Police call mistakes due to 'human error'
- Published
Police say errors are made in only a tiny proportion of the emergency calls they receive
Police Scotland's failure to properly respond to some emergency calls is the result of "human error", a senior officer has said.
The Scottish Conservatives have highlighted a list of 202 errors made by the force over the past year.
Assistant Chief Constable Nelson Telfer insisted the mistakes were not due to the closure of local call centres.
He said a small number of mistakes were inevitable in any organisation that deals with so many calls.
On Thursday, Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson challenged First Minister Nicola Sturgeon over the errors, some of which saw officers being sent to the wrong address.
The exchange at first minister's questions came after the Police Investigations and Review Commissioner (Pirc) found a number of failings in the way police dealt with a 999 call from a domestic abuse victim.
Elizabeth Bowe, 50, called for help on 17 September last year but Police Scotland took almost 90 minutes to respond. She later died after being found seriously injured in her home.
Police Scotland has shut its Aberdeen call centre and is pushing ahead with plans to close its Inverness facility.
But Mr Telfer told Â鶹ԼÅÄ Radio's Good Morning Scotland programme the errors that had been made were not connected to the centralisation of call handling.
Police call centres deal with more than two million calls a year
He said: "When human beings are dealing with decision making, sometimes the decision making will be wrong and we need to pick up on that and learn from it and move forward.
"I would love to operate in a perfect world, but there's always going to that human factor and no-one lives in an error-free environment."
Among the cases highlighted by Ms Davidson were a suicidal man who she said was told to hang up, and separate call handlers failing to record a report of a dead body in a house.
Other cases included:
A woman threatened by her ex-partner who didn't get a response from police because they were sent to the wrong address
A man threatened with a knife where police were sent to the right flat in the right street but in the wrong town
A caller who rang as their mother and their niece were being assaulted and again police were sent to the wrong location
Mr Telfer admitted that in cases such as these it was "not appropriate that we don't attend".
He added: "The bottom line is our staff are now confident in declaring mistakes and learning from them.
"Don't think I'm making any excuses for mistakes being made, one for me is too many. But we need to put this into context.
"This is over a period where we received in excess of 2.2 million calls, both emergency and non-emergency calls, and the 202 incidents we're talking about is 0.009% - that's the human factor there."
- Published9 November 2017
- Published7 November 2017
