 I welcome to the 14th meeting of the Criminal Justice Committee in 2024. We have apologies this morning from Pauline McNeill and Sharon Dowie is joining us online. Today, we are beginning our stage 1 evidence taking on the Police, Ethics, Conduct and Scrutinay Scotland Bill. Before I begin, I wish to declare that I was a former police officer for Grampian Police and Police Scotland. Can I invite any other members to declare any interests that they have? I spoke with Stephanie Bonner and Bill Johnson, one of the other witnesses today, and with Magdalene Robertson. Thank you very much indeed. I do not know if there are any other members who wish to make a declaration. I welcome to the meeting, Ms Stephanie Bonner and our refer members, to papers 1-4. It is vitally important that we hear the views of those who have personal experience of the police complaint system. The committee is very interested to hear your perspective on what is being proposed in the bill. I intend to allow around about 45 minutes for this evidence session. I wonder just by way of opening things up, if I can perhaps ask you a question, Stephanie. It is a fairly simple one. Can I ask what you think should be changed about the police complaint system based on your own experience? I wish to make a short statement to help the committee before taking questions. Indeed, I hope that this statement will cover some of your questions. I want to explain how difficult it can be to make a serious complaint against Police Scotland. In my case, it took over six months from the discovery of my son's body to actually making a formal complaint against the police. My first form, my 19-year-old son, Ruth Bonner, was discovered on 8 August 2019. A formal complaint was made against Police Scotland on 6 March 2020. During this period, Police Scotland took me on a journey and I experienced many of their tactics first handed. I can only describe this journey as a herish memory go round of distractions, deceit, deception and manipulation. I hope that I would overcome my grief and simply go away. Ruth's body was discovered on a Thursday 8 August 2019. The police closed their investigation on Monday 12 August 2019. That is four days later, or one full working day later, but they never told me this. They read me on and on and on. Every time I mentioned making a complaint, they would stall me or distract me and, at one point, they sent female officers out to try and connect me to befriend me and groom me. That is the type of tactics that do not leave a clear trail of evidence. When I asked Mr O'Kane to represent me in February 2020, Police Scotland refused to put a mandate in place for him. They told him in writing that the investigation was still on, despite it being closed six months earlier. In my case, it was not that easy for me to even start the complaints process. It makes me wonder how many other grieving families have experienced the same obstructions and manipulation and are prevented from making complaints. I know of other parents who have simply been overwhelmed by grief and have had no strength to engage with the police, complaints process whilst I am the voice of my son. I am determined to give other parents and other families voices too. What does it feel like to make a serious complaint against Police Scotland? Some of you may have watched the TV series Mr Bates versus the Priest's Office. One man's battle against a whos organisation. One man's battle to uncover the tooth. My representative, Mr O'Kane, has used this type of compassion. He calls my journey Mrs Boner versus Police Scotland. Make no mistake, Police Scotland was hell bent in making my life difficult. They did it once. Complaints made. They did it once me to have a representation as they know it was easier to manipulate a grieving mother. Indeed, this month, part got held too. Complaints I made. One was regarding the Priest continually contacting me whilst being specifically told not to. The other was regarding the Priest sending a March Priest fan to Mr O'Kane's home with a number of uniformed officers simply to deliver a letter, which we acknowledged and emailed as he sent. That was part of a course of action to try to intimidate me and my representative. At one point in time, Police officers put hands on me and gave me a written warning to try and stop my campaigning for justice for my son. In other words, I was threatened with the force of the law in an attempt to silence me from raising genuine concerns. Five of those concerns, including fairings to properly investigate the death of my son, have been upheld by park review. After the initial manipulation, misinformation, deceit and grooming failed and an official complaint was made on my behalf, Mr O'Kane and I then encountered Police Scotland's war of sirens, as they closed ranks to protect each other. It is a culture that you may have read or heard about in the media over the years, but if you have experienced it, you will feel how cold and calculated it is. I made two complaints that were interlinked. The first complaint was made in March 2020, the second complaint that was made in 2022, but put on hold by Police Scotland and Park. Due to similar points, it has taken over four years to exhaust the police and park his police process. It has taken over four long and painful years just to prove that my son's death was not properly investigated by Police Scotland. Potentially vital evidence was lost forever and I will never know what happened to my son. I will never know with certainty why my son's body was discovered due to two different sets of coordinates held by Police Scotland and conflicting accounts and fidual footage that I secured from local people. Police Scotland has put me through a prolonged and unnecessary nightmare and I have lost all faith in them and their complaint process. Police Scotland has repeatedly given quotes to the media suggesting that they are working closely with me, communicating with me and supporting me. That was painful to read, as it could not be further from the truth. I wanted justice for my son. These people have asked me what justice looks like. I am looking at justice right now. I am looking at the Justice Committee and the changes that they might bring to policing. Police Scotland has to be reformed and I am relieved that the Justice Committee has taken on that task. Thank you for such comprehensive opening remarks. That sets the scene for us very helpfully and very openly. I can ask you about how important having a representative support you through your journey has been to you. Slightly straying off the provisions of the bill, but that was a very important aspect of your journey. I wonder if you can outline a little bit more about how important it was to have that by your side. More than the world. My voice, he says, I am the voice. Alex O'Cain is my voice. He is my son's voice. He is made me. I might shed tears from every day I cried a wall and a full wall of tears, but that man and his wife have made me so proud to hold my head high and they have just made me so strong. They said, I was the voice of my mind. That was happening. That really did come through loud and clear in your opening remarks. Before I bring in other members, one of the other things I would like to touch on is delays and the timescales that you have experienced since your son was discovered. I am sorry, I will get my stuff there. That is my on-you-go. I am not at all. I want to ask you a little bit about how difficult those timescales have been for you and what should we be considering when we are looking at the bill about how that aspect to a police inquiry or review can be improved? I did not answer that one. I just gave it to myself and it was not done. I will do the first one again, please, if you do not mind. Yes, that is fine. What do you think should be changed about a priest's complaint system being so new and experienced? You never asked me that one. It was just about Alex O'Cain wanting it, so I was a bit of a guard right. My second one is to priest Scotland, the best part of a year to investigate one complaint, then it took part, the best part of the next year to review the complaint. It was clear that Perk did not have access to all the information, then he did, and they repeatedly had to contact the priests specific documents. Perk were clearly deraid by the situation and were dependent on the priests in terms of timescales. This left me waiting and prolonged my pain and distress. Priest Scotland did not want to engage with me as soon as I had made a formal complaint, so I could not ask other relevant questions about my son's death as I faced a war of silence. That left me unable to lay flowers at the location where my son's body was discovered. I still do not know with certainty where my son's body was discovered, as Priest Scotland told two different sets of coordinates. He eventually said one set was a mistake, so I do not know what to breathe now. I have been left traumatised by this and I have lost all faith in Priest Scotland. Thank you Stephanie, thanks very much. I am going to bring in other members to ask questions now. I am going to bring in Fulton MacGregor to start off. Fulton MacGregor, thank you very much for what was a very powerful testimony. I am bringing in your sons in your case to the Justice Committee. I have got just a very small question. It is not actually one that would have been on at the sheet handed out to you, so I hope that it is okay to ask, but it is about the issue that you have raised about the legal representation and how you felt that the police pushed back in that, which somewhat surprised me when I heard that. Do you think that perhaps something that this bill could do or even look at, or do you think that it would be helpful if, when somebody is at the start of a complaint process like that, the police actually sit down and actually advise you to get legal advice? I will answer that. It is vital to remember that the priests are being asked to investigate themselves, so unlike when they are asked to investigate criminals, they are investigating some of their own, so there will be a lack of willingness. I do not believe that there is any way to avoid this whilst the priests are being asked to investigate themselves, so the sooner perk on other more independent and objective bodies become involved the better. The head of complaints from is problematic as it is asked to surmise a lengthy complaint into a small box. The categorisation of complaint is confusing as members of the public might not understand if the complaint has been correctly categorised. The time of the priests takes to investigate a complaint has to be reasonable. The time perk takes is often dependent on the files made available to them by the priests. In my case, perk had to repeatedly ask police officers for more documents, and that takes more time. It has taken me over four years to have to enter the complaints investigated and reviewed by perk. Yes, there is a group of Scotland that does not give you nothing to work with at all. Do you think that it would have been helpful for you and perhaps others in a similar situation if at that very early stage police officers or people within the police were actually advising you to get legal advice? I have never been shown any empathy, no compassion, no nothing, so I have