Police Scotland is “overwhelmed” by the “appalling” demands made on officers by failing mental health services and a court system that requires complete reform, according to its chief constable, Jo Farrell.
The first woman to lead Police Scotland, the UK’s second largest force, Farrell took command of the national service last October.
She inherited an organisation under pressure: falling officer numbers, a stressed and demoralised workforce, under-reporting of misogyny and racism within the ranks, and public outcry over police station closures. Since then she has faced specific challenges such as the continuing investigation into Scottish National party finances, Operation Branchform, and most recently the implementation of the Scottish government’s controversial Hate Crime Act.
Now Farrell has hit back, challenging other agencies to “step up” and allow officers to focus on core policing.
“If somebody’s threatening themselves or a danger to other people, that’s absolutely where the police should be,” said Farrell. “But we are babysitting people who are not criminals, they don’t meet the threshold to be sectioned under the Mental Health Act but we feel the need to wrap around them because there’s nobody else.”
“When people say ‘Why aren’t you doing that better or more of that and why haven’t we got a community officer here?’ this is some of the reason.”
A number of English forces, including the Met, have deliberately stepped back from attending mental health calls.
Farrell says she has met chief executives of local authorities across Scotland to press her point, and goes on to highlight court appearances as another major drain on police time.
According to Farrell, only 15% of those who attend actually give evidence that day, with the rest re-cited to court at a later date. She estimates that Police Scotland spent £3m of overtime last year on court appearances, while a third of officers go to court on a rest day or annual leave day, affecting their work-life balance.
The problem went “system-wide” said Farrell. “We’ve got a prison population that’s tipped over 8,000 [close to full capacity], we’ve got a disproportionately high number of people on remand. That says this is a system that is not working efficiently or effectively.”
NEWThe implementation of the Hate Crime Act saw officers flooded with more than 7,000 online complaints in the first week of April, only 3.8% of which were found to be legitimate, just as figures showed the number of officers had fallen to its lowest level since 2008.
But Farrell insisted it had not damaged public trust as critics predicted.
“I’ve been hugely impressed with the way in which officers and staff dealt with the high level of demand in those early weeks,” she said, adding that – with 124 online reports last week – “we’re probably at the new norm”.
“What we have seen is increases in the number of crimes against some of those new protected characteristics” – this is particularly the case for disability hate crime – “which was the purpose of the legislation”.
When he stepped down last summer, Farrell’s predecessor Sir Iain Livingstone defended the length of the Branchform inquiry and rejected claims of political motivation.
Given the investigation remains live, all Farrell would do was reiterate the operational independence of her force, and add: “We will be submitting our report to the crown in relation to the individual who’s been charged and we’ll be doing that in a matter of weeks.”
It is not the first time Farrell has had oversight of an investigation into prominent political figures. In her previous role as chief constable of Durham she led the “Beergate” inquiry into the Labour leader, Keir Starmer, and also drew criticism for not questioning Dominic Cummings for his breach of lockdown rules.
She would not be drawn on what lessons from Durham she might apply to Branchform but said: “Broader than that, I’ve been in policing for over three decades. Inevitably there are lots of opinions around it, but we are objective and we follow the evidence.”
Farrell was speaking to the media on Friday, as it emerged that a former Police Scotland officer, Gemma MacRae, who was sexually assaulted by a colleague and complained about bullying and misogyny at a Moray station, had accepted a payout from the force of £431,968.
MacRae made her initial complaint in 2018 but how much had changed? Farrell said she was “optimistic” that people were now more confident in reporting misconduct by colleagues, but said she was “not in any doubt there’s work to be done”.
Farrell also suggested that her attempts to focus resources on areas of growing crime such as cyberfraud and online child abuse had been “weaponised by some” after criticism of the “proportionate response” model which means that police do not investigate every minor crime.
“Whether it was misunderstood deliberately or not – these are people like you and me who want a crime number because they were silly enough to leave their phone on a table in a pub. Where people are vulnerable, where they’ve been the repeat victim of crime, or they simply say to us, ‘I really need to see somebody,’ we will respond.”
