The poisoned chalice of Scotland’s beleaguered national police force is now in the hands of a new chief – and she faces a monumental task.
Jo Farrell takes over as boss at a time when ‘every penny is a prisoner’ and a black hole of nearly £20million threatens yet more financial turmoil.
Since its inception a decade ago, Police Scotland has lurched from one crisis to another, enduring spells of chaotic and incompetent mismanagement.
But the core problem has been chronic under-funding. The SNP created a ‘world-class’ crime-fighting organisation, without the cash to back it up.
Now the force has decided to opt out of investigating all crimes on the basis that it doesn’t have enough officers –manpower has fallen to a 15-year low.
In time-honoured fashion, ministers have buried their heads firmly in the sand. But that’s nothing new, and sadly Ms Farrell will have to get used to it.
She is the fourth chief since 2013, when former justice secretary Kenny MacAskill admitted the single force was seen as a way to save cash.
Sir Stephen House, ex-boss of now-defunct Strathclyde Police, was the first to take charge of Police Scotland. It was a troubled reign that ended in acrimony.
His tenure was defined by two major scandals: the M9 tragedy, when a woman was left dying for three days by the roadside because of police call-handling blunders, and the death in custody of Sheku Bayoh.
Both are subject to ongoing probes – a fatal accident inquiry and a public inquiry, respectively – and the shockwaves forced Sir Stephen out of his job.
Sir Stephen also paid the price for an autocratic leadership style, which earned a thinly veiled rebuke from Nicola Sturgeon.
She said that no chief constable should be a ‘law unto themselves’.
His successor, Phil Gormley, quit Police Scotland in the midst of multiple bullying allegations.
Mr Gormley’s deputy, Sir Iain Livingstone, replaced him and presided over a period of relative calm – until he tarred his own force as institutionally racist and misogynist earlier this year, causing another morale slump among the depleted rank-and-file.
He quit two years before the end of his contract as he warned the service faces ‘unsustainable’ funding pressures, which turned out to be an understatement.
Against this bleak backdrop, Ms Farrell may be wondering whether she will be the latest in a long line of chiefs who became the public face of a brutal cuts agenda, while the ministers who instigated them watched from the sidelines.
She negotiated some tricky situations in her former role as chief of Durham Constabulary, where she was involved in tackling some of the highest-profile cases in Britain.
As a superintendent in Northumbria, she helped lead the hunt for Raoul Moat, who blinded policeman David Rathband during a deadly rampage in July 2010.
Mr Rathband’s family sued the police for negligence and Ms Farrell was criticised for failing to issue an immediate warning to all personnel after Moat called 999 threatening to hunt down police officers.
She was cleared of blame and the civil action failed.
She rose to national prominence during the pandemic when Dominic Cummings, Boris Johnson’s chief adviser at the time, was accused of flouting lockdown rules.
Ms Farrell refused to authorise her officers to question Mr Cummings over his 260-mile trip from London to Durham or a day out to Barnard Castle to ‘test his eyesight’, insisting the force would not take retrospective action despite the apparent breaching of government lockdown rules.
And she was in charge during the ‘Beergate’ row, when Durham Constabulary cleared Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer and his deputy Angela Rayner of breaching lockdown regulations after being pictured drinking beer and eating a takeaway curry with party colleagues.
Ms Farrell said her force was ‘apolitical’, but in Scotland she will find that policing has become a ‘political football’ – the description used by one of its own high-ranking officials, David Baird, who spoke out last month to condemn a lack of ‘organisational will’ to drive public sector reform.
Meanwhile, Police Scotland statistics reveal some 37 per cent of people are ‘not confident’ about raising allegations of crime – up by eight percentage points in the past year.
Top brass admit that detection rates are starting to slide, while non-sexual crimes of violence have risen by more than 14 per cent in the past year.
Dozens more police stations are set to close, and the force is postponing an intake of 200 probationary officers in January.
The force warned, under the temporary leadership of Sir Iain’s deputy Fiona Taylor, that ‘slash and burn’ budget cuts will need to be made before the end of the financial year.
Demanding more cash from the SNP Government for key projects such as body-worn video cameras – standard kit in England, including Durham – will be a pressing priority, as it always was for Sir Iain, with variable results.
Confidence in policing is ebbing away, and it won’t be restored by police unilaterally deciding not to investigate ‘minor’ crimes.
But that’s exactly what will happen in the North-East in an ill-advised pilot project that Ms Farrell should scrap as soon as possible.
Soft-touch Crown Office guidelines allow officers to dish out meaningless Recorded Police Warnings (RPWs) to people caught with hard drugs.
But the new chief should instruct them not to do so, defying the chairman of the Scottish Police Authority, who recently said that RPWs are ‘progressive’. It’s a bizarre practice at a time when drug deaths have spiralled to the highest level in Europe.
Ms Farrell should also challenge some of the woolly, woke orthodoxies which have taken root like knotweed.
She could start by heeding the words of Greater Manchester Police boss Stephen Watson, who said his ‘only interest’ was locking up dangerous criminals to protect the public – a heresy among the handwringers of the criminal justice system.
Getting bobbies back on the beat, or as many as can be found, and reversing the foolish plans to shut stations should be next on the list.
Ms Farrell must also immediately disown her predecessor’s claim that policing is inherently racist and discriminatory – something which sadly it appears she will refuse to do, judging by her comments yesterday.
Brave officers who put their lives on the line every day deserve our praise. They also deserve the full backing of their bosses and the basic kit needed to do their job.
Ms Farrell must stand up to the politicians who talk tough on law and order but rarely back up their rhetoric with action – or risk becoming the latest casualty of yet another SNP experiment in public sector reform which has gone badly wrong.
Source: Daily Mail
