GETTING information from the Police Scotland press office, as many journalists can attest, can be something like drawing blood from a stone.
Their labyrinthian system bizarrely cannot retrieve any information about cases unless a wealth of other information is already known. Want to find out if there’s been any hate crime reports in Dunfermline over the weekend? Sorry, it doesn’t work like that.
What if you want to know how many arrests Police Scotland have made of people engaged in pro-Palestine demonstrations? Sorry, it doesn’t work like that.
The force no doubt has reasons for keeping information tightly under wraps. But often there seems little justification. And in the case of suspended Labour MSP Colin Smyth, there appears to be none at all.
Let’s jump back to August 5. On that day, Police Scotland officers executed a warrant on Smyth’s address, leading to his arrest and charge in connection with “the possession of indecent images”.
In the days and weeks that followed, Police Scotland saw fit to tell precisely no one about the charge. Not Scottish Labour, not the Scottish Parliament, not the media.
This silence is hard to square with precedent.
When former SNP chief executive Peter Murrell was arrested, police issued statements within hours. Not once, but twice.
On the very same day Smyth was charged, journalists received multiple police press releases detailing charges against others for things like drug offences and robbery. Yet nothing at all about a sitting MSP.
So, why wouldn’t they tell the media – or anyone at all – about his charges?
There are very serious consequences to the police’s baffling decision to keep quiet.
According to sources in Scottish Labour, it was not until three days after that – on August 18 – that they learned of Smyth’s bail conditions. Not his charges, his bail conditions.
The sources would not be drawn on what those conditions were, letting on only that they could infer that the charges facing Smyth were quite serious.
Two days later on August 20, the media caught wind of the suspension after noticing that Smyth was now listed as an “independent” on the Scottish Parliament website – and had disappeared from the Scottish Labour one. It was only then that the August 5 charges became public.
Smyth has strongly refuted all allegations against him and is due fair process. This is not about him. It is about Police Scotland.
Initially, Police Scotland confirmed only that a man had been arrested and charged, and was due to appear in court. But after the hidden-camera allegations surfaced on August 28, its line shifted. The investigation, it now said, was “ongoing”.
When asked directly why charges against an MSP were not disclosed immediately after August 5, the force twice refused to answer – claiming it would be “inappropriate” while proceedings were live.
This is, frankly, no excuse. Especially as a live investigation into the SNP didn't stop the announcement of Murrell's arrest – and the force does not even appear to have thought there was a live investigation after first charging Smyth. There is no legal barrier to Police Scotland explaining why it took weeks to confirm the arrest of an MSP.
The public deserves better than that.
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