Police chiefs recalled to parliament over armed policing

Police chiefs will be recalled to parliament to answer further questions after revealing armed officers have responded to routine incidents such as drink driving.
 
Senior officers from Police Scotland yesterday told the parliament’s sub-committee on policing that armed officers have been involved in over 1,600 routine issues since a change in policy five months ago.
 
Holyrood has learned the two senior officers – deputy chief constable Iain Livingstone and assistant chief constable Bernie Higgins – have been asked to appear before MSPs again in two weeks time to provide further evidence.
 
Witnesses from the Scottish Police Authority and Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary for Scotland have also been invited back for a second evidence session on March 19 given yesterday's was curtailed to an hour.
 
Senior officers took the decision last October to no longer deploy armed police officers to routine incidents, instead directing that those attached to armed response vehicles (ARVs) only be sent to firearms incidents or where there is a ‘threat to life’.
 
Though only five occasions have arisen in the five months since whereby ARVs have been deployed on routine duties, Higgins confirmed such officers had “involved themselves in 1,644 instances where they have proactively engaged with members of the public” over the same time period.
 
“That will include charging people for offences such as dangerous driving, drink driving and other such like offences,” Higgins told MSPs.
 
“In terms of how many times they have assisted divisional officers or come across where there hasn’t been a police report at the end of it - they have turned up to assist with a missing persons search [for example] - I don’t have the particular stats to hand.”
 
Higgins said the number of instances had dropped from over 30,000 in the first year of Police Scotland going live, though committee member Alison McInnes said previous assurances from the force had been “given the lie by these figures”.
 
“It is another example of us not being given the full facts,” said the Scottish Lib Dem justice spokesperson. “We’ve been given an assurance by Police Scotland that this was not happening and it clearly is happening. Whether it is on a reduced scale or not, it is still happening.”
 
Higgins said that the force’s message had “consistently” been that ARVs would deal with firearms operations and instances of threat to life while using professional judgement over anything else that they come across.
 
“On 1,644 times they have come across instances where their professional judgment has determined that they should take action,” he added. “I would say that we haven’t hidden that fact and that’s what we’ve consistently said since October.”
 
The final report of a working group launched to review how sidearms and tasers are carried – whether on show or concealed – as well as use of ARV officers when not deployed to firearm incidents, will be provided to the SPA later this month.
 
A standing firearms authority in place within three legacy force areas – Strathclyde, Tayside and Northern – ahead of the single service being created was rolled out nationally on April 1 2013.
 
However, Police Scotland faced sustained pressure to review the decision amid concerns over officers carrying out normal policing duties while still armed.
 
“Police Scotland, things may have changed and probably have because of the stooshie, was pretty cavalier and dismissive of the SPA and the SPA doesn’t seem to have known what it ought to have been doing in terms of scrutiny and accountability,” said sub-committee convener Christine Grahame.
 
The SNP MSP said members were now seeking a “much more robust” SPA and a “much more communicative” Police Scotland.
 
“The SPA was not actually on the ball and not insisting that when things came ahead, big decisions like this, that they were in there at the beginning,” she added.