Police Scotland Officers Accused of Leaking Live Crime Probes

A Police Scotland anti-corruption case that began with four arrests in December 2024 now sits on an eight-charge High Court indictment, with a trial listed for August 2027. Two of the accused were detectives. One still served when he was held.

Court papers allege they fed live organised-crime work to a suspected cocaine trafficker. All three men have pleaded not guilty. None of the claims has been tested before a jury.

Four Arrests Became an Eight-Charge Indictment

On 1 May 2026 the case called at the High Court in Glasgow. A six-page indictment set out eight charges against Christopher Dougherty, 44, of Stirling, David Smith, 46, of Carfin, and Andrew Gauley, 46, of Gartcosh. Defence KCs Tony Graham, Donald Findlay and John Scullion pleaded not guilty. Prosecutor Greg Farrell and the bench agreed a trial could be fixed. Lord Arthurson listed it for August 2027, with a possible run of about four weeks.

Only Smith was in the dock that day. Dougherty and Gauley’s attendance was excused. The three men were continued on bail at that hearing. Every charge on the sheet is listed as aggravated by a connection to serious organised crime.

Dougherty was a serving officer in the Organised Crime and Counter Terrorism Unit (West) when Police Scotland’s anti-corruption unit arrested him. Smith is described in the papers as a then serving constable for the earliest allegation, and he had resigned by the time of the arrests. Gauley is described at one point as a member of the public.

WHO WAS CHARGED

Hunter appeared with the three men at Dunfermline in January 2025 and was accused of a drugs-related offence. She does not appear in the High Court papers that were read against Dougherty, Smith and Gauley. No later public listing for her case has been issued alongside theirs.

What Police Scotland Said in December 2024

The force spoke on 23 and 24 December 2024, days after the arrests, and it said almost nothing about the work the accused men were alleged to have touched. A spokesperson confirmed the anti-corruption unit had held three men and a woman across central Scotland on Wednesday 18 December 2024, then charged all four and released them on an undertaking to appear in court.

Following an investigation conducted by Police Scotland’s anti-corruption unit, three men and a woman were arrested across central Scotland on Wednesday December 18. All four have been charged and released from custody on an undertaking to appear in court at a later date.

Police Scotland spokesperson, December 2024 statement

The force did not name the four. It did not name a unit, a station, or a live job. Separate briefing at the time said one man was a serving officer who had been suspended, one was a former officer who had resigned, and the other man and the woman were members of the public. The December arrests followed raids at properties earlier in 2024.

On 16 January 2025 the four made their first appearance at Dunfermline Sheriff Court. Names entered the public record there. Dougherty faced a charge under the Police and Fire Reform (Scotland) Act, which makes it a crime for a constable to neglect or violate the constable’s duty. Smith faced fraud, conspiracy and attempting to defeat the ends of justice. Gauley faced fraud, conspiracy, theft and attempting to pervert the course of justice. Hunter faced the drugs-related offence. All four made no plea and were granted bail.

That first hearing still left the operational claim in the dark. The public record showed an officer, a former officer, and two civilians on a mixed charge sheet. It did not show five police operations, a suspected leak of surveillance tactics, or a warning that fellow officers had been put at risk.

WHAT WE KNOW

• The arrests: Three men and a woman were held across central Scotland on 18 December 2024 after an anti-corruption unit inquiry and were charged the same week.
• The High Court sheet: Eight charges against Dougherty, Smith and Gauley were read on 1 May 2026, and not guilty pleas were entered.
• The listing: Lord Arthurson set a trial for August 2027 that could last about four weeks.
• Hunter’s place: She appeared at Dunfermline on a drugs-related charge and was not named on the three-person indictment read in Glasgow.

WHAT IS UNCONFIRMED

• The alleged leaks: Whether any live probe was in fact compromised remains a matter for the trial.
• Hunter’s case: No public High Court listing matching the three-man indictment has been issued for her drugs charge.
• Service status now: Dougherty was a suspended serving officer at arrest; no later public update on his employment has been issued with the indictment.

The gap between those two public accounts is the part of the case that still sits ahead of a jury. A charging line about four people on an undertaking is a process story. An indictment that names five operations and says officers were endangered is a claim about the work the force does against organised crime.

Cocaine, a College and an Unmarked Car

Separate from the leak counts, the indictment accuses Smith of neglecting his duties as an officer between Christmas Day 2022 and 28 February 2024. Prosecutors claim he repeatedly took cocaine with a woman at the Scottish Police College at Tulliallan and drove an unmarked surveillance vehicle while high. Court papers allege he accepted cocaine from Gauley on various occasions.

Tulliallan is not a back-street lock-up. It is the force’s national college in Fife, the same campus the charge sheet also lists among the places where sensitive talk is alleged to have taken place. If the college counts are proved, the setting is the training ground for the officers who would have been asked to trust the two detectives.

Dougherty faces a linked claim that he violated his service by failing to stop Smith and the woman taking drugs and by failing to stop his colleague getting behind the wheel. That is a different allegation from passing intelligence. It is a claim that one detective watched another use cocaine, including at the college, and did not intervene.

Gauley is accused of cocaine trafficking between 18 December 2022 and 24 August 2024, including at a bar on Glasgow’s Bath Street and a flat in the city’s West End. The trafficking count is the commercial half of the same period in which Smith is accused of taking the drug from him. The papers treat Gauley as the man who could supply the detectives and, on the leak counts, as the man who could sell what they knew.

Five Operations Named on the Charge Sheet

The core joint charge runs from 13 June 2021 to 19 December 2024. Court papers list 12 separate accusations inside that count, with reference to five named police operations. Locations on the sheet include the college, the Louden Tavern near Ibrox Stadium, Livingston Police Station, and a number of shopping centres.

