Garda records ‘left vulnerable at risk’
The force misclassified serious incidents, TDs told
GARDA misclassification of incidents may have led to vulnerable people being left in domestic situations where they were at risk, two civilian members of the force have said.
Lois West, deputy head of the Garda analysis service, and colleague Laura Galligan were before the Oireachtas Justice Committee yesterday to discuss homicide figures.
Ms Galligan, a policing analyst, said she had been directed by line manager Ms West to carry out the review of domestic homicides from 2007 to 2016 as requested by the Garda National Protective Services Bureau.
Ms Galligan identified areas of key concern including ‘misclassification, under-reporting, overreporting, delays in recording and data quality issues’.
She said she also raised an ‘incident of serious concern to ‘Faced pressure’: Lois West the notice of the Garda National Protective Services Bureau upon discovering the partner of a deceased person was in a new domestic violent relationship’.
‘Since then, I have highlighted a number of these types of cases to GNPSB,’ she added.
Ms West hailed her colleague, who, she said, continued to ‘refer cases to GNPSB, where we had very genuine concerns that a person may be living in a vulnerable situation’. Ms West said: ‘We made the decision to escalate cases where we felt that a new partner may be at risk.
‘These were identified as Ms Galligan did her utmost to piece together histories where escalation in the number and severity of incidents pointed to significant risk indicators.’
Ms West added: ‘I strongly believed we would never regret referring such instances to the Protective Services Bureau, but we might regret not doing so.’
Asked by Independents 4 Change TD Clare Daly if she believed, based on the evidence and analysis of files that she had looked at, that people were at risk today due to crimes being misclassified on the Garda’s Pulse system or if risk indicators had perhaps been missed, Ms West agreed it may be a possibility. However, she said they ‘don’t want to panic people either’ and that a lot of work has been done around issues with Pulse to try to improve data collection.
The civilian members of the force said that at times during their work they were subjected to ‘severe pressure’. Ms West told TDs that ‘our integrity, both personal and professional, was undermined and attacked’ as they raised concerns about the misclassification issues.
Ms Galligan said they ‘voiced concerns at what we deemed to be a very serious issue regarding the recording and classification of deaths’ within the Garda.
Last night the force said it supports personnel ‘in bringing forward issues of concern’.
It said it ‘takes the investigation of each and every suspicious death very seriously’.
‘An Garda Síochána recognises the need to provide the public and our other stakeholders with correct data so that issues affecting policing are based on accurate information,’ it said.
‘Our integrity was attacked’