just never had experience of anything from them like that, but it would be great if it could be like that for other families in the future. I have never got that and I have never met any other family like that. My fun has just been in the circumstances. Rona Mackay. It is a quick question. Before you had to put in a complaint, which you clearly had to do, would a single point of contact for you have been helpful after your son's body was discovered? Pardon? You had a single point of contact, in other words, you know... The same purpose that I owe you, definitely, with all the time. Aha, you get a wee bit of faith in them and things and you get to know them and it makes you comfortable, definitely, especially having wee kids in that as well, because I don't... The police officers or the depicted ones came in and they were there. I was scared for my kids. Yeah, exactly. Was there a difference in police attitude after you took the complaint out to before that? I mean, I know from what you're saying that there was very pure communication even before that and that's why you ended up coming to it. But did you find it got more close? Yes, she was missmissing. The police officers that came in just to ask you for forties and different things and maybe they were all lovely, so they were so compassionate at the start and I feel as if when the other ones were coming in and things, that's when I was getting scared and I was scared. I said, like, could you do it from point of things and you're talking about resources and I didn't know what that means, and I'm saying it to my partner who's that, meaning about money, I mean, oh please, put money into my boy, like, get a helicopter sniffer box, things. Which you shouldn't have had to do. Yeah, and you wouldn't do it. Yeah, okay. I beg, I beg, I beg, okay. Thanks, computer. Okay, thank you. And Kezia Clark? Yes, thank you. Thank you, Stephanie, for being so bravest to come along. To date it must be incredibly difficult and from what you've said to Rona, it sounds as if you didn't have a single point of contact, you had quite a number of individuals that you had to deal with and that clearly is quite a major issue. But one of the issues that we were wanting to ask you about was the duty of candor, because one of the things in this bill is to put in a duty of candor. Do you feel there was candor from the police in your situation? Do you feel that would make a difference? Can you put questions up? Its question, I don't know if you have it, is 22. I'm not sure how it's numbered for you, but it's more, I think probably the question 5, but it's more whether you feel there was sort of openness on the police when you were, you know, so in terms of your experience you didn't feel. Yes. No, sadly I don't think a creation of duty of candor requirement will be enough. You are asking police officers who stand shoulder to shoulder with each other and may literally protect each other's backs in dangerous situations. To be truthful and cooperative, which could lead their colleagues being disciplined and punished, they protect each other every working day, so they are most likely going to protect each other in these types of situations. Perhaps, given evidence under oath with a perjury-type system in place, might make officers more willing to cooperate. There has to be consequences in place if they don't cooperate or they are proven to be untriffable. If police officers are held more accountable, they may be in public confidence might increase. Thank you. It looks as if you've done a lot of preparation for today. Would you be happy to share maybe whatever, you know, anything in writing that you've prepared with us if we haven't already got that? Would you be happy? Yes, I've just prepared the answers to the questions. Yes, that would be really helpful if you could maybe afterwards let us have that. I was getting mixed up there, so obviously I have just died. So that's number five, am I right? Yes, but it's quite clear that you feel that there wasn't that candor or honesty. Oh no, definitely 100 per cent. Aha, aha. Thank you very much. I wonder if I can just ask you a question about Perk, Stephanie, number 23. I wonder if you could tell us what you think about the introduction of a legal requirement for Police Scotland and the Scottish Police Authority to respond to recommendations that are made by Perk after they've handled a review, after they've dealt with a review. So do you have a thought on that at all? Yes, absolutely. Question six. Question six, is that it? I've got a number next up. Question six. What do you think? Question six. What do you think? This question is six. Don't worry if you don't have that to hand easily. I think that this could be helpful. This may require Police Scotland and the SPA to look closer at Perk review findings and recommendations. Okay, that's very helpful. Can I bring in any other members at all, Russell Finlay? Do you want to come in? Thank you. Hi, Stephanie Hydan. I want to pay tribute to you for coming in here today. I think that none of us can really truly imagine what you've been through. And it's admirable that you want to do this in order to help other families going forward. If it's okay, don't worry too much about the numbered questions. I'd just quite like to ask a general question to start with, on what this experience has done, both in respect of your faith in policing and indeed all the supporters that you have here today, their faith in policing. It's just, there's nothing if there's no faith. You could do that, sorry, since that again. Can that, do you think that can be repaired? Yes, yes. I think that in the future, as things put in place and things, it could be repaired and hopefully other families will be able to, in the future, like, no go through this and it could be. When we spoke in 2020, I was working at SDV News at the time and one of the issues that you raised at that point was that initial catastrophic mistakes made by the police may have been due to what was deemed to be postcode policing. And assumptions were made and at that point, having made their decisions, there was no going back from that. There's no going back. And then when you attempted to get answers, you effectively had to conduct your own investigation, which the percolator established to be the case. But I suppose that all of this was compounded by the complaints process, which is what we are looking at today. So could you just explain the tactics? Or you've already done so, but we've got delays, we've got the mischaracterisation of heads of complaint, we've got attempts to put pressure on you. I mean, how would you summarise the entire complaints process? What did it do to you and how does it make you feel? Just if I never had my represented, it's okay. And it's just to sign to break you, it's absolutely to sign to break you. As it's a very hard, hard, hard complaint system. Because they've got the resources and the arguments and they know the system. Happy fate, I think CIS professional standards department, that C there, that went a big, that was really a big farce. And that was a horrible experience. So it was especially that the professional standards department right at the start, that was awful. Because making a complaint as a member of the public about something that's happened is one thing, but you're a grieving mother and you're complaining about something that's absolutely unimaginable to most people. And there was no real compassion apart from at the outset where the officers came to you and were respectful and helpful. But after that, it just became, I think the phrase you used was, a hellish merry-go-round, that seems to sum it up. It's just I'm getting mixed up by the numbers. Don't worry about the numbers, it's just about how you feel, just remembering some of what happened, you know. I couldn't believe that this was your police Scotland and I'm begging for help and I just, I couldn't believe it. It's just lost all faith, I've lost all faith and I don't think it could be restored by this point. We don't expect you to know what this bill does. We don't yet know, we've not really looked at it properly. But I'm assuming you would agree that in general terms, we need to pass a law that changes the police complaints process. Yeah, that's absolutely necessary. That's why you're here. Yeah, that's a major factor. Thank you very much. I say that, sorry, this would, yes, this would absolutely, this would have saved a number of months of the stress and suffering. In my case, it was clear that Perth had to go to the police Scotland and police Scotland to be going at their own pace. So this is a vital option. This is one of the most important suggestions, in my opinion. Thank you. Okay, John Swinney. Thank you very much, Gavir, and good morning. Steffi, thank you very much for coming in today and for the courage you've demonstrated in facing up to these circumstances, which we're truly sorry about. One of the points you just made to Russell Finlay a moment ago was you said that you were essentially having to work against the system and you were pleading for help from the police. Now, that strikes me as being entirely the wrong place for you to be as a mother who was searching for your son. I'm worried about that. So I wonder if you could just say to us a little bit more about how you felt about how the police were acting towards you when you began to raise your concerns about how they had handled your case? I just had a wee baby in the way that we came in at my house. Sorry, but they made me a bullet through his vest. I'm absolutely not a wee mummy and I've never been involved with the police in my entire life in my boy. Everybody says that boy is good, you know, but my boy wasn't involved with any trouble yet. I drove right up neighbours. They scared me. They very scared me in asking, if you're looking for my son, you do it. And when my partner was saying some things, I was saying, oh, I've got to know, say that, because what if they don't look for vise? So you're scared to kind of speak up because they, I felt sick, right, to be a baby. So I was, they did, they came out and the radio was going through and he's why he's saying, what do you want for dinner? Something like that, I heard. So I stood up and I had to go on the toilet and they went, sit down. I went, I can't please, can I, and they were telling me to sit down so I sat down with the baby and I was holding my baby. And I felt scared them on house and timid they did. Just, oh, my wee boy's out there, 19. And I tell you what, one day they came and says, sorry if we can't go and look for vise today. And for two days, I said, oh please, it's a lovely day. And they went, there's a football thing's happening and we need all the police officers to go to this place. So I said, if it can make them talk to me, they can go and look for my baby for two days. And the, the short space he was missing. It's hard to find the situation. Thank you for sharing that with us. The point you make there highlights to me that in that short period of time between Rhesco missing and his body being discovered that the police made mistakes. Is that fair? Oh, these slots. And then from that, do you think your experience of the complaints process, which you've made it very clear to us, it was a terrible experience of the complaints