Posted: Monday 14 February 2011
Forces criticised by Commissioner over 999 response times
Strathclyde and Lothian & Borders Police have been criticised by Professor John McNeill, the Police Complaints Commissioner for Scotland, following complaints by the public over police response times to 999 calls.
One case reviewed by the Commissioner and published today (Monday 14 February), followed an attack on a restaurant by a group of twenty youths armed with bottles, bats and clubs. During the attack the owner, his wife and two members of staff locked themselves inside the premises and made ten 999 calls over a 90 minute period to Lothian & Borders, but no police attended the scene. The family eventually made their way to safety after the crowd dispersed.
This case was brought to the Commissioner by a member of the local community council who was dissatisfied at the response by Lothian and Borders Police following a complaint by the restaurant owner. The Commissioner agreed that the response from the force to the community councillor did not explain what had gone wrong or what steps had been take to prevent a similar situation occurring in the future. He has asked Lothian & Borders to provide this information.
In another report Professor McNeill recommends that Strathclyde Police apologise to a family for the length of time it took to respond to their calls for help. The calls were made following an argument at the house, during which a man was slashed across the face with a knife.
Police records show that the family made three 999 calls to the police at 4.04am and twice in the space of one minute at 4.18am, as the alleged attacker tried to force his way back into the house armed with knives and hammers. The family used furniture to barricade the doorway to prevent him reaching those inside, including a teenage girl.
The contact centre wrongly classed the call as Priority 3 and the police took 17 minutes to attend. This was the second time that evening that calls had been made to the police from that address.
The Commissioner's report concludes that a thorough investigation by Strathclyde Police into what went wrong was let down by the brief, unsatisfactory response issued to the complainer. The complainer was not informed of the error made by the Contact Centre regarding the priority grading of her call nor was she told of the outcome of the review by the contact centre into the circumstances surrounding her calls for help. As a result the Commissioner has called on the force to apologise and provide this information.
This month the Commissioner examined 32 individual complaints from the public, including two about the Chief Constable of Northern Constabulary, both of which were found to have been handled reasonably by the Northern Joint Police Board.