Police have the answers to ease a family’s grief. The silence is shameful
Every parent in Scotland fears the sudden, shattering grief inflicted upon Brian and Karen Calder. Thankfully, most will never have to endure it.
To lose a son – a smart, handsome, popular 23-year-old son – to such a needless, pointless death seems unbearable. To suspect he might still be alive, if only police officers had kept him in their care a little longer, is unthinkable.
Terrible accidents happen. Every Saturday night, young people drink a little too much and make stupid decisions and, while most make it home, some do not.
Tragically, Scott Calder was one of them but the terrible suspicion gnawing at his bereft parents, family and friends is that he need not have been.
He was clearly at risk and vulnerable in the hours before his death. That was plain to the people who came into contact with him, from the stewards to the concerned onlooker who called the police about the young man walking in the middle of a busy, pitch-black road.
Only the officers, who picked him up and drove him three miles down the road before, they say, dropping him at a bus stop, were apparently oblivious to the risks. Whatever assessment they did, whatever conclusion they came to, it was clearly wrong; terribly, fatally wrong.
That is bad enough but the failure of Police Scotland to meaningfully engage with the Calders since their son’s death is just as questionable. After our story last week revealed how Scott had been in the care of police before his death, senior officers could have met his parents, opened the file, explained what happened, delivered the facts as they understood them, and tried to explain why their officers did what they did.
Instead of that, in place of the transparency we hear so much about, they did nothing and said less, referring this shattered family to the Crown Office for reasons that no-one, certainly no-one in the Crown Office, could explain.
Meanwhile, Pirc, the watchdog whose only purpose is to hold officers to account, quickly agreed with Police Scotland that, yes, they had acted appropriately. The basis for this decision, the inquiries that led to it, and the evidence that justified it, also remain a mystery to Scott’s family. That is untenable. It cannot stand.
Whatever happened that night, we know there was an opportunity for police officers to throw a protective arm around a young man who was at risk of harm. Instead, they let him wander off to his death.
If that is not a decision for Pirc to scrutinise with the greatest possible rigour then it is hard to imagine what is.
So, yes, every parent in Scotland will be thankful they are not enduring the Calders’ heartache.
And every one of them will be asking why Police Scotland and Pirc have done so little to ease it.