process, do you think your experience was bad because the police could not face up to the fact that they had mishandled the initial investigation? That's what I think, yes, I think, yes, I think, 1,500 per cent. What does, so what would your message be to us about what it is we've got to fix here? Because it sounds like what you're saying to us is that, and you know, we're all human, we make mistakes. So the police will make mistakes, we all make mistakes. Oh, I understand things like that, but mistakes like that can't be done next. I've been a politician for years, I made mistakes, I got some things wrong. But what's important is about just being open. Oh, that, oh, definitely. I, to come and say, what a judge, I, be built in things at the start and say, we've done this wrong at the very start, you're so sorry, you're going to rectify this right now at the very start when we found out things or whatever, but they knew for the start it was wrong, I believe. So that was, so that was not your experience of what happened here, that the police did not say to you, Luke, we've got this wrong? Oh, never, never, I've never, no, never. We still don't apologise, they say they won't apologise to me, to my representative, because it's been over the timescale of the complaints, so they won't give me an apology. I've already said that to my representative, I've got that from Perk. So I thought that, see when I, see when I've done that, I was, oh, God, put my insides or tongue, when I did this, we didn't even apologise. It's horrible. Thank you very much, thank you. Thank you, thank you. Hey, thanks very much. Okay, just, I know this is extremely hard for you, Stephanie, so just take your time and we can easily suspend the meeting for a couple of moments if we need to, so that's absolutely fine. Can I maybe just come in and pick up from the point that John Swinney's just covered, and I wonder if I can ask you a wee bit about what you think Police Scotland maybe needs to be thinking about changing in terms of the way they respond, but particularly to incidents whereby someone dies in unexplained circumstances, as was the case with your son tragically. So what do they need to be thinking about in terms of how they can improve the way that they respond to that? Every unexplained death should be put down when your loved one is missing like that, it should just be put down as a suspicious straight away. Right. I think that it should be done as suspicious. Is that the right question? You asked me that. I know that that makes sense, but thank you for that. Instead of honest. And I wonder, just on that then, that's a helpful response. And one of the things in my mind on that is perhaps the role of some sort of family liaison support or a family liaison officer. Do you have any views on that, the benefit of that, or is that something that you were offered? No, I was never offered that, no, and I think that would make a big, big difference, because I had to sit in and wait, and my son was missing for the 15 days, and I got a phone call every second day at 10 o'clock at night, and that was only my contact with Police Scotland, and that was my wee phone calls at that time, and that was nothing. Okay, okay, thank you. I'm just looking round the room to see if there are any other questions that any members want to ask. And if not, I wonder if I can maybe just draw the session to a close, Stephanie, and just ask if there's anything else that we haven't covered this morning about the bill or the police complaint system. The database? That you think it's important that the committee should know about it. Any final thoughts? I think about the database. I absolutely agree that PURC should be given access to Police Scotland's complaint database. This would have made a great difference for the better in my case. I don't see this causing any negative issues for the public or the complainer. I suspect that the police might be more guarded with what they put on the database if they know PURC can access it, but I think that this is really important recommendation. Okay, thank you very much. So I'm going to bring this session to a close. Thank you so much, Stephanie, for joining us this morning. I think what you've shared with us has been extremely valuable for the committee to hear. And thank you to your support in the public gallery. That's most appreciated. So we'll just have a short suspension and that will allow us to have a change of witnesses. Thank you very much members. So we'll now move on. And I would like to welcome Mr Bill Johnson to the meeting. Good morning, Bill. So thank you for taking the time to attend today's meeting. We're very grateful for you doing so. It's very much appreciated. And thank you for kindly providing background information about your experience. So I intend to allow around 45 minutes for this session, but before we get under way, I'm just going to turn to Russell Finlay. I believe you'd like to declare an interest. Yes, it's just to declare a more full interest than I initially did in that I've known Bill Johnson for many years and I've written a book about his case, which is titled, Fitted Up. And I think it's probably proper that I let others ask the majority of questions and I may come in, but yeah, thank you. Perfect, thank you very much. So I thought if I may, I'll just open up with a fairly general question if I may about the police complaint system. So I wonder what you think about or what you think should be changed about the police complaint system as it stands at the moment, but based on your own experience? First of all, thank you for allowing me to come up here to give my experience to the committee. And I'd like to say that the lady who's just left, I could recognise every single item that she mentioned in her statement. Everything that she stated is exactly and worse than what she stated. To answer your question, I would date in two parts. The first part is dead straight and that is I would change everything. The reason for that is because in my long experience in the military, I've seen this in-house investigation carry on going on for many years with the police in Northern Ireland and in the military. And it is by definition not fit for purpose. It is fatally flawed right from the outset because when politicians expect police officers to do the job that they do, which is really difficult, everybody accepts that, right? It's the same in military. A bond becomes there, right, that civilians don't really maybe understand. You're an ex-police officer yourself, right? So, depending on the level of complaint, the system was designed 90 per cent on trust and 5 per cent on naivety. Because if you think that police officers, even in the most basic complaint, will sit down and decide that they're going to maybe ruin their pal's career. And I say that's pal because the system is so flawed that even for a normal complaint, something that they would think wasn't that serious. In my case, I went along to a police station who was the officer's concern. It was dead serious at the time. There was a fire. There was virtually no investigation, right? My initial complaint about the CID officers who were there at the spot is that they'd basically done nothing. So, I was invited to go to the same police station that his officers were dispatched from to speak to their DI. So, I was dealing with almost entirely with the CID. They knew nothing about my background at the time and I didn't mention it. To me it wasn't relevant. So, when I was doing there, I was speaking to their detective inspector, the two detective constables involved. And he took a kind of brief statement. At that point, these things didn't exist. This was 2009. So, I'm sitting there and the DI detective inspector takes a statement, right? He's their direct superior officer. So, that makes him an interested party. Because the outcome of the complaint, and it was quite serious at that point, the outcome of the complaint would most definitely affect him as their line officer. Because it goes down to his management and everything else, right? So, if he's going to be saying, yeah, that was ridiculous, he didn't investigate that, he didn't bother about the foot of the fire, he didn't interview any of the witnesses whose names you gave, right? You'll recognise us as a nice police officer. When they've done nothing and he's sitting there, he can do two things. He can be absolutely candid that the lady was saying there was none of that, right? And there wasn't any. And he could say, okay, we'll deal with these two guys, they'll be whatever's going to happen. And within that process, but it's not a criminal allegation you're making, right? In the event, he sent me a letter that was just absolute nonsense, right? And saying you can go to professional standards. Now, the problem with professional standards, is professional standards is manned by the same guys that they used to be pals with when they were serving cops, or they're still cops. I've seen all this nonsense with the RUC Northern Ireland and the date and with the army, and that's because the in-house investigation thing I couldn't believe was still going on in Scotland. But when the letter came and I went to professional standards, they only go by what they get from the police. You don't see what they get, ever. So you go to professional standards, add on it through my solicitor, but what made my case so serious in the beginning was rather than going to professional standards alone, the chief of the CID at that time was a lady called Anne Maguire. She was the senior officer in charge of the CID in Scotland. So I went directly to Anne Maguire, and then the whole system went completely against me. But the lady was saying that she must have complained, it was made and it became serious. The complainer became the victim of Police Scotland. Can I just draw you back to the question about what you spoke about earlier on and you've teased out in your response is around that bond, that camaraderie, perhaps culture within Police Scotland. So again, just thinking about the provisions in the bill and the bill being an opportunity to address some of these issues that you've described. In your view, what are the key things that Police Scotland needs to think about in terms of how that bond and the implications of it, if you like, can be addressed? You've heard it right in the head, convener, right? You can't remove that bond from police officers or firemen or soldiers or anybody else who work in that type of environment. It's naive to think that you can say to them, look, you can't do this, what you need today, what you need to do, it just didn't happen, right? So you've got to remove, this may sound quite harsh, but the only way to sort this, to have any chance that you're going to have a complaint system where you don't end up with that lady there, I mean, I was 10 years in this system, 11 years actually, right? In the public interest in Scotland, for all the people in Scotland, you have got to remove the police from the system in the first stages of the complaint because the environment is, right, the first initial officer who's dealing with it, then you've got a culture there where you've, a self-investigation is a situation where it can only breed corruption. That's an environment where it's going to thrive, right? So there