Police have questions to answer.. and quickly
Answers about how officers identified the property are miles short of adequate
Processes are precious to Police Scotland, as they are to every force across the UK. There are many very good reasons for that.
Chief Constable Iain Livingstone should make an exception today and personally apologise to a young mum who says she was the victim of unacceptable treatment from men more resembling a rogue military battalion operating in a war zone than officers from a civilised police force.
Brainless, gutless and completely lacking in compassion. That’s the picture painted of the plain clothes mob which descended on the unsuspecting single mum as she ate dinner at the end of a difficult day.
Of course, the story is her word against the three officers – who have all denied the claims to an internal investigator.
What can be safely said is this – if Mr Livingstone was to sit down face to face and experience the woman’s terror and tears as she recounted the alleged ordeal, he is surely too good a detective to dismiss it as total fabrication.
He would surely also recognise the wider circumstances which caused the woman to be alarmed in the first place.
Th e force had encouraged residents to be extra vigilant because of a group of bogus off icers operating in that area.
Against that backdrop, a raid based on flawed intelligence in which a wholly innocent woman was handcuffed and believed she was under arrest are utterly shocking. An apology for that alone is long overdue before the rest of her claims are properly examined.
This could have been anyone’s address. Answers given by officers about how they identified the woman’s property are miles short of satisfactory and are likely to cause the force difficulty during any resulting court action.
The institutional reaction has not been much better, which is why a report by the watchdog PIRC has been so critical.
That report, published in April, said satisfactory remedies in terms of how the woman’s complaint was handled were expected within two months.
We’re still waiting seven months later. The familiarity of an overdue wait for closure from Scotland’s criminal justice system doesn’t make it any less deplorable.
There should be complete embarrassment in the upper echelons of the force.
They must start with a blank sheet of paper and conduct a proper, thorough investigation around allegations which will appal the vast majority of our highly professional, hard-working officers as well as the Scottish public generally. Starting today.