Another blow for our crisis-hit police force

WHEN news spread that dementia sufferer Janet McKay was wandering lost – perhaps searching for her childhood home – the public responded. Those in the Clydebank area kept an eye out while those further afield felt a pang of sympathy for the 88-year-old.

No one can say for sure what might have happened had police dealt correctly with a tip that Mrs McKay had been spotted.

What is certain is that the potentially life- saving information was not passed on to the relevant officers and that the pensioner was later found dead.

The case has chilling echoes of the disastrous M9 crash. There, a call to police about a car having left the road was not handled properly, condemning Lamara Bell to three days in the wreckage next to her dead boyfriend – an ordeal she did not, ultimately, survive.

It is clear Police Scotland is a deeply flawed force with systemic problems. Embarrassingly, Home Secretary Theresa May has used the force as an example of why she should resist siren calls to integrate English regional forces.

The roots of Police Scotland’s difficulties extend back to before its creation, when Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill held sway. He brushed aside fears that his haste to create a single f orce was dangerous. He was so in thrall to Chief Constable Sir Stephen House that he even kept the deployment of armed officers on routine call- outs from both Holyrood and the public.

Sir Stephen has finally bowed to public pressure to quit but for now is still in post, a lame duck leader about to leave his force rudderless.

The need for a Justice Secretary capable of steadying the ship and driving reform could not be clearer.

But while Mr MacAskill has mercifully slipped back into the obscurity of the Holyrood back-benches from which he was so i nexplicably plucked, his replacement is rapidly proving a dud.

Michael Matheson’s response to the McKay case yesterday did nothing to prop up the public’s collapsing faith in Police Scotland or in him as he refused repeatedly to take personal responsibility. His key point – that her family deserve a ‘thorough and timely investigation’ – was jaw-droppingly obvious. But what Mr Matheson seems unable to grasp is that he needs to take command and set the agenda, to stop – as he is now – reacting to events while bouncing from one crisis to the next like a cork in a storm-tossed sea.