is no way that you can change the system where you're going to make police officers decide, you know what, I'm just going to ruin you, right? You may even be going to the jail and guess what, see because I covered up to the beginning, maybe I'm coming with you, that is not going to happen. So there's nothing you can do to change that system, except remove the police from the initial stages entirely and somebody else must deal with it and you've got to wheel round that. Okay, thank you. You spoke about, you said just a moment ago that this was 10 years of your life. So it's obviously one of the issues that we're very aware of is the extraordinarily long timescales that some people experience. Do you think, in terms of the bills, again coming back to what the bill contains, do you think that it does enough to address the issue of lengthy timescales that people are experiencing and how do you think that that should be changed? The way to change is see it in the initial complaint. I'll use the example of Perk, for instance. When you first go to Perk, there's a short time period when you've got to respond to you. It's something like 30 days. So Perk will come back to you and they'll say, right, we've got your complaint and this is your response. We are waiting for the documents from the police. Now, therein lies the problem because depending on what documents and evidence, documentary evidence or whatever that the police cherry pick that they're going to send to Perk and depending on how long they want to play out before it gets to Perk, leaves it open-ended. Here's the first example of Perk when I first went to Perk. It was two years when I made my complaint that involved Perk before they came back to me. And when I seen the heads of complaint, the heads of complaint were absolutely ridiculous compared to what the complaint was. For instance, I was allocated a false criminal record and it was done by way of alias. Right? I don't know what that means, right? I've actually got a copy of the record here, but that's... You'll know this better than anybody. The criminal history system, you've got the SID, you've got the CHS, which is the actual system and you've got the general criminal history system that is in one big sphere, right? To allocate somebody a criminal record by way of alias, it's a conscious act. There is but one way it can be done. You've got to go into the system. You've got to find somebody who is more or less close enough to whoever it is that you're looking at. Similar date of birth, close enough in age, high and everything else, right? And you've got to make an entry within the CHS, a marker that links that person to that criminal history, right? The Scottish criminal history system. I can see that you recognise that convener, what I'm saying there, right? Now, to do that the only way that is possible is for somebody to sit down, a police officer can only do this, not a civilian, not a member of staff, right? They've got to sit down and they've got to consciously go in there and they've got to link you by marker and it may be a small bit of intelligence as an alias used by this criminal. So, when I was speaking to police officers about the 28 crimes that was reported, the crimes were death threats, fire raising, vehicles being set in fire, vehicles being destroyed, 28 crimes, not a single detection on any of these crimes, four instances of CCTV footage, never recovered. So, that record, when I found you out by that and actually got a copy of the record when I was charged by the police, I realised that's why the police's focus during this whole three years was on me and not the perpetrator of these crimes, because the criminal record, as my counsel put it, was amongst one of the worst criminal records he'd ever came across. So, I think what you're saying from that is that these actions, if you like, contributed to the lengthy timescales that you experienced. Well, Perk and the police, right? I personally see Perk as another line of defence for the police, and I'll give you a very, very good instance shortly, right? Perk are an organisation where, in theory, they can hold the police to account. The police are control of all the documents and all the timescale. At that point, Perk is open-ended. If you made a timescale, will they say that they've got to conclude, say, within six months, for talk and say, right? And that the police were forced to produce the documents within that period. That would not mean that the police wouldn't be cherry-picking with the assent to Perk, because the most important thing is that the complainer has never allowed access to what has been sent to Perk. And if you ask for it, no chance. Okay. Thank you for that. I know that other members would like to come in, and we've got a little bit of a limited time. So I'm just going to open it up and ask if any other members would like to come in. Rona Mackay. Thank you, convener. Good morning, Mr Johnson. Thanks very much for coming in to talk to us. It's just going back to some of your, you know, you're talking about the Perk and some of your previous comments that I'm understanding now that you don't think Perk is independent enough to do the scrutiny on the policing that the complete system should be outside of that. I'm going to give you a really good, strong example shortly for that. Right. Just so you think somebody entirely independent, entirely independent board, should be investigating complaints. And also, was there any mention at any time of the Scottish Police Authority during the long time you've been involved? No, I was dealing with fairly senior officers, detective, chief inspectors, people at that rate. And when my allegations changed from serious allegations about what they like to call service, a service complaint, like for instance, when I found out about the false record and said, this is Malice, I was sitting doing me a DCI in Helen Street, and at that point in the game, he knew that I understood the system very well. It hadn't changed. One of the units within the army that I worked with, we had full access to the criminal history system across the UK. So I understood the system and so you do, basically. He realised at that point that I understood how this criminal record could have came around. And it became completely impossible at that point for my complaint to go any further. He shut it down. The perk thing is like just a ring of defence from the police. You're always interested in this perk situation, right? I'm going to give you an example here, which covers that completely. Now, this here is a copy of the police complaint system. Right? That's the process. Now, one of the most important parts of this, I'll just read this line, it's just one line, right? To your right. It's, if the allegation lodged is of a criminal nature, the force cannot resolve, and this is the important part, or attempt to resolve the complaint. Right? Now that's, that's in the complaints process. Unfortunately, it's usurped by the police's operational procedures. This is what you've got to look at, because there's a paragraph in there that says, if the allegation is a criminal allegation, the contradiction to that statement, which is in here, is in there, where the paragraph says, if the complaint is criminal nature, I did, an inspector must report, can report to the Crown, which is what they're saying, or he can report to professional standards, so his professional standards can assess the allegation. I'm not finished, right? So, in my case, this letter here was sent to Chief Constable Livingston, who's just retired. On that letter there, which I saw it doing with council and done, there was 18 police officers on this list. The hash drunken officer was a Detective Chief Inspector. Nine of the complaints were perverting the course of justice, preventing evidence being available, right? Now, everybody knows that's a crime, that's a common law crime, right? Correct? Now, that gets sent to the Chief Constable. The Chief Constable goes straight back to the DCI, who's atop of the list owning this complaint, for him to deal with the complaint. So, what he does is he gets an SI, a superintendent, to send me this letter. And in this letter here, she says, we have sent your complaint to professional standards, right? Blah, blah, blah. And they have confirmed that the allegations you have raised do not amount to criminality. And unless you are prepared to accept your complaint being non-criminal in nature, we will abandon your complaint. Now, before I done this here, I'd spent three years building this case against these police officers. Why? Because we had the disclosure during the trial that I was on with the police and acquitted unanimously. Now, she says to me, but you can go to Perk. So, I went to Perk. And Perk came back and Perk said, let's keep bearing with the resigning to you. After 10 months, Perk came back and said, just give the resigning to you, because I definitely haven't hear a brother with me, it is, I'll tell you what it was because I've no brother with me. Perk came back and said, we can't deal with your complaint, Mr Johnston, because the allegations are criminal in nature. We'll just take that in for a minute, right? Now, when Perk do that, what they are supposed to do in the SOPs, Perk had the authority to deal with that, right? To deal with what they've got to send it to the Crown, or they've got to go back to the police and say, we've responded to this complaint and you will deal with us as criminal. Now, at that point, the letter from Perk, the lady says to me, I've had to go to my senior review officer. She had to go to her senior review officer to decide if preventing the course of justice was a criminal allegation. Now, I would imagine it would take 10 minutes for somebody to figure that one out, right? That's a criminal allegation, right? Not 10 months. The 10 months was taken in by me continuously, emailing and phoning this review officer and getting panned off all the way down the line. So, do you think they were hoping that you would just give up and say that I'm not waiting any longer? Or, you know... This became so serious, right? That when I was asked to go and speak to Dame Elyse Angiolini about this case, right? Dame Elyse was shocked, and she won't mind me saying this, she was shocked that I had not been put in front of the fiscal years before. She looked at the paperwork that Shah showed her and she looked across to the other lawyers that was there. And her actual words were, while we are doing this, because the officers involved in this, when it started off, is it being covered up and then becoming criminal? Get back to what the convener was asking about the loyalty of officers, right? When this became criminal, what you were talking about here was just about half of the CID officers in Glasgow. When I was in trial, there was 28 police officers, Russell was there in the court, right? There was 28 police officers, CID officers, bar 1, uniformed officer, was called by my council and the police officers who had charged me were actual four of the officers who were subject to the complaint before I was charged. Four see it that night that I got attacked by the guy in the knife after the death threats, right? I phoned the police, the police came, put me in the back of the van, right? I looked at the windy and