Watchdog: Who polices the police?

The wrongful arrest and detention of Gary Webb was raised by Scotland’s police watchdog as she called for a review of how complaints against officers are investigated.

In her only press interview, the then Police Investigations and Review Commissioner Kate Frame told The Sunday Post: “There is a discussion to be had about whether the police should investigate themselves.

“I think that, from the public’s position, they would feel an independent investigation would be preferable.”

Ms Frame, who stepped down last year, spoke out amid mounting concern around the rigour of Police Scotland’s internal investigations.

Her interview in June 2018 came after an English chief constable brought in to investigate a spying scandal at Police Scotland said he had found ineptitude, incompetence and reckless decision-making in the force’s Counter Corruption Unit, which was then in charge of internal investigations, but that he had been blocked from pursuing a full investigation.

She refused to discuss individual cases but revealed there had been a number of cases when serious allegations against officers had not been passed to prosecutors in time for an independent probe.

Recently, MSPs voiced concern that a report into an alleged cover-up of potentially-criminal chaos at an undercover unit, which was run by the now-defunct Scottish Crime and Drug Enforcement Agency, was in itself a cover-up.

Without naming him, Ms Frame said Mr Webb’s arrest was one of the most significant complaints her team had ever investigated.

It has been five years since Gary Webb, an entirely innocent man, opened his door to two police officers.

Five years since he was wrongly arrested, mistakenly jailed, and had his life appallingly, unbelievably turned upside down by Scotland’s police and criminal justice system.

There are many unanswered questions around how this shambolic, shameful case of mistaken identity was allowed to unfold but let’s start with just one.

How, in what we like to believe is a modern country of laws and human rights, could a man who, according to his passport, had a completely different name to the suspect, who did not look like the suspect, and who categorically denied being the suspect, be arrested, handcuffed, driven across the country, put in a cell overnight, put in the dock, and sent to jail?

And, if we can squeeze in a supplementary, how, when he is finally freed, can he be given a train ticket home without apology or explanation, complain to the police, and then wait over a year to be told his complaint is a “quality of service” issue and, in any case, has no merit? This, for those who follow this sort of thing, is quite the surprise because Police Scotland love to tell us how they welcome scrutiny.

Only last month Gill Imery, HM Chief Inspector of Constabulary, was telling MSPs how chief constable Iain Livingstone urged her to bring some more scrutiny to bear because there was such a paucity of scrutiny. Senior officers, according to Ms Imery, herself a former senior officer, were apparently completely gutted about the whole lack of scrutiny thing. Honestly, it would take a heart of stone not to laugh.

How Police Scotland officers handled Mr Webb’s arrest and detention might have been appalling but how their force handled his complaint is a straightforward disgrace. Perhaps it was more cock-up than conspiracy but it is easy to understand why Mr Webb, his lawyers, Kate Frame, the former Police Investigations and Review Commissioner, and MSPs suspect that if it wasn’t a cover-up then it was sitting in the cell next door to a cover-up.

If arresting the entirely wrong man, a completely innocent man with no criminal record, and having him thrown behind bars for four nights is a “quality of service” issue, the mind boggles at what might constitute a serious howler for Scotland’s national force.

After five long years, Police Scotland, or their insurers, or taxpayers (one way or another), may have paid more than £100,000 to Mr Webb and might finally have offered an apology but that can only be the end of the beginning.

There are many questions to be answered, much to be made clear, by the force, by the Crown Office and by the politicians responsible for Scotland’s justice system. No doubt we will get into the platitudes later; how this must never be allowed to happen again and all that.

But right now? We deserve to know, in great and forensic detail, how this could ever have happened at all.

If it wasn’t a cover-up, it was in the cell next door