Chief Constable who was never afraid to speak his mind
IAN OLIVER, who has died aged 82, was a senior police officer who had a controversial career as the chief constable of the Grampian force.
Mr Oliver, who had been Scotland’s youngest chief constable when he took over at Central Scotland aged 39, was fiercely criticised in a report that accused Grampian of incompetence in its handling of an inquiry into the murder of a nine-year-old boy.
The report led to Donald Dewar, the then Scottish secretary, taking the unprecedented step of demanding the resignation of a chief constable. Mr Oliver, said Mr Dewar, should “pack his bags and go. The public, with good reason, expect nothing less.”
Mr Dewar made the call in the wake of a report into Grampian’s handling of the murder of Scott Simpson by a convicted paedophile in 1997. The report exposed what it said were serious flaws in the investigation of the murder and the leadership of the force.
It concluded the force was in apparent disarray, with too much control from the top and too little communication on the ground. But Mr Oliver was severely critical of the report into his force and said there was no evidence of corporate failure.
After the publication of the investigation, Mr Oliver at first refused to go but when a newspaper published photographs of him hugging and kissing a woman in a car park he agreed to take early retirement.
He continued to criticise Mr Dewar, suggesting he had been forced to resign due to accusations and slander. Appointed as the Grampian chief constable in 1990, Mr Oliver had never been afraid to speak his mind. In 1993, he clashed with councillors over his proposals to close 11 rural police stations in the area. Although the councillors rejected part of his proposal, he told them they could retain the houses and stations but they would not be manned.
The following year, as president of the Association of Chief Police Officers of Scotland, he made it clear he rejected government assurances it was not seeking state control of the police.
In 1995, he clashed again with local councillors over his apparent refusal to leave a meeting at which his pay was to be discussed. In February 1996, he attracted controversy once more when he indicated in a newspaper article he was prepared to allow the Grampian force to carry out trials of CS gas sprays without consulting the police board.
The son of a policeman, Ian Oliver was born in Middlesex and raised in west London. His first job was as a trainee company secretary, but he left and began an aircrew attachment with the RAF before joining the Metropolitan Police in 1961 when was 21. In London he met his future wife, Elsie, who comes from Aberdeen, and was then a WPC in the Met.
He rapidly rose through the Met’s ranks. In 1973, he joined Scotland Yard specialising in race and community relations and, in 1977, became superintendent at the Bramshill Police College, Hampshire, before moving to the Northumbria force the same year as a chief superintendent.
Almost a year later, he was appointed assistant chief constable and in 1979 took up his post in Stirling. He was at Central
Scotland for 11 years, during which time he was awarded the Queen’s Police Medal for distinguished service and completed a PHD in public administration at the University of Strathclyde before taking over Grampian’s top job in 1990.
Always a fierce defender of the independence of the police, Mr Oliver did not take kindly to criticism of the way the Scott Simpson case was handled. The report suggested that, despite the admirable actions of individual officers, there was a lack of coordination and an inability to focus on the essentials of the inquiry.
At the time, Mr Dewar also said a particularly unfortunate aspect was the way in which the Simpson family had been treated.
“It is clear from the report that their complaints about the conduct of the inquiry were well founded and they had good cause for being dissatisfied with the police response,” he said. “It is apparent that, despite the efforts of individual officers, their complaints were not fully or properly addressed.”
The chief constable did not go quietly, however, criticising Mr Dewar in a TV interview after his resignation and demanding payment of the legal fees he had incurred trying to keep his job.
After leaving the police in 1998, Mr Oliver worked as an international consultant for the UN and in 2008 was made head of justice and security in the Helmand province of Afghanistan, with a brief to reform the police and justice system.
Outspoken on many issues, he was a critic of the legalisation of drugs. Writing in The Herald in 2013, he said: “The truth is that all drugs are potentially dangerous... The purpose of any effective drug policy should be to lessen the harm illegal drugs do to society. Lowering or eliminating current legal and social restrictions that limit the availability and acceptance of drug use would have the opposite effect.”
Mr Oliver is survived by his wife Elsie and their children, Stephanie Heasman, a dementia link worker, Guy Oliver, an interior designer, and Sir Craig Oliver, who was a press adviser to the former prime minister David Cameron.