I see two of the CID officers who were part of my complaint, a detective sergeant and a detective inspector for Mary Hill. Talk to the uniformed officers. I know it's very difficult not to refer to your own experience but I wonder if I can maybe just move you on because there's quite a number of other questions that we would like to ask an officer. Because in this case it may be probably take two years to go over. I'm sure it would. I'm sure it would. Are you finished? Okay, thank you. So in that case I'll bring in John Swinney. Thanks. Mr Johnson, you raised an important issue about which you're actually, Stephanie Bonner also raised with us in the earlier evidence session that essentially that there is a necessity or it appears as a necessity for the initial investigation of complaints about police conduct to be handled by a body outside of Police Scotland. Is that your reflection on your experience? I think you've got to have something like an ombudsman type thing, right? Who are out with the whole criminal justice system. Do you think, does Perk meet your expectations? Absolutely not. Absolutely not, okay? In the two occasions that I went to Perk, there were very, very serious allegations, one of them was a criminal one, but Perk obviously agreed that the police, for these officers to put their neck in the line and writing to say these allegations are not criminal allegations. No, no, no, false statements on crime reports. That's going to carry on. This is all serious, serious stuff, right? For these police officers. Plus all the documented evidence that my lawyers and I had got during disclosure, during the trial, right? So Perk in my view, and it's not just my view, I noticed I read through your bill, right? I noticed in your bill, especially the section 13 of the bill, I think it was right. Ar gyfwun oedd y cysylltu, ti'n dweud i gweithio ddim yn ystod y perch yn ddechrau'r ddweud. Felly mae'n cael ei ddae, ydych chi'n i'n eistedd o'r gweld i'r ddweud o'r ddechrau? Mae'n gwrdd o'r chrwng. Mae'n gweithio'r ddae. Felly, nes rydych chi hun yw'n astudio'n bryd, i ddarlingi'r'r gwestiynau i nhw'n gwovech i gweithio'r mewn y gallu'r bwysig ac ychydig yn ymddangos gyda Llywodraeth yw'r cyffredin. Rhaid? Reitio'n gweithio'r wych o gwyddoedd. �esntwyddau yn bwysig yn gweithi'r gwestiynau. Yn gyfysig gion, dwi'n gwybod ddaeth sydd yn ond dim ngonflaenwyr, ac mae'r bdod yn gwybod mewn gwybod ddaeth silaidd. Felly, mae efallai mae'r fathlach cymduno sydd yn cael ei gydweithio. Mae'n g 작업au cymaint â ni. Felly, mae'n gwymau'r ddaeth sydd yn gwybod gwybod gan gwybod cymlaenwyr. The head of complaint was, we see this as a service complaint. That is a bad service, but it's also a joke. It's a criminal allegation. It's not a service complaint. That perk took that as a service complaint and dealt with it as a service complaint in the first visit to perk. Do you think that's just in the nature? You've made a very strong argument there that all these issues need to be taken way out of the hands of anybody who's had anything to do with the issues previously, which is actually in a logical sense the type of practice you would have in all processes. You can't, for example, have somebody on a panel making a decision if they've been involved in the case before. I have a certain given statements, left the statements, to Detective Inspector in Helen Street. One of the statements was against a Detective Chief Inspector and when I was at number five, Police Officer, I'm leaving there. Next door to the DI who's taken the statements of criminality. This is no trivial stuff. This is serious, serious issues here. Police Officer's possibly gone to prison. The DCI, sorry, his boss is sitting next door on the office next door, basically. That's when I say to him, you told me you're an independent, you've got nothing to do with this. I said to him, who is your superior officer? I said, is it him? I pointed to the name on the door next door. Who's on this list? Anyway, well, yes, but that doesn't mean we're not right. This stops. I'm sitting there with a DI who's subordinate to the top guy on this list who the Chief Constable has sent to him to deal with the complaint against the criminal allegations against these guys. It just bonkers. You can't have the police taking part in the complaint system. For as long as you want to leave them in there, you'll be doing this all over again. Ladies like that lady, four or five years doing the line. I wonder if I can just ask about the duty of candor. The bill contains a proposal around creating a duty of candor for Police Scotland, so officers and staff are required to be truthful, candid and co-operate in proceedings. Is that sufficient for you to have more confidence that police officers would co-operate with investigations, for example, including those against other officers? What do you think should be put in place in that regard around a duty of candor? The only way that you're going to get complete candor for police officers against other police officers is if they're under oath and before they're under oath, they're presented with evidence to show that if you go in there and you just spin a story for your pals that you are going to be going to jail. That's the only way you can do it because if you're wanting candor for any organisation, particularly the police, and as I said earlier, asking this in the military to its detriment, we've done in-house investigations as well at a regimental level, when it was ridiculous. You had kernels holding courts of inquiry, boards of inquiry, of its serious, serious issues when it really should have been dealt with completely away for the military together. The problem you've got here is you can take it away for the military and maybe even give it to the police, then you're going to get some sort of an independent investigation. But with Police Scotland and any other police force, when you have it solely being dealt with by police officers, then it's by definition just raw right for the start. It's not going to work. I'm supposed to link to that again within the bill. There is a provision which places a legal obligation on Police Scotland to create a code of ethics. Would that give you more confidence in the behaviour of the police? Should there be some sort of sanction or implication, should an officer breach the code of ethics? Absolutely, but the problem you've got is how do you decide when he's breached the code of ethics when there's nobody going to cooperate? When you're sending all your paperwork to perk when you've actually cherry-picked it and how long you take it, it's just as they work. As I said right for the start, the only way you can sort this is route and branch, and that involves having an organisation that is completely divorced from the police force all together. The ethics thing on that is over, but nobody's going to be going along with that. That should be there just now. These are police officers that we're talking about. Those are guys that are supposed to be protecting people in Scotland. So she's saying, do you think, if they better ethics, it'll be alright? The answer's not, because it's not going to happen. Okay, thank you. Fulton MacGregor, I think you want to come in and then I'll bring in. Yeah, thanks. Bill, for your again very powerful testimony and coming in here and trying to make change with this. I think you've made it pretty clear to colleagues already that you don't think the perk is really the right body to deal with this, but obviously the bill has got some focus on improving, if you like, for one of a better word, perk's role in making it more robust. We have heard, although we've just started, we have heard some evidence already that instances were perk. Has been successful, maybe, or has been effective? Effective is probably the right word. That's clearly not been the case in your cases. If there wasn't to be what your wish is for a totally new, brand new independent organisation, the main function is to remain with perk, is there anything you think that can be put through this bill to improve perk, even further, to provide that distance between the police officers in perk? I think, especially in fairly serious complaints, the complainant should be given a statement direct to the perk. If you were going to keep part and place them on about here, which I don't think is maybe a good idea, but if you were going to do that, then there will be complaints that are fairly trivial and have any else, right? That's not going to be a massive concern, although for the people it's a big concern, but the perk can only be effective if they've got teeth, and I mean real teeth, right? If they can enforce the release of documentation from the police, but mainly if the initial statement is given to perk, or an organisation that is like perk, and the police are not allowed to be in the initial stage, because the initial stage, depending on the officer, depending on the seriousness of the complaint, it will be predetermined where this is going to go. You've got a police station, you start talking about criminal allegations, it will be predetermined in that police station, about where that's going, or in my case, where it gets blocked. In my case, I even, Dame Elyse gave me the second name and details of the fiscal who dealt with complaints against the police, criminal allegations, right? So I sent, through my solicitor, two separate points of contact, I sent an email to the fiscal, to this fiscal, Dame Elyse gave me the details, and it was sent by the post, and it was sent via my solicitor, and that was in 2020, just before Covid, right? And we have heard nothing, nothing. Now, you've got to be going about Covid, because I know, because I had it twice. But I can assure you, that went to the fiscal, and the fiscal went to the DCI, or the SI, but at stage there's a superintendent on this, and the fiscal spoke to them, and they've said, ah, that's just, this guy's just nuts. Now, a question that the committee might think of, is I was doing this for 11 years, for seven years, it was serious criminal allegations against senior CID officers, 18 of them, who we could see. Council, no just me, could see, had broke the law within the crime reports that we were given, right? And the evidence there was very, very, very strong. So why have I not been charged by making these vexious complaints against police officers? Are wasting police time for the last 10 years, almost 12 years in fact, if you go back to the non-criminal stuff? Now, I would suggest that if anybody in this room walked into the nearest police station today and made a complaint at any of this nature against a CID officer, particularly a senior officer, say a detective chief inspector, or a superintendent, right? If that complaint you made was vexatious, if it was false, if it was just you were just doing it because you wanted to, you would be very quickly charged. And you'd be put in front of your judge. This hasn't yet went in front of your judge. And the police have never charged me with anything today with that, right? Yeah, they ran out and charged me when I was standing there after this guy tried to stab me. It didn't bother taking any DNA samples off the knife, but I told them to make sure they're done after the handle. But they should think, why wasn't I, why have I never been