The lawyer for the family of Sheku Bayoh, whose death in custody is the subject of a stalled public inquiry, has criticised “speculation and delusions of grandeur” from the Scottish Police Federation after suggestions that the investigation could be downgraded to a fatal accident inquiry.
At a press conference on Wednesday, the federation’s general secretary, David Kennedy, and lawyer Peter Watson questioned whether a public inquiry had been necessary when a fatal accident inquiry – similar to an inquest in England and Wales – was already mandatory for deaths in custody.
Bayoh, 31, died in handcuffs and with multiple injuries after officers responded to calls about a man brandishing a knife and behaving erratically in Kirkcaldy, Fife, in May 2015.
A pathologist told the inquiry, which began in 2020, that a struggle while Bayoh was being held by at least six police officers should be considered a major part of what caused his death. Bayoh’s family allege police overreacted and were influenced by racial bias.
Last month the inquiry chair, Lord Bracadale, stood down just as proceedings were reaching their final stage with all evidence taken.
He had been facing a judicial review later this month brought by the federation over claims he unfairly held private meetings with Bayoh’s family. He denied any bias and the long-running inquiry has been thrown into chaos, with senior and junior counsel resigning soon after.
Watson said: “The question for a new chair is how best to move forward … it’s possible that a new chair could say we’ll proceed now with the fatal accident inquiry.” He said that “if race is a factor involved in the death, a FAI can deal with that perfectly adequately”.
Kennedy said the officers involved wanted the matter to be concluded and for it to be “open, fair and transparent”, adding: “We could have got to the same position with an FAI instead of spending £50m of taxpayers’ money.”
But Aamer Anwar, the lawyer for the Bayoh family, said: “I appreciate from today’s press conference there was a great deal of speculation and delusions of grandeur – but in this case the lord advocate, as head of the system for the investigation of deaths in Scotland, considered the remit of an FAI would not allow all the issues which require to be investigated to be addressed.”
Anwar said an FAI would be too narrow in scope because it could “examine circumstances and factors leading up to a death but not what follows after”. The public inquiry has taken hours of evidence on how the police, the policing watchdog and prosecutors managed the aftermath of Bayoh’s death, raising significant issues of public interest.
Kennedy also criticised the first minister, John Swinney, for offering to meet the Bayoh family, who spoke of feeling “totally betrayed” by the federation’s legal moves against Bracadale, which were supported by Police Scotland and the Crown Office.
Kennedy said: “The first minister’s intervention undermines the prospect of a fair and transparent investigation. If we move to a situation where police officers do nothing to stop someone armed with a knife, for fear of being accused of racism, we will be powerless to protect the public.”
Kennedy and Watson were accompanied at the press conference by the former PC Nicole Short, one of the first officers on the scene, who agreed with a suggestion that the officers involved that day had been “villainised”.
She said she had nothing to hide and that the issue of whether police responses were motivated by Bayoh’s race was like “a question mark over you for 10 years”.
“I’d love to see our names cleared because race wasn’t a factor,” Short said.
