Police Scotland doesn't even log the sex of suspects properly

The Herald Scotland

10-06-2025

And whilst there are far fewer of them on the roads, a vehicle fleet in which hardly an engine gets the chance to go cold from one end of the day to the next is also likely to have the odd metal-on-metal encounter with others. Paying out for such things is to be expected.
If that were the end of it, I suspect the vast majority of us would shrug our shoulders and take a pragmatic view that there wasn't really much to see here. But as with so many things in policing, that is a long way short of the whole story — and the service's approach to dealing with these incidents, and the inevitable questions the payments invite, points to something altogether more concerning.
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Our police service has wholeheartedly embraced a sackcloth-and-ashes approach to institutional failings of misogyny, racism, and sexism. Our Chief Constable was barely a few hours into the job when she told us all she agreed with her predecessor — who himself had had a Damascene conversion on this just before he retired.
Indeed, such was the speed with which Jo Farrell was able to weigh up the evidence for herself that you have to wonder how it took so long for the Branchform inquiry into the SNP finances to come to a close.
On top of that, the service is never shy to remind us how it fails the LGB and TQIA+ community, and has apologised for upholding the law as it now seeks to incorporate as many rainbows as possible into life as penance for its past misdeeds.
Self-evidently, these kinds of pronouncements grab headlines and create a feeding frenzy of manufactured outrage, as well as cottage industries, pledges, and even more corporate jargon that allows a feeling of righteousness to wash over those at the top. New posters on walls, mandatory re-education for "wrong-think", and countless meetings to give the impression of action — all add to the necessary cleansing, and most crucially of all, serve to distract from the one true failing in the police: that of institutional dishonesty.
Informed by the maxim of never asking a question you don't already know the answer to, I recently FOI'd our national service to ask how many policies, procedures, and guidance documents had been changed since Iain Livingstone told us this was where many of the institutional failures lay.
Many of the claims made against the service are filed by its own officers, says Calum Steel, a former leader of the Scottish Police Federation (Image: free) Whilst I'm still in the FOI war of attrition awaiting the outcome of an appeal to get the service to properly respond, I already know the answer is none.
In fact, the best one deputy chief constable can muster as evidence to support the institutional punishment-beating being meted out is that the resuscitation dummies used to practise first aid skills are all white! Now, that would be funny enough if it were true — but it's hilarious because it is not.
The desperation to manufacture evidence to support the claims, and the corporate industry it now sustains, has been there from the get-go. The very day Iain Livingstone rang the bell and shouted "unclean", the service's own equality advisor was in front of the cameras declaring that the data held by the service proved there was a disparity in the service provided to some sections of the community. Cue another FOI to reveal that there was, in fact, no data — but by that time the seeds had been sown and the damage done.
Police station closures are met with fantastical claims of improving officer morale and service to the public, while cutting the number of road policing officers is packaged as delivering intelligence-led patrols on targeted routes — even though road deaths are increasing.
The shocking state of police morale and ever-increasing sickness rates are body-swerved with pledges that well-being is prioritised, despite HMICS investigations 'finding no recognition or reference to areas of significant stress in any of the work being undertaken in relation to well-being.'
And best of all, the decline in the quality of recruits to the service is sold as evidence of a steadfast commitment to standards — despite one in five now failing vetting, against a historic position of one in fifty.
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You'd like to believe that such a casual relationship with the truth would have some serious consequences for the service, or at least raise the curiosity of its oversight body— but so ingrained is this institutional duplicity that it passes entirely without comment.
It is against this backdrop that we have to look at the compensation numbers and ask why it is that the service doesn't give even broad details of what the payments were for. After costing the public purse some £18 million, a smidgen of openness shouldn't be demanded — it should be automatic.
The hard truth is, many of the claims made against the service are made by its own officers. If made public, they would point to a service which treats its own people deplorably and is never held to account for doing so — such is the consequence of the confidentiality clauses which accompany nearly all settlements.
This is what lies behind the endemic confusion within the service on how to deal with issues of sex and gender, which allows the Chief Constable to say one thing while allowing her officers to do the opposite. It is an abdication of leadership and serves only one purpose: the continuing prioritisation of feelings over facts.
Calum Steele is a former General Secretary of the Scottish Police Federation, and former general secretary of the International Council of Police Representative Associations. He remains an advisor to both