Charity: Six years to prosecute police over M9 crash? Extraordinary, appalling, unacceptable
A charity has questioned why it took six years for Police Scotland to be prosecuted for systemic failures that led to the death of a young woman left undiscovered in a crashed car for days.
Chief Constable Iain Livingstone apologised last week after admitting failures in a call-handling system in 2015. At the time, an officer was said to have failed to log the first call reporting the crash and Livingstone’s predecessor, Stephen House, apologised for the “individual failure”.
However, deborah Coles, director of Inquest, a Uk-wide charity which investigates and campaigns on state-related deaths, said: “The delay in dealing with this case has been appalling, extraordinary and unacceptable. We know how delay impacts on the grieving process for the families involved and also on proper public scrutiny, which is required to identify learning needed so this doesn’t happen again.”
It took officers three days to attend the crash on the M9 after a Strlingshire farmer raised the alarm about a car in a ditch. When police finally arrived the driver John Yuill was dead and his girlfriend Lamara Bell was conscious next to him but gravely injured. She died in hospital a week later, on July 12, 2015. It is believed she could have survived if rescued earlier. Last week, Police Scotland admitted “corporate criminal liability” and was fined £100,000.
Coles said: “A guilty plea, while welcome, also means there is still no public opportunity to scrutinise the failings.”
The force and the Crown Office have faced accusations of “slow justice” in a number of high-profile cases including those involving the deaths of Emma Caldwell and Sheku Bayoh. Coles said: “Excessive delays are all too apparent after contentious deaths involving the state in Scotland, and there is clearly a systemic problem which must be addressed.”
Graeme Pearson, a former MSP and police officer who led the Scottish Crime and Drug Enforcement Agency, said senior officers could have been far franker, far sooner.
Pearson believes, after the tragedy, senior officers will have tried to limit reputational damage. He said: “A whole group of executives will have been sitting, coming up with a
position, and that position would not necessarily have been about acknowledging shortcomings.” Pearson also criticised the force for failing to heed warnings about centralising control rooms after the merger of regional forces into one national force.
Police Scotland said the force has fully cooperated with every inquiry into the tragedy and pointed out all 38 recommendations made by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary in Scotland to improve call handling have been implemented.
The force added: “Timing of a prosecution is a matter for the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service. Police Scotland has cooperated fully throughout this process.”