Cancelled 999 calls: 'Sustained, intrusive engagement' by gardaí needed to resolve issues

Report commissioned by Garda oversight body found that some call-takers were 'rude', 'impatient', and 'lacked empathy'

Garda Commissioner Drew Harris, Deputy Commissioner Anne-Marie McMahon, and Assistant Commissioner Paula Hilman attend a meeting between the Policing Authority and Garda Commissioner Drew Harris with members of An Garda Síochána at Dublin Castle. Picture: Gareth Chaney/Collins Photos

"We've said this review has shone a light into the control rooms. A light that wasn't there before."

These were the remarks made by Assistant Garda Commissioner Anne-Marie McMahon during yesterday's meeting of the Policing Authority with senior Garda figures.

The topic of discussion at the meeting was the final report commissioned by the Garda oversight body into the incorrect cancellation of 999 calls.

From the report’s contents, it is clear that it was not before time that a light was shone in this direction.

The meeting heard that the public must be able to trust and rely upon a consistent and supportive 999 call service. People ringing 999 are usually doing so in a time of great crisis.

Policing Authority member Shalom Binchy pointed out examples in the report that found some call-takers were "rude", "impatient", and "lacked empathy".

Ms McMahon admitted that there were examples where the call handler “didn’t display that empathy and the curiosity that one would expect when somebody is calling in from a vulnerable position or a position of crisis”.

It is no wonder that, when asked about it, the Taoiseach described the report’s contents as “very worrying”.

Potential for serious harm

That report, compiled by former chief inspector of constabulary in Scotland, Derek Penman, differed from the interim report which had already laid bare some extremely concerning statistics around the cancellation of such calls from members of the public when published last November.

The interim report had already revealed that more than 200,000 calls were cancelled between January 2019 and October 2020, the period covered by a Garda review of the matter into more than 2,000 Domestic Violence/Sexual Assault calls (DVSA) which appeared to have been cancelled for “invalid” reasons.

That interim report had found that “serious risk or harm” to individuals may have resulted from the cancelled calls.

The difference in this final report is that Mr Penman and his team actually had the chance to listen to the calls themselves, albeit a small number of them, to gauge the response the public received when they called 999.

While, generally, the report would say that call handlers would react with understanding and empathy to those who reached out to 999, it also noted instances where there were “serious shortcomings” in how the calls were handled.

These shortcomings meant there was the “potential for serious harm” to victims, which could mean that crimes were not reported or investigated and some offenders were not brought to justice.

The team listened to 210 calls. The authority admitted that the sample size is “relatively low” but was chosen to provide a “sufficient basis to make observations around compliance and quality”.

Of these, 83 calls were identified as belonging to a “serious cohort”, where the incidents reported had the potential to result in serious risk or harm to individuals. It involved 60 calls for Dublin and 23 calls for Cork.

Inconsistent approach

Away from situations deemed as serious, the report also randomly reviewed a further 120 calls. It found in some cases the call taker was impatient, interrupting the caller unnecessarily, failing to ask sufficient follow-on questions, or providing poor advice.

There was also evidence of an “inconsistent approach” to children calling 999, in one case where a call taker was abrupt in asking for a child’s name and did not ask for a location before the child ended the call.

It added: “There are some incidents where the Garda members dispatched to incidents specifically requested that a call be cancelled. 

"This practice was highlighted in the Interim Update [Nov 21] as a means of Garda members avoiding follow-up activities.” 

Reiterating a point made in the interim report, Mr Penman said that the absence of call-recording at local Garda stations is a “serious vulnerability”.

This is made more acute by the lack of sufficient technical or procedural safeguards to ensure that such incidents reported to local stations are recorded and appropriately actioned.

Furthermore, it pointed to the ageing CAD system and other legacy technologies used in regional control rooms as indicative of a “chronic lack of investment”.

“However, the cancellation of calls requires a specific action on the part of a call handler in order to cancel a call and therefore the technology was not deemed to be a significant contributory factor,” it noted.

The report also praised the gardaí for their “detailed preparation” of the CAD review incident files. It also said there was “consistent evidence” that the gardaí sought to provide a service to those failed via a “victim engagement process”.

Next steps

 

Based on his findings, Mr Penman recommended that the force conclude its CAD review and “ceases any further retrospective analysis of incidents”.

“This should be agreed by the Policing Authority and the Garda Síochána on the understanding that the financial and opportunity costs of further analysis are unlikely to identify harm or offer meaningful service recovery to potential victims,” he said.

Mr Penman recommended the gardaí focus resources on improving the current call-handling arrangements.

These findings and recommendations were acknowledged by Garda Commissioner Drew Harris at yesterday’s meeting. He said there were “missed opportunities” to engage with people who had called 999.

Furthermore, while he outlined a number of steps An Garda Síochána had made to try to improve processes and prevent such instances from happening again, Mr Harris could not give a “complete reassurance” on the behaviour of call takers.

“So we are dealing with very much, I would say, a human endeavour,” he said. 

"The individuals within the control rooms do work hard, do work in very stressful circumstances at times, and they are very conscious of the next calls arriving in as well.

"So there's just not an element of 'here's his standard' and being ruthless around that.” 

Mr Harris said that gardaí recognise the “absolute importance of the correct handling of calls right from the start”.

To that end, part of the improvements will come from an increased role of supervisors in control centres. 

Mr Penman’s report had noted that there was “limited evidence” of supervisory checks over incidents in the calls he had listened to.

Ms McMahon said that not enough supervisors have yet been recruited, but work was ongoing in this area.

In remarks to reporters after the meeting, Policing Authority chairperson Bob Collins said that “we cannot be certain” harm did not come to some of the people whose 999 calls were incorrectly cancelled.

But, he said, he was assured by the lengths gardaí went to try to engage with those people who did have calls cancelled in their subsequent reviews. 

He was assured by the seriousness with which Mr Harris and his team were taking the matter and the measures they were taking to try to mitigate it in future.

However, he said it was “people, humans, individuals who cancelled incidents, not technology, not the absence of training”.

Mr Collins also seemed clear that, in its oversight role of An Garda Síochána, the Policing Authority would keep that light shining on this issue for some time to come.

“This is a problem that is going to need sustained, intrusive engagement by the Garda Síochána over a prolonged period of time to make sure that all of the issues that have been identified are satisfactorily resolved,” he said.