charged? A book was written with this whole story on it, they were all named, every single individual police officer, MSPs are all named in this book, and nobody, absolutely nobody has come back and says, what's that all about? You're a DCI and you're in a book for corruption, accuse of corruption, and you don't do nothing. I can't go to the beggar, I'm just conscious of time. Yeah, I do think Bill was answering my questions. I just maybe go back to what I was asking, so I think just to clarify, you're saying that if, you know, obviously the perk isn't your preference, but perk is in place, but at that very early stage of the process, that the police officers who the complaints are against, they shouldn't have any involvement at all in that initial approach from perk, the initial approach to perk. Well, perk had details of the complaint, it was criminal allegations that was deemed by professional standards in a police and a superintendent that were not criminal in nature to use their words. And perk took 10 months to come back and say to me, well actually we can't do anything for you because they are, so perk are an organisation which I don't think are fit for purpose. What, and I should have said that there, in terms of not having any contact or any, the police officers concerned not having any, not being able to view those complaints, that should either be, that should be the case either through formal or informal processes because it's informal, I think you sound most concerned about, is that informal culture, which will be any organisation, but particularly something as high profile and high risk as the police? I mean I had phone calls for one of the DIs, it's on this list here, right, in the kind of middle of the process, right? It seemed to me, yeah, I spoke to perk, naming the person he was talking to at perk, right? And then I'm saying, I'm going to be a minute here, this guy who's part, this guy's subject to the complaint. This DI is subject to a serious complaint and he's talking to Mrs So-and-So who was it was dealing with because I'm not going to name anybody, right? Well, it's just shocking. I mean, like, the mere fact that there was correspondence for A2 on a phone, the woman in perk who was dealing with my complaint and one of the people who was involved, subject to the complaint, a criminal allegation was talking to this lady at perk and he definitely was, there was no, he wasn't just saying that to try and bluff her, try and play it doing 100% because when I asked her, she's kind of a ducked and dived a wee bit, but she did say, well I mean that is part of the process and I have it not, isn't it? Okay, thanks. Okay, um, Russell Finlay. Yeah, thanks very much. I'm struck by the fact, the same tactics that you've experienced, you recognised in respect of what Stephanie Bonner went through, the fact that these have been replicated in respect of a grieving mother and a former British Army intelligence officer is quite something. Now my question is, hopefully I think, a yes or no question, it's one I've never asked you before. Nine years ago you discovered you had been wrongly and potentially criminally assigned a criminal record by way of ALS. Please Scotland have not told you at any point how that has happened and yes or no, do you think that they will ever disclose that to you? No. Okay, and next question is in terms of a lot of our focus is on the police, but I think sometimes we can overlook the role of the Crown Office in much of policing work in Scotland, they very often work hand in glove and in your case just by virtue of speaking to Dame Eilish Angelini, you were directed towards making a direct complaint to the criminal allegations against the police division of Crown Office, you also referenced attempting to have your complaint heard by Perk, but the concern was Police Scotland on a position to cherry pick was the phrase you used, what they disclose of your allegations. The same goes for what their disclosure might be to the Crown Office, although in this case they didn't choose to disclose. The question is, and it's to do with the legislation, would there perhaps be a mechanism whereby if there was full transparency around the submissions both to Perk and to the Crown from Police Scotland that would go some way to building public confidence that at least you knew that the powers that be Perk and the Crown were being told something that was reflective of what the complainant was saying? I would actually add to that by saying that the funding, for instance I have to fund everything myself, to the lawyers and all sorts right, to add to that the complainant should have access to funding to get a suitable solicitor who should also have access to what is going to the Crown from the police to Perk for the police etc. The actual complainant is always in the dark, always. So whatever is getting disclosed, there should be a legal mechanism there where the complainant has a lawyer that is paid for by the system so that they get access to that. One proposal in the bill is that Perk should have access to Police Scotland's systems, which seems perfectly sensible. It opens things up if there are attempts to withhold certain information, but that is supposed to be done by the Federation. You described going to Perk who said that they could not look at a particular set of circumstances because they were of a criminal nature, but then when you went to Police Scotland with the same information they said that they deemed it not to be criminal and if you did not accept that they would not look at it. That was an absolute catch-22. It was also an illegal act by the officer involved because she blocked lawful process. When Perk says that these are criminal allegations, when council says that these are criminal allegations and an unnamed sergeant at professional standards decides that they are not criminal allegations, false statements on crime reports, all sorts of things, really serious crimes for a police officer to commit and numerous and backed with evidence. You are just jammed because what do you do? You do what I have done, you do what Damangealini suggested and you go straight back to them again because I went in there twice, do not forget. The same thing happens again and that thing is nothing because it is too big. There are too many police officers involved and you are going to end up with half the CID in Helen Street in the back of Yvan. I will have to come in and just draw things to close. We are just running slightly over time. I know that we could sit here probably for the rest of the morning, but on that, thank you very much for attending this morning. It has been very valuable to hear your views on that. We will have a short suspension and a change of your witnesses. I would now like to welcome Magdalene Robertson to the meeting. Ms Robertson is joining us online and I believe prefers to be addressed by the name Maggie. Welcome to the meeting this morning, Maggie. Thank you for taking the time to give evidence to us today. We do really appreciate it and thank you for kindly providing some background information about your experience. I intend to allow around about 45 minutes for this evidence session. I wonder if I need to ask Mr Finlay if you would like to declare an interest before we start. Just in that I have previously spoken with Maggie in respect of what she has been attempting to deal with. I am going to open up with a general question about the police complaint system. Should the police complaint system be changed based on your own experience? Okay. To be changed completely would be what I would suggest. To talk about all the things that don't work would be to talk about mainly everything, to scrap and reset and have something completely new. Based on different morals, based from a different group would be the way forward. To scrap and set up again and not with the minds of those who caused the issues and the problems in the first place. You cannot set up a new way forward working with those minds that created the issues in the first place. Okay. Thanks for that. One of the issues that has come up in evidence sessions that we have had this morning has been that of timescales, which I think you will be able to relate to. I wonder if I can ask you a little bit about that and how any potential delays in the system impact on people involved in the system and what should we be thinking about in terms of how that is addressed within the context of the bill that we are looking at? Okay. Time delays, times should be set. There is unknowns and there is knowns for the unknowns. We cannot set a time. Nobody can, because they do not know about it yet. But what they should be able to do is have a plan in place about what their expectations are and deliver on those for the unknowns that they do not know. They have not dug up. This is an investigation, so the plan should be set in place about what their expectations are and what they intend to achieve. Report and summary should be given back to the complainer and internally to their auditors or their group about how they are managing to progress. Also, things may have a turnabout where it becomes much more serious. For example, somebody could be charged with murder in-between that investigation. That changes, does it not? It becomes much more serious, so the pace then needs to change and they need to evolve that process to suit. Thank you for that. That is really helpful. I am going to open up questions to other members. I may come back in with one or two, but I am going to bring in Katie Clark first of all. Thank you very much, Maggie, for being willing to speak to the committee today. What you are suggesting is that we start again with a complaints process. Perk, what we have at the moment has only been in place at a relatively short period of time, just a few years. You have talked about morals that you would want an organisation that had a different set of morals. How would you ensure that any new system does not fall into any traps or failings that Perk has? Do you not think that Perk could perhaps be reformed to incorporate some of the changes that you are suggesting? No. I will stick with the fact that you cannot fix a problem with the same mind that created the problem. That is well established. It is a basic rule for life and living. Now, what we have here is organisational culture within the police department, where you do not get ahead unless you fit in with that culture. If you think out with that, you are not going to get ahead. Perk is set up of ex-police, that system culture, that system mindset. We cannot go ahead with making improvements and investigating police from the same mindset that has created those issues. You cannot do it. It is impossible. I do not know why that was set up in such a way in the first instance. If I could just pick that up, because we heard something similar from a previous witness. If you are saying that former police officers are not the appropriate people to be employed in those roles, what kind of skillset do you think that the organisation should draw from? I think that we should be looking at the base round about why these were hired in the first place. The organisation, the people from that and the culture and the mindset that they develop and learn, because regardless of whether you are against that culture