The Courier & Advertiser (Angus and Dundee)
Referring to Bayoh as black ‘was appropriate’ to coordinate response
One of the officers in charge of coordinating the response to Sheku Bayoh has told the inquiry into his death it was relevant to refer to him as “black”.
Scott Masterton was working in the police control room in Bilston Glen when the first phone calls came in from the public.
A major part of the inquiry will examine whether Mr Bayoh’s race played any part in his death in Kirkcaldy on May 3 2015.
Mr Masterton said as various callers had described Mr Bayoh as “black” or “African” it had allowed him to realise the two separate calls described the same man.
This allowed him to create a single record on the police computer system, known as the storm log.
Asked by counsel to the inquiry Angela Grahame KC whether the descriptions given had made a difference to him, Mr Masterton replied: “Only in that it was a good description to give to the officers to help identify the person.”
He said a single “master job” could be created instead of duplicating the same incident on the system.
“Essentially what we don’t want is more calls coming in and more call takers to be making more jobs – we want all the information on one master job so that I can immediately see any new information that’s coming in that I might need to pass to officers on the ground.”
He said: “(We had) two calls from the same town describing what looked like the same incident – a male armed with a knife.
“Both of them described him – one as an African male, one as a black male.
“It was already a rare and unusual job to get at that time in the morning.
“The chances of us getting two separate incidents with males armed with knives being African or black was unlikely.
“It seemed extremely likely these were both the same jobs.”
Mr Masterton, who retired in 2017 after 30 years, said he had received diversity training – but could not remember the content – prior to moving to the control room, with computer-based updates and tests thereafter.
He said a mapping system designed to show available police resources was not widely used by officers due to being inaccurate.
“I think once a month we were supposed to check it – possibly even once a week.
“We’d get officers to call up to test the system.
“They would call up and say where they were and we’d see if it matched up on the map. It never ever did.
“I’ve had incidents where I haven’t been in contact with officers for a while and I’m starting to possibly get concerned about their safety and I’ll check up on their location.
“All too often I would find them in the middle of the Firth of Forth.
“So there was none of us relied on that system in any way whatsoever to give us an accurate indication of where officers were.”
He added he had to shout to control room call takers to let them know the calls had been linked.
“There was no way to communicate with call takers effectively, other than standing up and shouting across the room.
“So I’m pretty sure I recall standing up and shouting at the top of my voice, because it’s a massive hall and they are right at the other end of the hall – shouting ‘call takers, these jobs that are coming in, the master incident is this job’ and they will start putting any updates on to that job.”