Fettesgate was the term given to a major scandal involving the
Lothian and Borders Police force in the 1990s, from its Fettes Avenue headquarters near
Fettes College in
Edinburgh
Edinburgh ( ; gd, Dùn Èideann ) is the capital city of Scotland and one of its 32 Council areas of Scotland, council areas. Historically part of the county of Midlothian (interchangeably Edinburghshire before 1921), it is located in Lothian ...
.
The "Fettesgate scandal", as the incident was quickly called, began in the early hours of 19 July 1992, when burglars spent three hours in the Fettes headquarters of the police force. The break-in, through an unsecured window of the Scottish Crime Squad’s ground-floor offices in the HQ building, led to several confidential documents being stolen and
Animal Liberation Front slogans being sprayed on the walls.
Two journalists who reported on the incident after receiving tip-offs were arrested;
*Alan Muir, a reporter for ''
The Sun'', wrote a story based on an anonymous telephone call on the day of the incident, and was detained for six hours, and
*Ron McKay, a journalist for ''
Scotland on Sunday
''Scotland on Sunday'' is a Scottish Sunday newspaper, published in Edinburgh by JPIMedia and consequently assuming the role of Sunday sister to its daily stablemate ''The Scotsman''. It was originally printed in broadsheet format but in 2013 ...
'' found documents after another anonymous call six days later. When he wrote a story based on the documents, he was arrested at dawn, while at his girlfriend's house in
Chatham
Chatham may refer to:
Places and jurisdictions Canada
* Chatham Islands (British Columbia)
* Chatham Sound, British Columbia
* Chatham, New Brunswick, a former town, now a neighbourhood of Miramichi
* Chatham (electoral district), New Brunswic ...
,
Kent
Kent is a county in South East England and one of the home counties. It borders Greater London to the north-west, Surrey to the west and East Sussex to the south-west, and Essex to the north across the estuary of the River Thames; it faces ...
. He was held overnight, and charged with reset, the crime under
Scots law
Scots law () is the legal system of Scotland. It is a hybrid or mixed legal system containing civil law and common law elements, that traces its roots to a number of different historical sources. Together with English law and Northern Ireland l ...
of receiving stolen property. The charges were dropped six months later.
The stolen documents concerned the police's use of "telephone metering"; recording the destination and duration of suspects'
telephone
A telephone is a telecommunications device that permits two or more users to conduct a conversation when they are too far apart to be easily heard directly. A telephone converts sound, typically and most efficiently the human voice, into e ...
calls, without
listening in on them. Although this was regarded as legal, the controversy led to a debate about privacy and what safeguards were needed regarding information gathered in this way.
The theft of such sensitive material from what should have been such a secure place—a police headquarters—led to questions about the competence of the Lothian and Borders force to take charge of the European summit in Edinburgh later that year.
It transpired that the Animal Liberation Front had not been involved in the break-in. The chief constable later admitted that the treatment of Mr McKay was tactless and apologised to the editor of ''Scotland on Sunday''. Nobody has been charged with the break-in.
The return of the sensitive files was allegedly the result of senior detectives reaching an immunity deal with a man close to the city’s gay criminal underworld. An internal report is believed to have been completed by the police force on the matter, but has never been released to the public.
References
{{reflist
Law enforcement in Scotland
Scandals in Scotland
History of Edinburgh