or not against that culture, when you join an organisation, you have to develop and get along in that culture. You adopt that. You always do. You have to. It is basic psychology. When you move to the other side, Perk, and you get hired, there is the old body network, there is the group, there is the police gang. Do you remember this? There is this group in this set in place. For setting up a new department, you need to set that up within yourselves and figure out how you are going to do it. However, the current way is not the way. We see that. It is corrupt. Holy, holy, corrupt. I am going to bring in Rona Mackay now. Thank you, convener. Good afternoon, Maggie. Thanks for doing this. I was just following on from Katie's questions about the Perk. I am looking at the response that you got from them after your complaint was made. They say that senior police officers are an officer who gave instructions to detectives involved in the murder investigation to ignore your rape allegation against a named individual. After you provided the additional statement in 2015, there has been an activity and this mail has not been questioned by detectives subsequent to you providing this statement. They say that their role was to examine the manner in which your complaints were handled by the police. They indicate that, although the review would consider how the police investigated the complaints, they would not be investigating your complaints or the matters giving rise to them. They did not uphold your complaint about the police. That seems astonishing to me because it is almost funny. It is just so strange. How did you feel when you got that response? I knew I was going on to the hamster wheel. I knew that. It was going to be a hamster wheel for years. I was going to get left with nothing. It was just going to be expelling energy. The only way that I could actually go through that was to do two things. Document it. Secondly, deal with my own mental health during the process. That is what I had done. I knew it was going to be difficult but I knew that I had to look after myself at the same time. When dealing with these, not only was it astonishing but the fact is that they lie consistently throughout the full entire process. They had talked about interviewing Ian Packer. They talked about interviewing him in 2010 and they did not. They really did not do that. They lied and then they would not prove it. When I said, can you actually prove and verify that this was actually done, they would not do it. That was tough because you know that you are dealing with a lie or you know that you are going to get your butt in your head and you cannot get anywhere forward. Do you feel you were being spilled by the system at that point? I was depleted of energy. It was an exercise to deplete me of my energy so that I had nowhere else to go and also deplete me of the time that I had because everything is time bar, does not it? If I wanted to take the place to court for this, I had to go through this process. That takes away that time that time bar is in place and that is ticking away so that is the intention of Perc for me. I do not see it as anything else. Maggie, I wonder if I can just come in and ask you about the proposals on the duty of candor for Police Scotland. Can I ask if you think that the creation of a duty of candor for both officers and staff relates to them being truthful, candid and co-operating proceedings? Do you think that what is being proposed is sufficient for you to have confidence that police officers will co-operate with investigations, including those that are carried out against or in relation to other officers? Haven't they already sworn a duty in an oath already? Aren't they already got a duty under statutory law? Hasn't that been bound in law for hundreds of years? Thousands of years maybe even? How long have we had the police department? Why do we need another set of rules? If I was in the police or in Perc and someone says, do you like to create something in candor or create another set of duties? I will take that one. I will write you as many lists as you want. It does not matter. It makes no difference. Absolutely scrap it. Keep to what we have. It is there. As soon as we start getting more specific on a general piece of law, we are honing in and honing in to very specific items. When you do not know what happens, when you get very, very specific, people find it easy to opt out. We did not agree to that very specific item, but I still fit within the boundaries. Scrap it. It is a waste of time. It is an absolute rabbit hole to get guided in by those in Perc who are going to waste their time. Money as well. Dealing with this, no. Scrap it. I suppose that the link to that is another provision in the bill around ethics and a code of ethics. Do you feel that the provisions in the bill which would place a legal obligation on Police Scotland to create a specific code of ethics, would that give you more confidence in the behaviour of officers? Following on from that, should there be specific sanctions for a breach of the code of ethics? I would look towards a breach for the codes of ethics that they have already had sworn into. I would not create anything else. I cannot express how much I disagree with that. However, I would say that it should have clear, criminal, minimum, criminal terms or what is in the fines, anything there. What is in the minimum that they would suffer if they did not? It needs to be carried out. That is what needs to happen. It needs to be charged if they commit offences or if they do up hold their duties. Thanks for that. Do any other members want to come in at all, Russell Findlay? Please. Hi, Maggie. Thank you for joining us. You described your ordeal or the police complaints process as being like a hamster who a previous witness used the phrase, a hellish merry-go-round and I suppose what they have got in common is an endless circularity to them and it seems to be designed that way. One thing that has been another common feature is the way in which at the outset the police are able to be very selective about how they categorise complaints and that sets the tone for everything going forward, both in terms of how they categorise it internally, how they might represent that perk or indeed the crown. Do you think that much greater transparency around that particular crucial early moment could be a helpful thing for the bill to include if it does not already and I am not entirely sure if it does to be honest? Transparency is key, Russell. Transparency is all the way through. It gives the person who is reporting the crime confidence a crime. It might not be a crime, but reporting the incident anyway, how they categorise it. I think that they need to maybe categorise it anyway to see how serious it is, to see who is going to deal with it. So maybe there does need to be some sort of categorisation, but there should be transparency and the person making the complaint should have equal input into that. So it must be in a meeting of the mind in an agreement. So an absolute protocol whereby the complainer has to be fully appraised of what their complaint constitutes and no slightly softening of things or removal of issues. Some people who have not experienced what you, Stephanie, Bill and other witnesses have experienced might find all this quite extraordinary. Police Scotland are very effective at telling the public that all is largely well and it is absolutely the case that the vast majority of police officers do an incredibly difficult job and do so with the greatest of integrity. I think that the question is, can you perhaps explain why you think Police Scotland or any police force or big organisation might seek to waste people's time, waste public money on a process when in fact doing the right thing would be more efficient and better for the reputation in the long term? When you have a culture and an organisation such as the police that's been going on all these hundreds of years that's got this culture built up, people want to protect it. It's natural. They want to protect it. They don't want to blame. That's why they will cover up. That's what I believe anyway. So part of it's protecting the reputation of the organisation and I suppose also there's an element as we've heard from Bill Johnson about individual protection. Bill Johnson and other witnesses have said that at the outset every complaint should be looked at by some independent entity. There's huge cost implications to that. I've already heard concerns about the cost of this bill perhaps being much greater than the financial memorandum states. Would you agree that there needs to be every complaint that would need to go through an independent body at the outset even some kind of sifting process? Then that would say that you should eliminate perk because if you need to have someone manmarking each step that's an external body manmarking every step then why don't they just do it? Why do we need perk? Why don't we have a separate entity? So the bill does allow much greater powers so that might be the solution to... Yeah, maybe have people that are not in the police or have not came from the police. We need to look at these networks that the police are involved in as well. These are old boy networks. These are people that have worked with each other, their families worked with each other, they're connected, they're in the same golf course, they could be in the same masonic lodge, they could just know each other from media connections, football teams, they're involved in different ways. They're also as well connected personally within the workforce and how they manage these jobs. Now, if they've got something wrong and they've covered something up once right at the beginning of their career, then people know about it, then they cover up something else, then something gets hidden, something's not reported, then it paints a picture, there's a bigger picture, there's a Pandora's Boxer to be opened and none of them want that to be opened. These are not single little items that they don't want to have disclosed, these are big major items. So for example, when I asked for the freedom of information on the two perk officers that were investigating my complaint and their relationship with the senior police officers that I reported that, they came back and they gave five pieces of legislation as to why they cannot provide this freedom of information to me, and they were absolutely ridiculous pieces of legislation. I mean, I've got them written down here, there were, I'll tell you the name, section 20 relationships with the UK, so they wouldn't provide me evidence of information on these police and their relationship with the senior police office because it would affect relationships with the UK, Northern Ireland, Wales. That's ridiculous. One also was section 41. That one, if you know it, is exempt because it's related to communications with Her Majesty and the Royal household. These are ridiculous pieces of legislation that they've gave back to me as an excuse for not sharing the freedom of information. So what I would like is clear freedom of information. Given before the police officers even do the investigation, what they should do is they should provide a statement of fact that they do or they do not know the officers that we're complaining about. In