Police Scotland records show sudden deaths dramatically increased in 2020 and continued to increase in subsequent years
Police Scotland records show a significant increase in sudden deaths in 2020. Notably, the were spikes in sudden deaths in April and May, after “stay at home” measures were implemented, and a third in December 2020, the month the mass covid vaccination campaign began.
The incidences of sudden deaths increase further in 2021 and again in 2022.
Police Scotland uses a command and control incident recording system called System for Tasking and Operational Resource Management (“STORM”) Unity to record incidents consistently across the country. The system is largely used for resource allocation purposes, guiding police responses to incidents.
There are three call centres in Scotland to which the public reports an incident. These call centres record the details of the report in STORM, which include an overview of the details of the initial call; any update on the initial report; any action taken; and the outcome. A clear distinction is made in the system between a crime and a non-crime incident.
Last year, a Freedom of Information Act (“FoI”) request was submitted asking Police Scotland for:
The number of logs created for Sudden Deaths (*) broken down by month for the years 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2023 so far.
(*) – whereby somebody has died suddenly and unexpectedly and the police are asked to attend, you may call it something different to “sudden death,” INCLUDING sudden deaths due to covid (you may separate these out but this is not necessary)
On 20 March 2023, Police Scotland responded by providing tables of the number of incidents recorded on STORM where the final incident type was recorded as “Sudden Death.” The tables provided showed a breakdown by Divisional area and month from 1 January 2019 to 31 December 2022.
On Tuesday, Biologyphenom published a Substack article (see below) summarising the information contained in the FoI response and highlighting a spike in sudden deaths in 2020 which increased in 2021 and 2022. While answers can’t be found from this data alone, it does raise questions.
As background information to Biologyphenom’s article: Scotland went into a national lockdown, with a “stay at home” order announced by First Minister Nicola Sturgeon on 23 March 2020. This was part of the UK-wide lockdown.
Scotland began to diverge with those elsewhere in the UK as the first lockdown was lifted starting in April 2020. The Scottish government pursued a zero-covid strategy and lifted lockdown rules later and more gradually than the rest of the country. At the end of May 2021, lockdown measures began to be lifted in Scotland, with a phased approach to reopening society and the economy.
It is also worthwhile reading Biologyphenom’s article last week summarising a response to a FoI received from the Scottish Ambulance Service regarding callouts relating to heart problems. It includes an overview of the relevant changes regarding Scotland’s covid vaccination policy. You can read last week’s article HERE.
FoI: Police Scotland Sudden Deaths 2019-2022
Most sudden or unexplained deaths are reported to the Scottish Fatalities Investigation Unit, within the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service (“COPFS”). The Procurator Fiscal is there to direct the recovery of evidence and instruct the police in carrying out further investigation.
2019-2022 Data
Considering there have been 190,000 deaths in Scotland 2020-2022 I find it quite astonishing to discover 30,000 are recorded as sudden deaths requiring further investigation – cause of death unknown.
You can clearly see a notable increase in these death reports in 2020 compared to 2019 in particular after the lockdown period commencing on 23 March 2020 (NB: some care homes locked down sooner).
Disturbingly unexplained deaths then increased year on year after the rollout of the experimental covid vaccinations, which commenced on 8 December 2020. The standout months are from Dec 2020 to Jan 2021 – an unmistakable jump in deaths occurred with over 2,000 reports!
