By Professor John Robertson OBA
I know, Operation Branchform is a disgrace but, to be fair, when the security services tell the chief of police what to do, they have to do it.
Today, the widely-read international policing journal, Policing Insight, has:
A record number of police forces in England and Wales have been put into special measures (formally known as ‘Engage’) over the past three years – but what does Engage mean, and how do forces move out of it? Policing Insight’s James Sweetland spoke to HM Chief Inspector of Constabulary Andy Cooke, as well as two Chief Constables who have led their forces out of special measures – Staffordshire’s Chris Noble and Wiltshire’s Catherine Roper
From the Guardian, in September 2024:
At one point, six out of 43 local forces in England and Wales were in special measures. There are now three: Devon and Cornwall and Nottinghamshire police as well as the largest force in the country, the Metropolitan police. The Met has been in special measures for more than two years. Senior police sources say there are concerns that two more forces may be placed in Engage.
Police Scotland has never been in special measures, quite the opposite.
Since the merger of Scotland’s eight regional police forces into a national single force in 2013, Police Scotland have made considerable progress in the development of a modern, successful, and forward-thinking Police Service. These achievements have largely been overlooked by the Scottish media and have seen little media coverage as Scotland’s TV and press which has focused on a small number of high-profile failures.
So, what is the good news about Police Scotland? There is more than you might anticipate.
Starting in 2019, a Police Scotland survey found increasing confidence levels with 82% reporting it to be high or very high, up from 81% in the previous year [i]. The survey attracted little or no media coverage. In the same year, the use of tasers in England and Wales was revealed to be nearly three time as common, per head of population, than in Scotland [ii] [iii] yet the Daily Record presented the Scottish data as negative because they did not use the comparative data from England & Wales.
In a related 2020 report, Police Scotland were able to say that they had never tasered a child in the seven years of their existence yet data from England revealed 25 such incidents in 2013 alone [iv] [v].
In their handling of law and order during the pandemic, Police Scotland were shown to have been more sensitive, issuing fines for lockdown laws at half the level of England & Wales [vi] [vii]. Also in July of 2020, Dr Marsha Scott of Scottish Woman’s Aid praised Police Scotland officers for their sensitive handling of women at risk during the pandemic. She noted on BBC Scotland Nine:
“And one of the big things that we found on the helpline was that a really big part of the calls in the initial part of lock-down was just information about, if women decided to leave and could leave, would the police tell them that they had to go back. I mean we heard some stories from England that that might have been the case. And I want to give lots of credit to the Scottish police. That was certainly never the message up here.” [viii]
On lockdown policing, John Scott QC, speaking in June 2020, to the independent committee scrutinising the way the police have implemented lockdown told MSPs:
“I’ve been in touch with colleagues in the human rights field in other countries and it appears that Scotland is ahead of the game here in terms of having a human-rights-based scrutiny of these emergency powers. I’ve spoken to colleagues in England and Northern Ireland and now moving further afield as well. So, I think it’s an extremely healthy sign that the initiative for this group came from within Police Scotland.”
In October 2021, in the wake of the Sarah Everard case and the Metropolitan Police’s, at best, heavy-handed policing of a vigil in her memory, Police Scotland acted quickly to reassure the public with a new verification check for lone police officers. Members of the public in Scotland can now request a control room check [ix].
Finally, in October/November 2021, Police Scotland handled the 40,000 attending the COP26 conference with good humour and self-discipline, resulting in only 97 arrests which resulted in widespread recognition and praise from Police Services throughout the world.
[i] https://www.scotland.police.uk/assets/pdf/138327/232757/554719/management-info-report-q1-2019-20
[ii] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-50862398
[iii] https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/taser-use-scots-cops-up-14043452
[iv] https://www.scotland.police.uk/assets/pdf/434027/599268/599276/20-0236-response?view=Standard
[v] http://www.crae.org.uk/news/increase-in-use-of-tasers-on-children/
[vi] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-52674192?xtor=AL-72-%5Bpartner%5D-%5Bbbc.news.twitter%5D-%5Bheadline%5D-%5Bnews%5D-%5Bbizdev%5D-%5Bisapi%5D&at_custom4=394EF570-96AD-11EA-95ED-FDC34744363C&at_custom1=%5Bpost+type%5D&at_campaign=64&at_medium=custom7&at_custom2=twitter&at_custom3=%40BBCNews
[vii] https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/18373135.coronavirus-police-scotland-issued-500-fines-will-not-patrol-shopping-baskets/
[viii] https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000l6gt/the-nine-23072020
[ix] https://www.scotland.police.uk/what-s-happening/news/2021/october/lone-police-officers-to-offer-verification-check-to-members-of-the-public/#:~:text=of%20the%20public-,Lone%20police%20officers%20to%20offer%20verification%20check%20to%20members%20of,genuine%20police%20officer%20working%20alone
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Talking-up Scotland 'Albatraz' 
I will never criticise the police because they do an enormously difficult job , at times, dealing with the worst in our society , every society has their worst , the extreme, violent people who will torture and kill .Yes you get individuals n the police force who break the rules but the service as a whole protects us from a lot, there would be violent mayhem without the police.Well done to them i say and thank you for the protection and peace of mind you allow us to have.
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I do not wholly agree with this comment.
The police have a difficult job, but I would not say it is ‘enormously’ so. On the whole, they do their job pretty well. However, as an elderly, white, male, homeowner, my experience might be different from other groups in society.
However, I have not always been elderly and a homeowner. I was born and brought up in Anderston in Glasgow during the late 1940s until the early 1970s. Glasgow was a different place then. Poverty in some places was very high. Much of the housing was dire and the peripheral estates lacked amenities. Social disorder was common, crimes against the person were high and there was a fair amount of housebreaking and theft. Some parts of the city felt unsafe places to go to.
While poverty is still unacceptably high and homelessness is a serious problem, the kinds of crime that I mentioned earlier have decreased markedly. I feel safe walking in any part of the city at any time. The monthly police reports for our area given by the police to our community council indicate about 20 reported crimes per month and few of these are crimes against the person or of personal property.
I think that, on the whole, people are behaving better and more considerately towards others.
There is crime and violence, but, to a large extent it is drugs related and much of the violence is between rival drugs dealers. There is financial crime, but, much of that is ‘white collar crime’ and more could be deemed crime had the money launderers of the City of London, not got compliant lawyers and politicians to create legal ‘loopholes’, to make much fraud ‘perfectly legal’.
The police are under-resourced in dealing with such crime – and that is a wilful decision by Westminster. Policing in sparsely populated areas needs enhancing to deal with the issues in small towns and villages caused by ‘county lines gangs’, whom BBC Scotland continually ignores.
The media create the impression of ‘unsafe streets’ to divert attention from the financial plundering that goes on by sections of the financial classes.
Alasdair Macdonald.
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Hm, but they can be nasty jobsworths as well, they don’t always do their job well in my experience. I have a neighbour who was taken (no choice!) to a police station having been searched outside her flat, (first they kicked her dog pushed her into her flat) and all because of false claims by someone who hates her dogs, released later no chanrges obviously, had no offer of representation. I’d say is a bit vulnerable and single female, no proof about the bad treatment from those jobsworths, disgusting.
They can take anyone for ‘questioning’ without a reason given and without legal respresentation and they do that it seems, maybe they were bored!
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Hi John
Are you going to publish on Blue sky…I think you should.
Regards Julie Gegan.
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