Report - Police Scotland - PIRC/00619/24
The Complaints
The complaints in this case arose after the applicant and her husband made reports to the police about alleged criminality on the part of their neighbour.
We have reviewed the handling of twelve complaints, namely that:
The applicant finds it difficult to comprehend that the police advised her neighbour to film any interactions with her and her husband, when the applicant’s neighbour had previously been charged with stalking her.
The applicant is dissatisfied that a named Sergeant advised her that the ‘bar’ for Police Scotland taking action was higher, and so incidents such as those included in a previous charge against her neighbour would no longer justify police attention.
The applicant is unhappy that incidents were viewed and judged in isolation and not as a course of conduct despite this being identified to Police Scotland at the time.
The applicant was informed that an incident she reported to the police, when her neighbour followed her and appeared in front of her, was not a crime, without being given an opportunity to describe what happened.
An officer did not link the above incident to similar previous incidents.
An officer bluntly advised the applicant that previous incidents had been dealt with.
An officer phoned the applicant’s friend at an inconvenient time when the applicant’s friend found it difficult to hear and felt uncomfortable discussing the matter in a public place.
An officer did not obtain a statement from the applicant’s friend who was present during and after the above incident.
The applicant is unhappy with a Sergeant’s statement that ‘everyone is filming everyone’ in response to the incidents she was reporting.
The applicant did not receive a response as promised from a Sergeant following a meeting on 4 April 2023, and had to send two chaser emails before a response was received from him on 29 May 2023, which did not refer to any of the incidents being followed up by him.
The applicant is unhappy with the content of the email response from the Sergeant, which she believes generalised incidents as a ‘neighbour dispute’ and did not include any information about, or responses to, the issues raised at a previous meeting, and
The applicant received a verbal response from the police, in which she was advised that her neighbour would not engage in any form of amnesty unless she agreed to stop using her bathroom extractor fan, and that her neighbour would continue to film her for his own ‘protection’. The applicant is unhappy that the police accepted this as a reasonable response from her neighbour and that they communicated it to her as a reasonable response.
Police Scotland's Decision
Police Scotland did not uphold any of the applicant’s complaints.
Our Findings
We have found that Police Scotland handled complaints 1, 2, 3, 6, 7, 8 and 9 to a reasonable standard, but not so complaints 4, 5, 10, 11 and 12.
Consequently, we have made four recommendations to address the shortcomings in Police Scotland’s handling of the complaints. In summary, we have recommended that Police Scotland records complaints 5 and 6, and complaints 7 and 8, as separate complaints about the police. Thereafter, Police Scotland should re-assess the available information on complaint 5 and provide the applicant with a further response to this complaint. We have also recommended that Police Scotland conducts any necessary and proportionate further enquiries and provides the applicant with a further response to complaint 11.
Our recommendations should be completed by Police Scotland within two months of the date of this report.
Police Bodies: Police Scotland