Police officer ‘was asked to fake drugs evidence’

PC Jonathon Threadgold said his colleague Jason Beck had filed a report saying they were both present when a suspect surrendered a stash of cannabis.

But at Beck’s trial at Livingston Sheriff Court, Constable Threadgold insisted that Beck had been handed the drugs before he arrived.

He claimed that the radio message asking him to meet Beck at a flat in Whitburn, West Lothian, had made it clear he was only needed to corroborate an interview.

And by the time he arrived, Beck already had several containers of grass and cannabis resin given to him by suspect Christopher Nisbet.

PC Threadgold, 37, – who had two years service with Lothian & Borders at the time – said he raised his concerns with two sergeants.

But he admitted that he had not asked them to intervene.

He said in evidence: “I believed that the issue would perhaps sort itself out without the intervention of a sergeant.

“I knew that Constable Beck had submitted an operational statement as well.

“I hoped when he read the report he would obviously see the discrepancy.”

The situation came to a head the day before Nisbet was due to stand trial for possessing the class B drugs.

He said Beck approached him in the car park of Whitburn Police Station and “saying words to the effect of: ‘Remember to say you were present when the drugs were handed over’.

“I recall I didn’t say I would say I was present, nor did I say that I wouldn’t.

“By that point I thought it was too late (to speak to Beck). It was too late to sort things out in my opinion.

“I just felt at that point that it had gone too far and I needed to sort it out myself by speaking to the procurator fiscal.”

Beck, 40, of Armadale, West Lothian, denies two charges of attempting to pervert the course of justice in April 2010 and one of attempting to suborn an officer in November the same year.

The trial, before Sheriff Graeme Fleming QC, continues.