Police commissioner sorry for error

Jun 13 2012

The police complaints commissioner has apologised to Scotland's largest force for making an error in his report into a complaint about a motorway pursuit.

Professor John McNeill said he no longer insists on certain recommendations he made in the report, published in April.

In a letter to Strathclyde Police Deputy Chief Constable Campbell Corrigan, he offered a "sincere apology" for the mistake.

The report criticised Strathclyde Police for the way it handled a series of complaints from a driver who was pursued by an unmarked police car along a motorway for seven miles in January last year.

The man being pursued was so frightened that he called 999 from his car, only to be told that the vehicle following him was actually a police car.

The report, called a complaint handling review, recommended to Strathclyde Police that it apologise to the man for having been stopped, stating that the plain-clothes officers pursuing him had no power to do so.

He reminded the force that under section 3 of the Road Traffic Act, only uniformed police officers can require a vehicle to stop.

Prof McNeill said he still considers the pursuit of the car to be "highly inappropriate". But having taken legal advice, he said he now accepts that his interpretation of the law in relation to a plain-clothes officer's power to stop a car was wrong.

He no longer insisted that the complaint that the officers had no power to stop his car, referred to as 1a, be recorded as substantiated. He said it was appropriate for him to publicly acknowledge the error.

Deputy Chief Constable Corrigan said: "I welcome the fact that the commissioner has written to us to apologise for the error in his original report. We always maintained that our officers had not acted unlawfully and it was, I believe, right that we gave those officers our full backing and challenged the commissioner on this issue."