the right place for freedom of information, Katie Clarksy or she's proposing a bill to improve and strengthen freedom of information. Maggie, can I come in just with another question? It's around misconduct procedures, but in the context of former police officers. Do you agree that misconduct procedures should be able to commence and continue against former police officers for allegations that, if they were proved, would amount to gross misconduct? I mean, should this only be in terms of gross misconduct? I'm interested in your views on that. I've got an example here. In my complaint, I've wanted to follow up against police officers. Now, there was one piece of information that I gave them many times, but they absolutely refused to check up on it. Now, this is really important because this was from Alexis Blake from the Crown. We know how senior Alexis Blake is from the Crown, wrote to me and told me that she was investigating possible criminal activity of the senior police that I was complaining about. The perk decided that they would not follow up on that. That, for me, is key and I think it's criminal that they did not follow up on that. I still don't know what happened, but I don't even know where that report is from the Crown. That should be investigated as part of my complaint. If it's gross misconduct, we need to define what gross misconduct is. Niggle complaints about the police maybe is a miscommunication, something small, but it's hard fact-based evidence that you have to hand. It's not even from yourself, you're not even making that up. It's coming from the Crown, senior legal officials that represent Scotland that are coming and saying, we're investigating this. If they're investigating possible criminal activity, do you know what? It must have had reasonable cause to believe in the first instance. If we get reasonable cause to believe, there's evidence, isn't there? Why was that evidence not used? Why were those police officers investigating—sorry, the perk—investigating these crimes? Why were they not charged? What's happened? The Crown and the Police know about this now, and these guys are walking free? Absolutely shocking. That's very interesting, goodness me. Can I follow on a question against sticking with former officers? I'm interested in what you think about the intention to allow proceedings against former officers to commence or to continue. The timescale that's put on is up to 12 months after an officer has left the force, unless, according to the bill, specific criteria are met. Do you have any view on that? A crime is a crime. It shouldn't be time barred. All the time it should depend on the seriousness and the effect that they had on the people or their persons or their property. Thank you for that. No time limit on that should not be time limited. Oh, no. Definitely not. No way. Thank you for that. I'm going to bring in John Swinney now. Can I just ask you—you've made a really powerful case about the need for what I might call as a significant hurricane of fresh air into this system. You've obviously seen the bill that we have before us. Am I right to deduce from that that you don't think that that bill is adequate to address the degree of scrutiny and transparency that is required of the system given your experience? Given my experience, we need to have, as I say, another mind, another culture to create this. I don't know who, but not the current one. We do need to have transparency all the way through. Transparency should be given as a statement of fact throughout. Never be requested. It should be there. That should be that. I'm not so sure how it would go. You pose a significant challenge to the committee because you've marshaled your arguments really powerfully in front of the committee today, but it raises a huge question about the transparency of actions and the confidence that members of the public and this committee can have in the culture of the police force and those who scrutinise the police force as being essentially built around that principle of transparency. I just wonder if you've got any further thoughts you could share with us about how we might strengthen the provisions in front of us to address the concerns that you've expressed to the committee. Never voluntary to have somebody come in and audit, someone highly paid, someone who can be proud of their job and somebody not giving bonus as such, somebody who's honourable, who's got integrity, maybe perhaps somebody from the military, someone who understands the process and someone who also understands what's cut the wheat from the chaff, what's important, what's not so important and how it can affect people, someone who understands it when on a psychological level who's who they're dealing with, are they telling the truth or are they not telling the truth, are they hiding something. So I'd be looking for ex-military, ex-navy, people like that, maybe Fire Brigade, someone like that. That's a team that I would be looking for, or maybe something like that rather than some people we can trust, people honourable. Okay, thank you very much, thank you. Fulton MacGregor. Thanks to me and good afternoon. Maggie, thanks very much for your evidence so far. I was wanting to ask a question a wee bit from the other side of the discussion that we've had today because I think that all of our contributors today have came to us with really quite serious cases in how you've been impacted and thank you again for bringing that to the committee in the way that you've done it, but all of you have at some point as well acknowledged that the seriousness of concerns will be on some sort of line from very low to very high. How do you think, if we're making changes here and we want to get that independence right, how do you think that we can quickly identify complaints that are less serious and can be dealt with quickly to prevent any system becoming overwhelmed? And why I ask that is because almost anybody could have a complaint about the minute police are in their lives, could have some sort of complaint and not all of them will be as serious as those that you've expressed and your fellow contributors have expressed today. Have you had any thoughts on how we might be able to do that? What we wouldn't want to create is a system that gets clogged up quickly and obviously in other matters outside of this committee session we've been speaking about particular bills that have been brought through and too many complaints have been into the police in initial weeks. We don't want police officers or any other organisations time to take it up and then we want them to be concentrating on cases like yourselves, cases like Stephanie's, we want them to be concentrating on that. Have you got any ideas? Sorry if it's a wee bit out of the blue that question, but any ideas how we quickly get to that stage? What you're talking about is you don't want any bottleneck there, that's what you're speaking about. I don't want a bottleneck and I want to be able to categorise so we can quickly get to that. Why can't that be done? What is causing a bottleneck to stop in a bottleneck? Why isn't it categorised? I think that there should be a categorisation. There should be depending on the people as well, so if you've got an OAP who really doesn't know how to operate the system or work the system and it takes time, but they have got a really serious complaint against the police, maybe they had something there that wasn't an investigation, it was a physical assault or something like that. Now, these people need to be dealt with differently than somebody else who's got a systematic complaint with the police. It's not really going to have an effect on them. It's not really going to affect them mentally, but it was more process related. Deal with it that way, have it categorised, have it worked out, but allow the categorisation to change over time because during the complaint things can change. So look at it that way, don't allow the bottlenecks to deal with it. Who is it, is complaining, what are they complaining with? What about? Allow the officer to highlight to another team or teams where this should go. I offer apologies first off in the offset as well. Allow the police to be able to apologise, but that might solve a lot of issues without having to go into full big going on complaints. Okay, thank you. Maggie, we're just coming to the end of the session. I wonder if I can just ask you another final question. It's not in the bill, but it does relate to Perk, which we've spoken about at length this morning. The bill does expand some of the functions of the Perk in terms of complaints and it does allow a further broadening of their role within the misconduct process. Do you feel that there's sufficient oversight of Perk in their role that they fulfil currently and do you feel that anything further is required if they are given further powers? I know that you've already articulated that to a certain extent, but if there's anything further that you feel you'd like to add on that. Okay, I'm going to come back right out with a question that not deliberately not to trick you, but you'll understand. So, on 28 May, Ian Packer was convicted and police apologised for their handling of the case. On 28 May, I went back to Perk and said, Hi, given police have apologised, given their, where they've admitted liability, would you please consider opening up my case for complaints again? It was ignored. I went back on the sick of March. It was ignored. I went back on the 8th of March. It was ignored. We're nearly hitting what, seven weeks after that, and guess what? They've still ignored it. We need somebody to make sure that Perk does her job. Where do I go? I've got nowhere to go, so there is no governing body for Perk. It's mates and people who know each other, who can grease each other's hands and help their mates out. That's what we have here, because I've still got nowhere to go with this complaint. What I need to do is to take civil action against these police at my own cost, and I need to fund it myself. That's what I need to do if I want justice. Thank you, Maggie. On that very powerful final note, I'm just going to bring the session to an end. Hand it back to you in case there's any further final, very final point that you want to make. Mae? Mae. What's happened is, with the police and Perk have managed to set up a perfect situation where they can protect themselves against the public. The public that have been victimised against them is absolutely ridiculous. It sounds like something out of a science fiction novel. It doesn't appear to be true, because it doesn't sound true, but here we are, and it's true. You believe it. Oh my goodness. Let's scrap all this nonsense about getting, giving them another list to create. Let's start charging these people, these people that have committed these crimes within Perk, and the people that are in the police that have helped to grease their hands need to be taken, the action needs to be taken against them. These guys are criminals. I'm going to pull the session to a close. Thank you for joining us this morning, Maggie. It has been really valuable to hear from you. We're grateful for your time. With that, that concludes the public part of today's meeting, and we'll now move into private session. Thank you all. Thanks for your time. Bye-bye.