The family of Sheku Bayoh have accused police of “closing ranks” on the anniversary of his death in custody.
Mr Bayoh, 33, died after being detained on a street in Kirkcaldy close to his home by officers responding to reports of a man carrying a knife.
His family say that more than 30 injuries found at his post-mortem examination are evidence of excessive force, and they believe that Mr Bayoh died of positional asphyxiation, a condition that can be caused by being forcefully restrained face down.
Comparing the response to Mr Bayoh’s death with the Hillsborough cover-up, his family said that it was “instinctive for police officers to blame the dead rather than their own”.
The incident is being investigated by the Police Investigation and Review Commissioner (PIRC), and a fatal accident inquiry will follow its report.
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Aamer Anwar, the lawyer representing the Bayoh family, said that failure to bring disciplinary or criminal proceedings against the nine officers involved would indicate that police could act with impunity, even when their actions have fatal consequences.
On Saturday, The Times published new details of the attempt to detain Mr Bayoh, during which several officers were incapacitated when their CS and Pava spray canisters backfired, temporarily blinding them.
Nicole Short, a police officer, was injured in the incident and neither she nor Alan Paton, a colleague, has returned to work.
A knife was found near the scene and witnesses said that they had seen Mr Bayoh, who came to Scotland from Sierra Leone as a child, brawl with a friend in his front garden early that morning. It is also thought that Ecstasy was found in his body.
Mr Bayoh’s family has seen CCTV footage of the incident.
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“The Bayohs have been expected, with no resources, to take on the might of the Police Federation and Police Scotland simply to find out what happened to Sheku,” Mr Anwar said in a statement. “Within minutes of Sheku’s death the most powerful institution in our country closed ranks, passing blame to Sheku. Over the course of a year, the press were manipulated to portray negative images of Sheku — of a 6ft-plus black man, a drug-crazed mad knife-wielding attacker who would have murdered had it not been for the police. Use of force has to be lawful, proportionate and necessary in the circumstances. But his family ask: did Sheku attack the police first or did they attack him first?
“No opportunity has been missed to demonise Sheku, the dead can’t answer back, but his family have for him.”
Mr Anwar repeated that the Bayoh family had no confidence in the PIRC investigation, saying that those in charge of the police watchdog had dealt with them “like petulant children”.
He said: “One year later the Bayohs’ confidence in the PIRC is shattered. They stand accused by the family of being weak and partial to the police. Sadly the family consider PIRC to be part of the problem not part of the solution.”
“For any parent the loss of a child shatters the soul, but no one can imagine the devastating toll wreaked by having to campaign for justice through one’s grief. Sheku’s mother still demands the right to know: ‘What were my son’s last words?’”
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Before the anniversary of Mr Bayoh’s death, Police Scotland and the PIRC expressed their condolences to his family.