Posted: Thursday 24 June 2010
Mixed picture for police complaints in Scotland
The enquiries made by the police when investigating complaints must be sufficient to allow a reasonable response to be issued to the person who made the original complaint.
In his latest set of reviews published today (24 June 2010), Scotland's Police Complaints Commissioner Professor John McNeill, found that 16 out of 26 complaints were handled reasonably by the police, but makes four specific recommendations for action to Strathclyde, Tayside and Central Scotland police forces, about the way they handle complaints.
His recommendations range from informing members of the public about what action was taken against an officer under the conduct regulations as a result of their complaint, to apologising to a complainer for not taking a statement from a witness, to providing a complainer with additional information on how the force reached the conclusions it did in respect of a complaint.
Professor McNeill said: "The enquiries made by the police when investigating complaints must be sufficient to allow a reasonable response to be issued to the person who made the original complaint. In this latest set of reviews, this was not always the case.
"Bearing in mind that I am dealing with historical cases, I can only remedy these omissions after the event, but I expect the police to use my reports as a learning tool for how future complaints are handled. That means ensuring that current police procedures are not perpetuating poor practice, once it has been brought to their attention."
In one case, where the Commissioner found that two complaints from a father who had accompanied his adult daughter when providing a statement to police were not handled reasonably, he also identified three procedural learning points for Tayside Police. These concerned record retention and the correct categorisation of complaints when recording the outcome of their investigations.
McNeill again: Complaints data can provide invaluable information to the police, politicians and the public about trends around different types of complaints. That makes the accurate recording and classification and retention of records relating to complaints essential."
Anonymised versions of his reviews which involve Central, Lothian & Borders, Northern, Strathclyde and Tayside police forces are available to the public on the PCCS website.