Garda failings hurt the force as well as victims
BACK in March 2013, the Garda Inspectorate said it was “unacceptable” that sergeants were unable to supervise gardaí on the beat, because they were bogged down in the office doing paper work.
In its report Frontline Policing, it said there were “significant gaps in supervision at the frontline” and this was a particular problem for inexperienced gardaí. It said sergeants in charge of regular patrols had told them they were only able to go out with their unit 10% of the time.
In its damning Crime Investigation report, published on Tuesday, the inspectorate said the situation was “far worse” than when it wrote its 2013 report. The consequences were clear: “The Inspectorate views the absence of patrol sergeants as a major contributor to the deficiencies in crime investigations found in this inspection”.
In chapters 3 and 4 of its 500-page report, the deficiencies are grave, not just for crime recording, but for victims.
It said domestic violence was a crime that required “particular attention”. It said there were 10,373 such calls to all Dublin garda divisions between January and September 2012. In half of these cases no reports were actually completed by gardaí.
It said the force had stated it had a “positive arrest policy” for domestic violence. But of the 10,373 cases, there were only 247 arrests — often for breach of a barring order, rather than for crimes such as assault.
The report tracked 158 calls from the public to seven garda divisions across the country. It said there were eight calls which should have resulted in a garda attending the incident, but didn’t. Three were domestic violence cases.
- In May 2012, a caller stated her husband had beaten her and hit her with a small table. Shortly after, the woman called back to say her husband had just left the address. The Garda control room recorded on the CAD [Computer Aided Dispatch] record that gardaí would still call to check on her welfare. The result to the call on CAD is shown as a report to station [not a crime]. The unit assigned to the call has since reported that the members were cancelled to the call by the control room. This information conflicts with the details on the CAD message.
- Also in May 2012, a caller stated her boyfriend was beating her and also had tried to choke her. A unit was assigned and the CAD message recorded that the unit arrived on scene within eight minutes and left the scene six minutes later. The call is recorded as a report to the station [not a crime]. This incident was never recorded on PULSE.
Of the 158 calls, 28% were never recorded on the Garda Pulse system. A further 9% of cases were only recorded after the Inspectorate sought details, bringing the total to 37%.
The report said heavy workloads was the main reason provided by gardaí for not recording incidents on Pulse. The report said there was “very little evidence” of supervision to check calls are correctly dealt with.
It added: “The failure to record and properly investigate a crime is unacceptable in any policing jurisdiction.”
The inspection found significant differences between garda divisions in the speed with which gardaí reported a Pulse incident, which is done by gardaí ringing in incidents to a civilian-staffed Garda Information Services Centre.
The report said a crime “should be recorded immediately” or at least by the end of a members’ duty. It found 18% of incidents were recorded at least 24 hours after the crime was reported by the victim. In 10% of cases, it was not recorded for at least one week after.
“A number of serious crimes, such as rape, burglary and robbery, were recorded at least one week after the crimes were reported to gardaí.”
The report found major problems in how crimes were classified, with burglaries and attempted burglaries often categorised as criminal damage, which is a lesser crime, and some minor assaults classified as non-crimes.
It said the general quality of Pulse narratives — or descriptions — was “poor”, with narratives of assault cases particularly shoddy.
“Often there was no details about what the gardaí did at the crime scene, eg, seeking witnesses or looking for secure CCTV footage. The narrative often had very poor descriptions of suspects.”
It further said narratives were subsequently changed, including cases where references of indecent assault were removed and attempted burglaries described as criminal damage.
Again, it said there was “limited evidence” of supervision.
The inspection conducted an examination of 500 Pulse records for crime classifications. It found that across nine categories, 30% of classifications were incorrect and a further 16% had insufficient information.
It said a “large percentage” of criminal damage, harassment, menacing phone calls, theft, and trespass cases could or should have been classified as more serious crimes.
In cases classified as non-crime incidents, a “significant percentage” were crimes. Yet again, it said there was very little supervision of this category.
The category Attention and Complaints included 16% of incidents which suggested a crime had been committed. This included threats to life from an ex-partner and assaults. It said in the Property Lost category 6% of records suggested a crime had taken place — equating over 2,000 additional offences.
The report said there was a particular issue of “letter box burglaries” — in which implements are pushed through letterboxes to take keys, bags, etc — not being classified as burglaries. It said of 310 such crimes, 89 were correctly classified. When it examined a sample of 100 others, 97% were incorrectly classified.
The inspection said that had lessons from previous Inspectorate reports been learned the current situation would be different.
Concluding, it said: “The Inspectorate believes that there are systemic failures in Garda Síochána recording practices and on-compliance with crime counting rules.”
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