POLICE’S JOB IS TO PROTECT US, NOT STAGE LAME PR STUNTS
16 Sunday Mail This has not been a good week for Police Scotland.
Though to be fair, that sentence could have been written on most days since the troubled national force’s formation in 2013.
It is dogged by chaos at the Bilston Glen cal l handl ing centre and under investigation by watchdogs, other forces and inspectorates over a string of alleged failures. And its second most senior officer, Iain Livingstone, quit last week.
The reasons for his decision may become more apparent in the coming months.
There are murmurings of a power vacuum at the top of an organisation which appears at times to be directionless and barely fit for purpose.
Of course the force, like most in Britain, is peopled by talented, motivated officers who simply want the time, resources and space to get on with doing the best job possible.
At the top of the tree, however, a very different and disturbing picture is continuing to emerge.
It is of an increasingly paranoid and authoritarian management whose priority doesn’t appear to be to give the country the best law and order.
Instead, its key obsession is to control the message, stymie the flow of information about faults and failings.
There is also an unhealthy fixation with meaningless PR victories through police work, many of which backfire because of a lack of understanding of public perception and a complete unwillingness to listen to criticisms.
Revelations that off icers have been told to declare contacts with pol iticians and journal ists are nothing short of sinister.
It beggars belief that this should happen at a force which unlawfully accessed journalists’ phone records in a misguided mole hunt following the Sunday Mail story about a forgotten suspect in the Emma Caldwell murder inquiry. Sadly, it is not the only example of an organisation abjectly failing to learn lessons. Last week, a ser ies of shor tcomings were highlighted in the failure to respond to reports expressing concern about the welfare of a vulnerable man.
Andrew Bow, 37, was found dead at his Edinburgh f lat in March last year – a week after police had first been contacted. His family believe his life would not have been lost if the response had been quicker. That alone would be bad enough. But the fact that Andrew died less than a year after the deaths of John Yuill and Lamara Bell, following a failure to respond to reports of a road
A response featuring 12 cars and two police vans, members of the mounted division cantering across the sands.
And the staged presentation of seized bottles of drink from the 6000 mostly young people who had gone to the seaside to enjoy a rare day of sunshine.
Those photos were no doubt inspired by PR images of huge cocaine seizures by balaclava-wearing drug enforcement detectives in South America.
Unfortunately, by contrast, they looked toe-curlingly embarrassing.
Scratch beneath the surface of
Tuesday’s events, and the fawning coverage afforded the police by some media outlets, and you find worrying elements.
The number of arrests among this crowd of 6000 were, according to Police Scotland’s own official spokesman, “more than 10”.
All but two were for the catch- all breach of the peace offence, which gives officers here greater scope to arrest than many foreign counterparts.
We’ll see how many result in serious convictions.
Most of the young people pictured on the sands looked compus mentis and just happy to have a day out. Some were playing football. Others, on seeing the police horses, went to pet them.
One image of two girls in fashionable swimwear being huckled by four constables is a little puzzling at best.
A single image never tells the full story but the girls involved don’t look dressed for a day of premeditated criminal behaviour.
The public should be concerned that a national police force, criticised for a failure to respond to serious incidents which resulted in death, appears to have its priorities wrong.
The prospect of some easy headlines will not have discouraged what appears to have been an over-the-top reaction.
Stunts designed to garner positive attention on social media come straight from the same playbook. They belong in the dustbin.
Scots want a serious police force led by people of intelligence and vigour, sure of its direction and ready to respond to serious crime.