Jamie Forbes lived his final hours in unimaginable terror and pain.
The 37-year-old was tortured for two days in an Aberdeen flat by Lee Smith before he plunged from a 12th storey window.
More than a year after Jamie’s death, the details of his ordeal retain their power to shock.
What Smith did to a man who had considered him a friend was horrifying; some, I suspect, will agree with my view that the eight-year prison sentence he received for culpable homicide seems remarkably lenient.
The circumstances of Jamie’s death are deeply disturbing. So, too, is the fact – revealed by the Press and Journal this week – that police missed a number of opportunities to save his life.
The Police Investigations Review Commissioner (PIRC) found that a series of mistakes and misunderstandings prevented officers getting to the victim before his death.
What happened on January 15 last year is hard to understand. Concerned members of the public made repeated calls to the police after hearing a man scream for help.
Officers arrived on the scene at 10.25am but left 40 minutes later after being unable to trace the source of the cries.
I’m sure Jamie’s sister, Lyndsay-Anne Forbes, echoed the feelings of the majority when she said her brother had grown up believing the police would be there for him if he ever found himself in trouble.
Pirc’s truly shocking findings must not mean the end of the investigation
The PIRC report has uncovered some truly shocking details but this must not mean an end to the investigation into what went so horrifically wrong on the day of Jamie’s death.
There must be a full inquiry, in public, into how Police Scotland failed so badly.
The actions of officers investigating reports of screams from the tower block where Jamie Forbes was being tortured bring to mind a previous catastrophic Police Scotland failure.
On July 5, 2015, a car containing John Yuill, 28, and his partner, 25-year-old Lamara Bell, careered off the M9 motorway near Stirling.
A failure of call-handling procedures meant the couple lay undiscovered in their Renault Clio for three days. Yuill was pronounced dead at the scene while Bell, a mother-of-two, lost her fight for life after four days in hospital.
A Fatal Accident Inquiry into the deaths of the couple should have meant lessons learned for Police Scotland. We cannot possibly know whether this is so unless a similar inquiry is held into what went so badly wrong in the case of Jamie Forbes.
When Police Scotland was launched by the Scottish Government April 1, 2013, ministers insisted the new national force would mean a more efficient approach to fighting crime.
An FAI into Jamie Forbes’ death is only way to ensure it’s not forgotten
The truth is that the decision to amalgamate Scotland’s regional police forces was an economic one. As is so often the case when it comes to public services, “efficiency” is a way of making “cuts” seem palatable.
Nobody who has had to deal with the police any time, recently, can possibly believe that the service provided is up to snuff.
I’ve no interest in scapegoating officers – though, obviously, there are serious questions to answer for those involved in the case of Jamie Forbes – but the politicians who have, over years, undermined those working on the front-line are deserving of criticism.
The creation of Police Scotland may have reduced the number of chiefs but that hasn’t translated into a more effective service. Rather, successive chief constables have acted more like politicians – spending their time defending flawed policies and explaining away horrendous mistakes – than like cops.
Let’s be blunt. Jamie Forbes wasn’t like most of us. A habitual drug user, he lived in a different world to ours. We pass men and women like him in the street every day and they’re not like us. It’s as if their miserable, dangerous world has been superimposed on ours.
For shame, when first reading about Jamie’s death, my instinct was to think that, well, that’s the sort of thing that happens in the world of serious addicts.
It would be all too easy for Jamie’s miserable death to be forgotten about. But, of course, he deserved the same standard of care from the police that any of us should be able to expect.
Jamie Forbes was failed by the police in the final hours of his life. Without a full Fatal Accident Inquiry, how can we be satisfied that Police Scotland has put right what went so terribly wrong last January 15?
Euan McColm is a regular columnist for various Scottish newspapers
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