A grieving mum who was told by police they had her son in the back of their van despite him passing away 15 months earlier has hit out, saying officers’ apology did not go far enough.
Tracy Hadlow lost her son Nathan to an accidental drug overdose in April last year but was left reeling when officers came to her door in the middle of the night saying they had picked him up.
Distraught Tracy made a complaint about the incident but said she feels let down by the response
from the police. In a statement, a police spokesperson said an apology had been made to Tracy “in person” but she said she only received a call from a woman from the Fettes complaints department.
Tracy, from Livingston, said: “Nobody came to me in person. I only got a call from Fettes complaints. It wasn’t the officers who came to my door. She just said there was nothing they could really say, except apologise.
“I didn’t know what to say. I just said ‘is that it?’ and she said if I wanted the inspector could speak to the officers concerned, but you’d think they would have done that anyway.”
Tracy, an NHS clinical support worker, also said she was concerned when the police admitted they had incorrect details on their system and wants an assurance they won’t turn up at her door again.
She said the mistake on July 3 took her right back to when police came to her home last year to tell her 20-year-old Nathan had died.
She continued: “I felt awful going to the door. It was 3.45am and it brought me back to that night when they woke me up to tell me about Nathan.
“When they said it was the police I just froze and thought why are they here again, and then I started to panic thinking something had happened to my daughter.
“I had to hold on to the wall because I thought they were coming to tell me something had happened to her.
“When they then told me they had my son, I felt awful and just started shaking. It just brought it all back.”
Tracy said after telling the officers they had made a mistake, they didn’t make any attempt to apologise.
She continued: “I just told them, my son died and they never seemed to respond, to acknowledge the fact he died.
“They just asked if I was sure I didn’t know the person in the van.
“When I asked how they got it wrong, they said they’d looked it up on the system, it had been wrong. It hadn’t been the guy in the back of the van. He was completely intoxicated.
“Nathan was well known to the police, so you’d think they wouldn’t make this mistake.”
Tracy had fought tooth and nail to get support for her son to break his addiction and says there is simply not enough help out their for addicts and their families.
And she said newly-released figures showing the scale of the drugs problem show “lessons are not being learned” in the fight against addiction.
A Police Scotland spokesperson said: “While dealing with a concern for a person incident, officers attended an incorrect address on Harburn Avenue, Livingston, at 4am on Sunday, July 3, 2022. We acknowledge the upset this caused to the householder and officers have apologised in person.”
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