakes we made.

“We have tried to keep Allan’s family in the loop and informed on everything that has been going on.

“In other ones, we will put our hands up and say we’ve learned from them and we will share that learning with the 17,000 cops out there to make sure it doesn’t happen again. It’s an emotional crisis for the families of those who have gone missing. It’s a tragic event in their lives. “I understand it’s difficult for families when they see cases like Madeleine McCann. “There is a perception that their investigation may have been ignored when they see a case having all this money and officers flung at it, so it’s difficult for them to understand that. “With our long-term cases, we need to be better at how we deal with families and support them the best we can.”