Prosecutors allege the two detectives and Gauley did “disclose sensitive information” about organised crime probes to “criminal associates”. One claim is that Dougherty used his post in the Organised Crime and Counter Terrorism command to get access to one of those investigations. Details were then said to have passed to Smith, then to Gauley, then to people linked to crime.

That chain is the second-order problem the December statement never described. OCCTU is the national command that targets organised crime groups. If a detective inside that command is proved to have used the job to read a live file and move it outward, the damage is not a bad headline. It is a claim that the people running the probes were also the people alleged to have briefed against them.

The indictment states Smith and Dougherty tipped off Gauley knowing that any compromise to a force probe would have “endangered” fellow officers. That line is the stake the first press notice left out. The overlooked party in the original story was not the suspended constable. It was the officers on the five named jobs, who would have been working under the assumption that their own unit had not sold the plan.

THE ALLEGED LEAK METHODS

• Database checks: Smith is accused of looking up Gauley on the Scottish Intelligence Database between 31 March 2005 and 11 July 2017 without telling superiors about a “pre-existing association,” with Shettleston, London Road and Maryhill police stations among the addresses listed.
• Unit access: Dougherty is accused of using his OCCTU West role to obtain material on a live investigation and passing it along the chain to Gauley.
• Mixed briefings: Smith and Gauley are said to have passed both “accurate and inaccurate” information to gain trust from criminals for cash, “as part of a scheme to protect associates against police action.”
• Images of colleagues: Smith is alleged to have taken photos and videos of colleagues to show Gauley.
• A training course: An attempt-to-defeat-justice count claims Smith got Gauley onto a covert surveillance training course even though Gauley was not a “trusted associate” of the police, giving him tactics later said to have been relayed to a named criminal.
• A protection scam: Gauley and Smith are accused of a bogus scheme to con a man into thinking he was a police target and to offer “protection” from being watched in exchange for an unknown sum of cash.

Over an 18-month period, Gauley is said to have wanted to know about police set-ups, including “surveillance tactics.” If that request was answered from inside the unit that runs those tactics, the leak is not a stray printout. It is a claim that the method itself was for sale.

A further count says Gauley and Smith plotted at HMP Addiewell with a named individual to assault a man, including attempts to locate him through the prison system and arrange an attack. That allegation sits beside the leak and drug counts. It is a claim that the same pairing moved from information to violence.

A SIM Card Went Into a Burner Phone

The joint charge ends on the day after the arrests. It states Dougherty knew he was being arrested in December 2024 and put his mobile SIM card in a “burner-style phone” before handing the device over at Livingston Police Station.

That is a small physical act with a large implied purpose. A SIM moved off a working handset onto a cheap spare is a way of changing what a search team will find. The papers place the swap at the station where he was being processed, not at a quiet house hours earlier. Prosecutors are asking a jury to read it as a last attempt to keep the real phone’s traffic off the record.

Smith’s alleged photographs of colleagues belong in the same family of tradecraft. A still or a clip of an officer is useful to people who want to know who is watching them. Combined with the claim that Gauley was steered onto a surveillance course, the indictment describes a pipeline that ran from files and tactics to faces.

The operational reading is blunt. Once a crime group learns how a job is being watched, and who is watching it, the job can fold and the watchers can be marked. That is why a leak from inside OCCTU, if proved, is a different class of harm from a constable who fiddles a database for a friend. The December statement could not carry that distinction because it did not describe the work at all.

Not Guilty Pleas and an August 2027 Trial

The three men deny the charges. Findlay, Graham and Scullion entered those pleas on 1 May 2026. Nothing in the indictment is a finding. The trial listing in August 2027 means the arrests of 18 December 2024 will be almost three years old before a jury is asked to decide them, and the earliest count on Smith’s sheet reaches back to 2005.

THE CASE PATH

1. Earlier in 2024: Raids at properties take place before the December arrests.
2. 18 December 2024: The anti-corruption unit arrests three men and a woman across central Scotland. Dougherty, then a serving OCCTU West officer, is suspended. Smith has already resigned.
3. 23 December 2024: Police Scotland confirms the four have been charged and released on an undertaking, without names or operational detail.
4. 16 January 2025: All four appear at Dunfermline Sheriff Court, make no plea, and are granted bail. Dougherty, Smith, Gauley and Hunter are named in court.
5. 1 May 2026: An eight-charge indictment against Dougherty, Smith and Gauley is read at the High Court in Glasgow. Not guilty pleas are entered. Hunter is not on that sheet.
6. August 2027: A trial of about four weeks is listed before the High Court.

That timetable is now the practical cost of the case. Officers named on the five operations, if they are still in post, will wait through another year before a court tests whether their jobs were briefed out. Dougherty’s alleged SIM swap, Smith’s alleged college cocaine, and Gauley’s alleged trafficking counts will sit in the same trial as the leak chain rather than being dealt with as a short sheriff-court misconduct matter.

The original notice from the force was accurate as far as it went. Four people were charged. One was a serving officer. All were released to appear. What it did not say, and what the indictment now says in public, is that the alleged corruption was not at the edge of the force. It was alleged inside the command that runs organised-crime work, with five operations on the page and a trial that will not start until August 2027.

Disclaimer: This article is news reporting on criminal charges and court listings. It is for information only and is not legal advice, a finding of guilt, or a comment on the merits of any defence. Anyone who needs advice about a criminal allegation, a police inquiry, or a court date should consult a qualified Scottish solicitor before acting. Names, charges, bail conditions and hearing dates reflect the public court record and force statements as published, and those details can change as the case proceeds.